The Endpoints Slack interview: How Beam CEO John Evans thinks about the science and business of genetic editing

Even with last year’s land­mark ap­provals for ge­net­ic med­i­cines in sick­le cell dis­ease, John Evans is con­vinced his start­up can push the field fur­ther.

Beam Ther­a­peu­tics start­ed 2024 by an­nounc­ing it had dosed the first sick­le cell pa­tient with its base-edit­ing pro­gram, ex­pect­ing ini­tial hu­man re­sults in the sec­ond half of 2024. End­points News in­vit­ed Evans, a for­mer Agios Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals ex­ec­u­tive who has run Beam since 2017, to our se­cret Slack chan­nel to talk about Beam’s sick­le cell plans amid in­creas­ing com­pe­ti­tion, as well as how CRISPR could evolve over the next two decades.

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