Vertex Receives CHMP Positive Opinion For The First CRISPR/Cas9 Gene-Edited Therapy CASGEVY

(RTTNews) - Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (VRTX) announced Friday that the European Medicines Agency's (EMA's) Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has adopted a positive opinion for the conditional approval of CASGEVY (exagamglogene autotemcel [exa-cel]), a CRISPR/Cas9 gene-edited therapy, for the treatment of severe sickle cell disease (SCD) and transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia (TDT).

If approved, exa-cel would be the only genetic therapy for patients in the European Union who are 12 years of age and older with either severe SCD with recurrent vaso-occlusive crises (VOCs) or TDT, for whom hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation is appropriate and a human leukocyte antigen matched related HSC donor is not available.

An approval decision by the European Commission is expected in February 2024.