Verve Therapeutics: How To Build A Gene Editing Biotech

By Ben Comer, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader

In 2016, Sekar Kathiresan entered a grant competition created by the American Heart Association (AHA). The competition, called One Brave Idea, awarded $75 million to a single person judged to have the best, or bravest, idea for curing heart disease, with funding provided by the AHA, Alphabet’s Verily, and AstraZeneca. Kathiresan, at the time a professor at Harvard Medical School and leader of a Broad Institute human genetics research lab, entered his idea for a onetime therapy to permanently lower LDL cholesterol levels (i.e., “bad” cholesterol).

He didn’t win.