Share prices for many gene-editing companies declined in 2021, but the field is burgeoning with novel approaches due to be highlighted at the J.P. Morgan meeting, and one player, Intellia, could move closer to a breakthrough in 2022.

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.