Bluebird Bio gene therapy sells itself to Carlyle and SK Capital

Bluebird Bio will sell itself to private equity firms Carlyle and SK Capital for about $30 million, the company said Friday, marking the end of the Bluebird’s fall from the one of the buzziest biotech firms to one that was on the cusp of running out of money.

Bluebird’s shareholders will receive $3 per share with the possibility of getting another $6.84 a share if Bluebird’s gene therapies reach $600 million in sales in any 12-month period by the end of 2027. Bluebird shares closed at $7.04 on Thursday. They fell 40% on Friday after the company announced the sale.

For more than thirty years, Bluebird has been at the forefront of creating one-time treatments that promised to cure genetic diseases. At one point, Bluebird’s market cap hovered around $9 billion as investors bought into the idea that the company could find success with its gene therapies. It’s fallen under $41 million after the company faced several scientific setbacks, separated its cancer work into another company and fell into financial despair.

The turning point came in 2018, when Bluebird flagged that a patient who received its gene therapy for sickle-cell disease developed cancer. Bluebird concluded its treatment didn’t cause the condition, but the revelation started a series of questions surrounding the safety of its DNA-altering treatments.

Bluebird also faced pushback from European payers after pricing its gene therapy for blood disorder beta thalassemia, called Zynteglo, at $1.8 million per patient. The company withdrew the treatment from Europe in 2021, just two years after it was approved there. Bluebird said it would instead focus on the U.S., where it was readying for the approval of Zynteglo for beta thalassemia, Lyfgenia for sickle cell disease, as well as another therapy Skysona for a rare brain disease called cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy.

All three of those gene therapies were approved in recent years, but none of them have been able to ease Bluebird’s financial woes. The company had been spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Offloading Bluebird’s cancer treatments into new company 2Seventy Bio also eliminated an important source of revenue.

At last update in November, Bluebird said its cash would fund the company’s operations into the first quarter of this year. The sale marks a stark reversal of Bluebird’s past performance. The upfront price of about $30 million is a fraction of the $80 million Bluebird’s former Chief Executive Officer Nick Leschly made from selling the company’s stock during his time there.

And it’s at odds with the transformative results that most patients see with the company’s treatments. This reporter has spoken to patients who were desperate for the chance to receive Zynteglo, as well as a then-10-year-old girl who felt fortunate to become the first person in the U.S. to receive the treatment after it was approved.

The entire field is facing tough questions right now about whether companies can translate the promise of one-time treatments for rare diseases into viable businesses. Vertex‘s competing gene therapy for sickle cell disease, Casgevy, has seen a similarly slow launch. Pfizer on Thursday announced it would stop selling a gene therapy for hemophilia that was approved only one year ago, citing weak demand.

Bluebird’s treatments could still change many lives. They just weren’t enough to change the company’s fate.