Prime Medicine announced a positive, binding resolution of its previously disclosed arbitration with Beam Therapeutics, relating to a 2019 collaboration and license agreement.
An arbitration tribunal found that PM647, Prime’s investigational gene-editing drug for alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency (AATD), is within Prime’s “field" as defined by the agreement, and that the company therefore did not breach the agreement. Prime owes no monetary damages to Beam Therapeutics.
Prime and Beam both trace back to the same gene-editing lab, and they've had a long-standing collaboration agreement under which Prime licensed and sublicensed certain intellectual property to Beam in specific fields. The dispute ignited when Prime announced in March 2025 that it was developing a gene-editing treatment for AATD — a lung/liver disease affecting an estimated 100,000 Americans. Beam already had its own AATD program underway and believed that Prime signed away its rights to create AATD treatments to Beam six years earlier.
Now, Prime says it plans to submit an IND and/or CTA filing for PM647 in Q3 2026, with initial clinical data expected in 2027.
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