A Nobel Prize Winner’s Startup Raised $350 Million. Now It Cannot Fund Its Most cancers Packages

0 0 1 minute read

A Nobel Prize Winner’s Startup Raised 0 Million. Now It Cannot Fund Its Most cancers Packages

The Berkeley gene-editing company will wind down its lymphoma and myeloma studies and explore a potential sale.

A Nobel Prize Winner's Startup Raised $350 Million. Now It Can't Fund Its Cancer Programs

Caribou Biosciences Co-founder/President & CEO Rachel E. Haurwitz. Photo:

Caribou Biosciences Inc., co-founded by Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, announced Tuesday that it would explore “strategic alternatives,” including staff reductions, citing an inability to secure sufficient funding.

The clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company said it would discontinue some of its cell therapy programs aimed at treating blood cancers such as B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

This is an extraordinarily difficult decision, Rachel Haurwitz,

“This is an extraordinarily difficult decision,” Rachel Haurwitz, the president and CEO of Caribou, said in an online statement. Haurwitz said the decision to discontinue certain programs was in “no way a reflection” of the company’s beliefs about their benefits to patients.

Caribou Biosciences, co-founded in 2011 by Doudna, uses a version of CRISPR, the gene-editing technology she co-invented that allows scientists to modify or correct the DNA of living organisms. The company used the technology to edit immune cells from healthy donors, which were then infused into patients with blood cancers. Doudna is also a co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences.

Refreshed leadership advice from CEO Stephanie Mehta

Company co-founders Doudna and Haurwitz took Caribou public in 2021, raising $350 million. Now, the company estimates that it will have to pay from $15 million to $19 million for its restructuring efforts, according to an SEC filing dated October 2, 2026.

The anticipated expenses primarily include one-time severance payments,

“The anticipated expenses primarily include one-time severance payments, continued healthcare coverage, and related costs of approximately $10 million to $11 million,” the filing said. The filing also estimated $5 million to $8 million in costs to wind down its ANTLER phase 1 trial in non-Hodgkin lymphoma and its CaMMouflage phase 1 trial in multiple myeloma.

In August, Caribou Biosciences told shareholders that revenue from licensing and other third-party agreements fell by $1.2 million for the three months that ended on June 30, 2026 year-over-year, according to a quarterly earnings report. The company cut its expenses, including $2.5 million from its workforce budget and almost $9 million from research and development funding.

Source: www.inc.com