Editas Medicine’s entry into the stock market with a $94.4 million initial public offering appears to be sparking positive signals for the company as well as the nascent gene-editing industry.
That’s not only because the Massachusetts-based startup, which lists Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates among its investors, was able to sell 5.9 million shares handily at a price of $16 a share. It’s also because the stock’s price trended upward during the company’s first hours of public trading on the NASDAQ exchange Feb. 3.
There have been lots of questions surrounding Editas, the biotech industry and the IPO market as a whole: Editas’ offering was the first IPO of the year, ending a drought sparked by concerns about stock market volatility.
What’s more, biotech stocks have been caught up in a riptide over the past few months. And on top of all that, Editas is heading into a dispute over patents relating to the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology.
