In the field of biotech, sometimes, partnerships and collaborations are vital to maximize the impact of new technologies.
We often ask ourselves: “How can we accelerate the science happening inside our walls with the help of innovation outside Intellia?” When we consider potential partners, we prioritize whether we share the same cultural and strategic vision. Are they as passionate about the science as we are? Is their fundamental objective to help patients with significant unmet medical needs? We look for technologies, resources or capabilities that might allow us to achieve results greater than those we could generate on our own.
Scientific progress isn’t a zero-sum game.
Throughout my career, one story that continues to resonate with me comes from the martial artist and actor, Bruce Lee. Lee used to stress the importance of “emptying your cup.” This analogy is about a teacher who can’t fill a student’s cup with tea because it’s already full. What is the meaning? Well, if you have preconceived ideas or well-established beliefs, it can be difficult to be open to other perspectives. For me, this story is important to remember, especially at a company pioneering a novel technology like CRISPR. Scientific progress isn’t a zero-sum game. That’s the philosophy behind our business partnerships — bring an open mind to determine how we can work together with various stakeholders to benefit patients.
Since I joined Intellia a year ago, we continue to advance our platform in ways we likely couldn’t tackle alone. For example, with Regeneron we’re developing Intellia’s investigational in vivo CRISPR candidate, NTLA-2001 for the treatment of transthyretin (ATTR) amyloidosis. On the ex vivo side, companies taking advantage of Intellia’s allogeneic platform include AvenCell, which is focused on oncology, and Kyverna, which is developing potential candidates for autoimmune diseases. In addition, our collaboration with ONK Therapeutics leverages our genome editing platform and their NK cell platform to develop NK cell products for oncology. Lastly, our partnership with SparingVision, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Scrip Award for Best Partnership Alliance, helps us expand into other tissues by targeting ocular diseases.
In this industry, medical breakthroughs don’t happen overnight. To set them in motion, sometimes we need to lean on each other and be open to different ideas, because at the end of the day, it’s all about changing life stories.
Forward-Looking Statements
This article contains “forward-looking statements” of Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (“Intellia”, “we” or “our”) within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, express or implied statements regarding Intellia’s beliefs and expectations regarding the safety, efficacy and advancement of our clinical programs; our ability to advance product candidates and to develop and commercialize a pipeline of CRISPR-based therapies; and the ability to optimize the impact of our collaborations, including, but not limited to, our collaborations with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“Regeneron”), including our co-development programs for NTLA-2001, with SparingVision SAS (“SparingVision”) for the development of ophthalmic therapies, with AvenCell Therapeutics, Inc. (“AvenCell”) for the development of allogeneic universal CAR-T cell therapies, with Kyverna Therapeutics, Inc. (“Kyverna”) for the development of KYV-201, and with ONK Therapeutics, Ltd. (“ONK”) for the development of engineered NK cell therapies. Any forward-looking statements in this article are based on our expectations of future events and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from those set forth in or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, risks related to Intellia’s ability to protect and maintain its position and rights regarding its intellectual property portfolio; risks related to the development and commercialization of any of Intellia’s product candidates; and risks related to Intellia’s reliance on collaborations, including that its collaborations with Regeneron, SparingVision, AvenCell, Kyverna, ONK or its other collaborations will not continue or will not be successful. For a discussion of other risks and uncertainties, and other important factors, any of which could cause Intellia’s actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see the section entitled “Risk Factors” in Intellia’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as discussions of potential risks, uncertainties, and other important factors in Intellia’s subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All information in this statement is as of the date of this article, and Intellia undertakes no duty to update this information unless required by law.
