The story
Sarepta started in Corvallis, Oregon on January 1, 1980 and was originally named Antivirals Inc. After occupying several research laboratory spaces in Corvallis, the company opened a production laboratory in Corvallis in February 2002 and was renamed AVI BioPharma Inc. The company made headlines in 2003 when it announced work on treatments for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the West Nile virus. In July 2009, the company announced they would move their headquarters from Portland, Oregon, north to Bothell, Washington, near Seattle. At that time, the company led by president and CEO Leslie Hudson had 83 employees and quarterly revenues of $3.2 million. AVI had yet to turn a profit and had not yet developed any commercial products as of July 2009. The company lost $19.7 million in the second quarter of 2009, and then won an $11.5 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Threat Reduction Agency in October 2009. By this time, the company had completed its headquarters move to Bothell.
In 2012, the company moved a second time, to Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the time, CEO Chris Garabedian indicated the move was motivated by the need to recruit expertise in rare diseases. The Corvallis laboratory facility was closed in 2016.
In June 2017, Sarepta Therapeutics appointed former Allergan executive Doug Ingram as its new CEO to replace Edward Kaye who had announced plans to step down earlier that year.
In February 2019, Sarepta acquired five gene therapy candidates for $165 million after one of them, MYO-101, produced results with a new gene therapy candidate for patients with Limb-Girdle muscular dystrophy; two months after receiving a single treatment, muscles from all three patients were producing the protein they couldn't make on their own. In 2019, the FDA rejected a Serepta Duchenne muscular dystrophy drug before reversing course 3 months later.
The company opened a new Genetic Therapies Center of Excellence in Columbus, Ohio in October, 2021 in order to dramatically advance research into therapeutics for several muscular dystrophies that had begun at Nationwide Children's Hospital several years earlier. As of 2022, there are three FDA-approved DMD drugs in Sarepta Therapeutics' portfolio. In January 2023, Sarepta partnered with Catalent to manufacture delandistrogene moxeparvovec (SRP-9001).
In June 2023, the FDA approved Sarepta Therapeutics’ fourth therapy, delandistrogene moxeparvovec-rokl, the first gene therapy to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). The product was approved under the accelerated approval pathway for 4-5 year olds with a confirmed DMD diagnosis. Accelerated approval requires that the product be studied further to verify its clinical benefit.
In July 2025, Sarepta announced plans to lay off 500 employees, about 36% of its workforce, following the deaths of two patients linked to its Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene therapy, ELEVIDYS. The layoffs are part of a restructuring effort expected to generate around $400 million in cost savings by 2026.
From Wikipedia’s article on Sarepta Therapeutics, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7