Pfizer is making a major push to leverage mRNA technology, on which its Covid-19 vaccine is based, to develop new vaccines and treatments.
The drug giant said Monday it will pay Beam Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Mass., startup founded by Harvard researcher David Liu, $300 million to spend four years developing treatments for three undisclosed rare genetic diseases affecting the liver, the muscles, and the central nervous system.
Pfizer had said on an earnings call in July that it saw base editing, the technology employed by Beam, as one of the major tools that could emerge from mRNA technology. The deal, which pays Beam $100 million each for three preclinical research products — and could pay out much more over time — is a loud announcement of Pfizer’s interest in the field. Pfizer also recently announced it is developing an mRNA-based shingles vaccine with BioNTech, its partner for Covid-19 vaccine development, with whom it had already been working with on a flu vaccine.
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