CRSP - anyone own it?

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dualstow
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CRSP - anyone own it?

Post by dualstow » Mon Feb 25, 2019 9:34 am

I have a nibble just as a crazy Hail Mary.
In general I shy away from biotech.
Crispr Therapeutics (CRSP) stock popped Monday after the biotech announced it dosed a patient with its CRISPR gene-editing therapy — making it the first company to use the technology in a clinical study.
https://www.investors.com/news/technolo ... yptr=yahoo
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Re: CRSP - anyone own it?

Post by sophie » Tue Feb 26, 2019 7:37 am

My guess is that this is extremely risky, unless the company is mostly relying selling products for animal research. The whole gene editing thing is still in the realm of science fiction. I can't see FDA approval and all the ethical debates being resolved anytime soon.

Take a lesson from what happened to University of Pennsylvania in the late 1990s. They fired or forced out many productive medical researchers in order to stack the faculty with gene therapy investigators. A few years later they started a much-publicized gene therapy clinical trial which resulted in the death of a pediatric patient. It took years for the school to recover.

I know the general public and many scientists are enthralled with genetics in general, but I'm not. It has all the makings of a fad. At the end of the day "gene-hunting" is a pointless exercise, because you usually can't link the gene with a pathophysiological process leading to the disease state, meaning it's just a statistical oddity that tells you nothing. Except you get to tell a patient with the wrong gene variant "It sucks to be you." Whee.
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Re: CRSP - anyone own it?

Post by dualstow » Tue Feb 26, 2019 10:21 am

I met one of the UPenn gene people once, as he was my neighbor and invited me to a party. He tried to explain to me what he was up to, but the second time around I could see the frustration in his eyes. O0 Oh well. He made a nice bowl of borscht.

In any case, Sophie, I agree with you, which is why I put in all of $1700 (in 2017). That's more than my original Tesla buy. Small enough that I can enjoy the wild ride instead of wringing my hands.
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Re: CRSP - anyone own it?

Post by dualstow » Tue Apr 02, 2019 2:46 pm

This is a silly stock to own. I'm putting in a Limit order to sell.
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Re: CRSP - anyone own it?

Post by dualstow » Thu Apr 25, 2019 8:58 am

Selling it at market. It's been a pretty good run. I dumped my MMM a couple of days ago, which feels very lucky this morning. I doubt I'll have that luck again, or not often, but at least I can leave CRSP with a nice, modest profit.
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Re: CRSP - anyone own it?

Post by sophie » Thu Apr 25, 2019 9:25 pm

Good for you. I think you'll be glad you dumped it. Speculative medical stocks can be quite toxic. That's how my stockbroking uncle blew his retirement nest egg - he was into a company called "Nastek" which promised to develop a method to deliver insulin via nasal spray. Sounded good, but they failed early in the clinical trials. Clinical trials are super expensive and incredibly political, and the only ones who can win at that game are the well established companies, or people with a lot of political clout in their fields.

Not that $1700 is blowing your nest egg, but it's the principle of the thing. Glad you made some money on your way out.
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Re: CRSP - anyone own it?

Post by dualstow » Thu Apr 25, 2019 9:47 pm

Although it was never a serious play, you were an influence in my selling it sooner rather than later. I generally can’t stomach medical or biotech stocks. Had some artificial hip, etc stocks (Biomet? Stryker maybe?) in the past.
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