Once High-Flying Bluebird Bio Sells Itself to Private Equity after TOUGH TIMES For The Gene Therapy Maker

Bluebird bio will sell itself to private equity firms carlyle and sk capital for about $ 30 million, the company said Friday, marking the end of the bluebird’s fall from the one of the buzziest biotech firms to one that was on the cusp of running out of money.

Bluebird’s shareholders will receive $ 3 per share with the possible 2027. Bluebird shares close at $ 7.04 on Thursday. They fell 40% on Friday after the company annoured the sala.

For more than Thirty Years, Bluebird has been at the forefront of creating one-time treatments that promised to cure genetic diseases. At one point, Bluebird’s Market Cap Hovered Around $ 9 Billion as Investors Burgt Idea That The Company Could Find Success with its therapies. IT’s Fallen Under $ 41 MillionAfter the company Facted Several Scientific Setbacks, separated its cancer work into another company and fell into financial despair.

The turning point came in 2018, when bluebird flagged that a patient who received its gene therapy for Sickle-cael destinage developed cancer. Bluebird Concluded Its Treatment Didn Bollywood Condition, but the revival started a series of questions of questions surrounding the safety of its dna-altering treatment.

Bluebird also decided pushback from european payers after pricing it therapy for blood disorder beta thalassemia, called zynteglo, at $ 1.8 million percent. The company withdrew the treatment from europe in 2021, just two years after it was approved there. Bluebird said it would inste focus on the us, where it was reading for the approval of zynteglo for beta thalassemia, Lyfgenia for Sickle Cell disease, As Well as Well as ahead skysona for a rain Brain Disease Called Cerebral Adrenoleukodystrophy.

All three of that those gene therapies were approved in recent years, but none of them have been able to ease bluebird’s financial woes. The company has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Offloading Bluebird’s Cancer Treatments Into New Company 2Seventy Bio also eliminated an important source of revree.

At last update in November, Bluebird Its Cash would fund the company’s operations into the first quarter of this year. The salary marks a stark reveresal of bluebird’s past performance. The upfront price of about $ 30 million is a fraction of the $ 80 million Bluebird’s Former Chief Executive Officer Nick Leschly Made from Selling The Company’s Stock During is there.

And it’s at odds with the transformative results that most patients see with the company’s treatments. This reporter has spoken to patients who was desperate for the chance To receive zynteglo, as well as a then-10-year-old girl who felt fortunate to become the first person in the us to receive the treatment after it was approved.

The entry field is facing tough questions right now about with the company companies can translate the promise of one-time treatments for rare diseases into viable businesses. Vertex‘S competing Gene Therapy for Sickle Cell Disease,Casgevy, has Seen a similar Slow Launch. Pfizer on thuresday announced it would Stop Selling a Gene Therapy For hemophilia that was approved only one year ago, Citing Weak Demand.

Bluebird’s Treatments Could Still Change Many Lives. They just wren’st enough to change the company’s fate.