The French biotech has managed to bag a blue-chip partner to advance its ambitions to be the leading company in the ocular genomic medicine space, getting access to Intellia's CRISPR/Cas9 technology.

Patient selection is held out as the Achilles heel of clinical trial success. But a surprise and fortunate finding in Pfizer’s gene therapy trial has already resulted in tightened recruitment criteria, thanks to genetic analysis.

While rivals Intellia impressed with their first in vivo CRISPR gene-editing data, Editas’s first results in just two patients are not enough to convince investors.

The family-owned German pharma dates back to 1885 and tries to keep up with its publicly traded peers by not mimicking everything they do, but with a “value by innovation” focus.