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For a decade, leading academic institutes and their associated companies fought a bruising, headline-grabbing fight over who held patent rights to CRISPR-Cas9, the revolutionary genome editing tool.

Editas Medicine, the winner of that battle in the U.S., will now cash in.

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Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Editas announced Wednesday that Vertex will pay Editas $50 million, along with a series of annual payments through 2034, in exchange for rights to use CRISPR-Cas9 in Casgevy, the sickle cell therapy approved last week.

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