Samarth Kulkarni

Samarth Kulkarni leads CRISPR Therapeutics, co-founded by Nobel Prize laureate Emmanuelle Charpentier, one of the discoverers of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology. The company achieved a historic milestone in late 2023 when its gene-editing therapy Casgevy — developed in partnership with Vertex Pharmaceuticals — became the world's first approved CRISPR-based medicine, for the treatment of sickle cell disease (SCD) and transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia (TDT). Casgevy works by editing a patient's own blood stem cells to reactivate fetal hemoglobin production, effectively curing the underlying genetic defect that causes these diseases. The therapy requires patients to undergo stem cell collection, chemotherapy conditioning, and then re-infusion of the edited cells — a complex and expensive process (the list price is approximately $2.2 million per treatment), but one that offers a potential one-time cure for devastating, lifelong diseases. Beyond Casgevy, CRISPR Therapeutics is developing a pipeline of gene-editing therapies: CTX110 and CTX112 (allogeneic "off-the-shelf" CAR-T cell therapies for blood cancers using CRISPR-edited donor cells), in vivo gene editing programs (directly editing genes inside the body without removing cells), and therapies for type 1 diabetes (using CRISPR-edited stem cell-derived islets). Key stock drivers include Casgevy commercial launch and revenue trajectory, treatment center activation, patient access and insurance coverage, pipeline clinical data readouts, competitive gene-editing landscape, and the broader gene therapy market development.