Beam Therapeutics Sues Two Biotechs Over Theft of Base Editing Trade Secrets
核心洞察
Beam Therapeutics filed a complaint on Sept. 25 in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts against YolTech Therapeutics (搜索) and U.S. partner Serapha Bio (搜索).
Beam alleges a former employee founded YolTech while at Beam and filed patents based on confidential information five months after leaving.
Serapha said it categorically refutes the claims and will vigorously defend the company; the suit also names YolTech's CEO as a defendant.
Beam Therapeutics has sued Chinese biotechnology company YolTech Therapeutics (搜索) and its U.S. partner Serapha Bio (搜索), alleging that an experimental treatment licensed between the two companies was developed using trade secrets stolen from Beam. The complaint was filed Sept. 25 with the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.
Beam alleges that a former employee, Zi Jun "Emma" Wang, secretly founded YolTech while still working at Beam, and that five months after leaving she filed patent applications on YolTech's behalf based on Beam's confidential and trade secret information. The complaint claims that while working as a scientist at Beam from 2021 to 2022, Wang accessed data in a manner that departed sharply from her ordinary work, retrieving and reviewing dozens of records she had never opened before, across technical areas beyond her own, including at night and on weekends. The filing also names YolTech CEO Yuxuan "Jensen" Wu as a defendant. Beam is seeking court intervention to stop the misuse of its trade secrets and recover the value it says YolTech and Serapha unlawfully extracted.
Serapha chief corporate affairs officer Shiva Fritsche wrote in an email to BioPharma Dive that the company "categorically refutes Beam's claims and will vigorously defend the company." YolTech licensed Serapha rights to an experimental program for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (搜索), or AATD, for an undisclosed upfront payment. In June, Serapha announced plans to go public through a reverse merger and develop that therapy, supported by $230 million in funding from investors including RA Capital Management and RTW Investments. Serapha's candidate, SERP-01 (搜索), targets the same mutation and changes a nucleotide at the same place in DNA as Beam's AATD treatment BEAM-302, which is built on base editing (搜索) technology. In clinical testing so far, BEAM-302 has helped trial participants produce a key protective protein they lack, and Beam has begun enrolling a new study cohort, with accelerated U.S. approval to be pursued if results are positive.
Source: BioPharma Dive