Description of the business

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2020

Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]

Description of the business

Description of the business

bluebird bio, Inc. (the “Company” or “bluebird”) was incorporated in Delaware on April 16, 1992, and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Company is a biotechnology company committed to researching, developing and commercializing potentially transformative gene therapies for severe genetic diseases and cancer. Since its inception, the Company has devoted substantially all of its resources to its research and development efforts relating to its product candidates, including activities to manufacture product candidates, conduct clinical studies of its product candidates, perform preclinical research to identify new product candidates and provide selling, general and administrative support for these operations, including commercial-readiness activities.

The Company’s programs in severe genetic diseases include betibeglogene autotemcel (beti-cel; formerly LentiGlobin for β-thalassemia gene therapy) as a treatment for transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia, or TDT; its LentiGlobin® product candidate as a treatment for sickle cell disease, or SCD; and elivaldogene autotemcel (eli-cel; formerly Lenti-D gene therapy) as a treatment for cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy, or CALD. The Company’s programs in oncology are focused on developing novel T cell-based immunotherapies, including chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and T cell receptor (TCR) T cell therapies. Idecabtagene vicleucel, or ide-cel, and bb21217, are product candidates in oncology under the Company’s collaboration arrangement with Bristol-Myers Squibb ("BMS"), formerly Celgene Corporation ("Celgene") prior to its acquisition by BMS in November 2019. ide-cel and bb21217 are CAR T cell product candidates for the treatment of multiple myeloma. Please refer to Note 9, Collaborative arrangements, for further discussion of the Company’s collaboration with BMS.

In June 2019, the Company received conditional marketing authorization from the European Commission for beti-cel as a treatment of patients 12 years and older with TDT who do not have a β0/β0 genotype, for whom hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation is appropriate but a human leukocyte-matched related HSC donor is not available. beti-cel is being marketed as ZYNTEGLO™ in the European Union. Through September 30, 2020, the Company had not generated any revenue from product sales of ZYNTEGLO.

As of September 30, 2020, the Company had cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $1.44 billion. The Company expects that its cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities will be sufficient to fund current planned operations for at least twelve months from the date of issuance of these financial statements, though it may pursue additional cash resources through public or private debt and equity financings and establish collaborations with or license its technology to other companies.