Homology shutters development as genetic medicines biotech flashes ‘for sale’ sign, lays off 80 employees

Gene edit­ing and gene ther­a­py mak­er Ho­mol­o­gy Med­i­cines is let­ting go near­ly all of its staff, end­ing clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and search­ing for a buy­er or oth­er busi­ness ex­it, the Mass­a­chu­setts biotech said af­ter Thurs­day’s clos­ing bell.

It marks an­oth­er pull­back for the field of pub­licly-trad­ed gene ther­a­py biotechs, fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar move by Avro­bio two weeks ago.

Ho­mol­o­gy will stop fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of its pipeline, which in­cludes a gene edit­ing pro­gram for the rare me­tab­o­lism dis­or­der phenylke­tonuria, or PKU, as well as gene ther­a­pies for PKU and a lyso­so­mal stor­age dis­or­der known as Hunter syn­drome. Avro­bio had al­so been ex­plor­ing a gene ther­a­py for cer­tain forms of Hunter syn­drome.

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