Congrats, Caribou!

By Ambar Bhattacharyya

Congratulations to Rachel Haurwitz, Jennifer Doudna, and the entire Caribou (NASDAQ: CRBU) team on today’s public debut! This incredible milestone marks the pinnacle of a decade of scientific innovation and next-generation technology.

Founded by pioneers in CRISPR genome editing, Caribou has fueled the development of next-generation immune cell therapies for the treatment of cancer. For nearly a decade, the company has developed proprietary technology to build a pipeline of wholly-owned allogeneic immune cell therapies for oncology. CB-010, Caribou’s leading program, is an anti-CD19 CAR-T that is currently in a phase 1 trial in B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

As we reflect back on their success up until this point, I go back to my initial meeting with Rachel nearly 5 years ago. She trained in Professor Doudna’s lab, and we discussed the wide-ranging potential of what gene editing could do. In parallel, at Maverick, we had been thinking through the question — what are the top 3 potential innovations in healthcare over the next decade? To us, it was clear that gene therapy would be on that list.

Caribou’s journey was unique; they started by focusing on gene editing in livestock and plants, and then made their own groundbreaking discoveries to create a unique DNA/RNA CRISPR hybrid technology that they cleverly named “chRDNA” (sound it out, fellow wine lovers). This technology has been the underpinning of their work for allogeneic cell therapies in human diseases.

We’ve been so impressed with Caribou over the years, and we’re so thrilled to be a part of this journey as they continue to innovate and revolutionize cell therapies to treat life-threatening diseases. Onwards, Caribou!

The views expressed herein are solely the views of the author(s) and are not necessarily the views of Maverick Capital, Ltd. or any of its affiliates. They are not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, investment advice.