20 Things You Didn’t Know About Intellia Therapeutics
Intellia Therapeutics is a biotechnology firm with its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company develops pharmaceuticals accomplished via CRISPR technology. It’s a leader in identifying treatments for conditions such as sickle cell anemia and others. The biotech startup is beginning to mature and has attracted the attention of investors from all over the world. It’s a company to keep your eye on if you’re considering expanding your investment portfolio. Here are 20 things you didn’t know about Intellia Therapeutics that you should know if you plan to invest in the startup.
1. Intellia Therapeutics chief technology is CRISPR
According to Wikipedia, Intellia Therapeutics arose from the efforts of a group of researchers at the University of California, Berkely. Jennifer Doudna, Virginijus Siksnys, and their colleagues invented the CRISPR gene editing system that is widely used for the development of biopharmaceuticals at Intellia. Teams from Vilnius University and UC Berkeley collaborated on the project.
2. Intellia Therapeutics partners with other biotechs
Intellia is embarking on research and discoveries in the biopharmaceutical industry with broad implications. The technology is complex and the research is dependent upon several partners collaborating and sharing their expertise. Intellia has developed key partnerships to accomplish its objectives with other large biotech companies including Regeneron and Novartis.
3. Intellia Therapeutics is still a young company
Intellia Therapeutics hasn’t been in operation for that long. It was officially launched in 2014. The company is entering its seventh year of business. For a biotech company, this isn’t that long as research often takes many years and even decades to unlock some of the mysteries that lead to innovative new treatments and even cures for rare and puzzling diseases. Intellia, however, has expedited the speed at which it is making these discoveries, thanks to the CRISP gene-editing technology.
4. Intellia Therapeutics is a versatile biotech organization
According to Crunchbase, Intellia Therapeutics falls under five different industry categories because of the scope of its reach. It is a biotechnology business that specializes in work in genetics. Because it creates treatments and biopharmaceuticals it is categorized as a therapeutics company in the medical and healthcare industries.
5. Intellia Therapeutics is a woman-founded and led the company
Intellia Therapeutics ranks highly on the diversity scale. The business was founded by women in 2014, It is in the diversity spotlight in the United States as such, which is encouraging as there has been a movement to bring more women into the science sector of business.
6. Intellia Therapeutics has seven founders
The biotech firm is the creation of collaboration among seven professionals in the biotech, medical, business, and healthcare arenas. Officially, seven co-founders combined their talents and resources to establish Intellia as a business. This includes Jennifer Doudna, Andy May, Derrick Rossi, Erik Sontheimer, Nessan Bermingham, Luciano Marrafini, and Rodolphe Barrangou. Many of the co-founders are experts in the field of gene editing as well as research in developing curative gene-editing treatments. They specialize in finding therapies for treating severe and life-threatening diseases.
7. Intellia Therapeutics has a 16 member executive leadership team
The leadership team for Intellia Therapeutics is large, comprised of 16 members. Derrick Rossi is a founder. Genn Goddard is the chief financial officer. David Lebwohl is the chief medical officer. Erik Sontheimer is a co-ounder. John Leonard is the president, chief executive officer, and member of the board of directors. Jennifer Mound Smoter is the senior vice president in charge of external affairs and communications. Jenifer Doudna is a co-founder. Nishla Keiser is a senior vice president, deputy general counsel, and assistant corporate secretary. It is a large team that is far bigger than the board of directors.
8. Intellia Therapeutics has a 3 member board of directors
The board of directors for Intellia Therapeutics is remarkably small with just three members. Jennifer Doudna has been a member of the board since the organization’s inception in 2014. She is a founder, and one of the creators of the CRISPR gene editing system that is used as a proprietary technology for the firm. She is an investor with two portfolio companies and currently serves on three board and advisory committees. She serves as an advisor to Intellia Therapeutics. Frank Verwiel is a board advisor who currently serves on three boards in advisory roles. Jean Francois Formela is a board advisor and partner at Atlas Venture. he has founded four organizations and currently serves on eleven boards in advisory roles. The board of directors for Intellia Therapeutics is small in size, but each of the members brings powerful knowledge and expertise in the financial and biotech sectors that make them qualified to offer their insights on how to move the company forward.
9. Intellia’s website alone uses complex technology
Intellia Therapeutics maintains an official webpage that describes the functions of the company and provides relevant news and information. Just the website, not factoring in the technology used to conduct research, uses a total of 53 technologies to power the site. These technologies are distributed over 33 technology products. Although the technology is complex and requires constant monitoring and updating, users enjoy a smooth experience when using the site. Some of the tech products used include jQuery, Google Analytics, HTML5, iPhone Mobile Compatible, SPF, Viewport Meta, and others.
10. The overhead expenses are high for Intellia Therapeutics
Intellia Therapeutics invests a great deal into its IT and website technology. The average cost of software and technology products to keep the website running is an estimated $660.5 thousand per year. This goes into the budget as a line item and it is a significant expenditure, yet it is a necessary one.
11. Intellia Therapeutics is unique in the biotech industry
Intellia Therapeutics is in competition with some other biotech organizations, while it collaborates with others. For those who are direct competitors, Intellia maintains a distinct edge and uniqueness. This is because it uses technology that it owns the exclusive rights to. We learned that Intellia Therapeutics has thirty-three registered patented in the biochemistry categories of beer, spirits, wine, vinegar, microbiology, enzymology, mutation, or genetic engineering. They own the intellectual property and none of the competition can use or imitate them without their express permission. On top of that, Intellia has secured seven registered trademarks in the pharmaceutical, veterinary, and sanitary product categories.
12. Intellia Therapeutics’ website gets thousands of hits
We also checked out the popularity of the Intellia Therapeutics website. We discovered that the average number of monthly visits to the site is 23,402. Intellia’s website is ranked as number 740,906 out of all of the millions of websites registered on the world wide web.
13. Interest in Intellia Therapeutics is growing in Germany
Our research shows that the majority of visits to the Intellia Therapeutics website come from people who are living in the United States. This group makes up ninety-one percent of the overall web traffic to the site. Although just six percent of the visitors come from the country of Germany, there has been an astronomical monthly visitor growth rate from the country, of 113.6 percent. This suggests that there is a growing interest in the company from Germans. Visitors from the United Kingdom make up three percent of the traffic, while Denmark and Iraq each make up one percent of the traffic.
14. Intellia Therapeutics was a VC backed company
For the first two years after its launch, Intellia Therapeutics was backed by venture capital funding. The organization participated in two rounds that raised a total of $85 million. The last venture capital funding round for Intellia was closed on September 1, 2015. The Series A round on November 18, 2014, raised $15 million, led by Atlas Venture and Novartis with one other investor joining. The 2015 Series B round was led by OrbiMed with seven other investors joining, raised an additional $70 million.
15. Intellia Therapeutics went public in 2016
Intellia Therapeutics started as a venture capital-backed startup. It wasn’t long before company decision-makers decided to go public. The initial public offering for Intellia was on May 6, 2016. Intellia is a registered publicly owned company listed under the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol NTLA. The most recent investors in Intellia were Janus Capital Group and Fidelity Management. The opening price of the stock in May of 2016 was $22 per share. If you’re considering diversification or addition to your current investment portfolio the stock in Intellia Therapeutics shares is offered for purchase, trade, and sale.
16. Intellia Therapeutics has exceeded expectations
When companies go public, it’s routine for analysts to make predictions about the potential outcomes of the move. Going public isn’t a guarantee that the company will benefit, but it could be the boost that pushes it over the top in fundraising. It’s generally a gamble. According to Fierce Biotech, Intelliaexperieced a gain of over fifty-five percent in a single day on its shares. The initial opening price of its stock was $22 per share in May of 2016. By June 29, 2021, the prices of Intellia’s shares soared to a high of $133.43 per share by the close of the day. This exceeded the expectations of analysts.
17. The results of Intellia’s gene editing were just as impressive
Intellia Therapeutics has been full of surprises to the casual observers. The gene-editing technology that it has developed and utilized has also exceeded expectations. The results that it has produced in this field have influenced the FDA to relax its previous stance to hosting gene editing trials within the United States. This is real progress for Intellia and other biotech companies that rely on this type of technology in the biomedical field.
18. Results for gene editing in humans are positive
Intellia and its partner Regeneron have broken new ground in gene editing in human beings. Previous research in animals showed that there was promise for the therapies involving this technology. They were the first to show that the therapies are useful and produce the desired results in humans. The results of NTLA-2001 showed that it is more effective in combatting a rare disease called transthyretin amyloidosis by standard therapies. The gene-editing treatment achieved a reduction of a key biomarker by eighty-seven percent versus an eighty percent effectiveness rate with the standard therapies. This is exciting news for researchers and developers in the biotech industry, but it’s even better news for the people who are still awaiting better treatments and hopefully a cure for this rare and debilitating condition.
19. Intellia Therapeutics offers hope for millions
People who sufferer from rare medical conditions for which there are few to no treatments or cures are given hope for the future. With the rapid advances that are being made in gene editing therapies, hope may be on the horizon. Although the technology is still in its infancy, there is significant progress being made. It is through the dedicated research and advances in technological innovations for processing volumes of biomedical data, analyzing the data, and better predicting outcomes, that we see a glimmer of hope for finding new treatments and potentially cures for issues that afflict millions of people around the world.
20. Intellia Therapeutics is hiring
We were interested in learning more about the workforce that is employed at Intellia Therapeutics. According to LinkedIn, the company employs a total of 356 workers in its workforce. There are currently five new jobs open at its Cambridge, Massachusetts location. The positions require candidates to possess credentialing in their respective areas of expertise that are directly related to the position’s responsibilities. From what we’ve seen in the job announcements, Intellia Therapeutics sets the bar high in its expectations for each member that joins their team of dedicated professionals in their quest to meet the goals of finding new therapies for the improved health of the masses.
