KdT Ventures presents The World in a Grain of Sand, where we break down an S1 from a recent biotech IPO and share insights on the science, business models, and financials. In this episode, Ketan Yerneni and Mack Healy discuss Verve Therapeutics, a gene editing biotech tackling one of the most common chronic diseases: cardiovascular disease. We dive into:

• Base editing, and its advantages over traditional (potentially error-prone) CRISPR.
• Verve’s pipeline, including their strategy of starting with genetically well-defined diseases like familial hypercholesterolemia and then expanding to the general population of patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
• Verve’s approach for predicting off-target gene editing, a key challenge for the gene editing field.
• Verve’s unique licensing strategy with Beam, Acuitas, and the Broad to secure several foundational technologies.
• The competitive landscape and target product profile tradeoffs for one-and-done gene editing approaches vs other therapeutic modalities.
• and more.

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