In first test for base editing, Verve’s one-time treatment lowers cholesterol levels in patients

Verve Therapeutics said Sunday that the first 10 people to receive a one-time treatment powered by a form of CRISPR called base editing showed reductions in bad cholesterol levels — study results that are preliminary but signal the potential for gene-editing treatments to benefit people with an inherited type of cardiovascular disease.

Three of the study participants treated with potentially therapeutic doses of the Verve drug, called VERVE-101, showed  reductions in LDL-C levels of 39%, 48%, and 55%, respectively. The latter patient’s decline in so-called “bad” cholesterol was maintained for six months.

The Verve-101 study results were presented at the American Heart Association conference and are the first data in patients from a therapy that uses base editing to change individual letters of DNA. Verve licensed the base-editing technology from Beam Therapeutics.

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