Jason is a general assignment reporter, with particular focus on genetic medicine and rare disease. Allison covers what hot startups are getting up to, and who’s financing them. A company spokesperson declined to say how many employees were laid off, or whether any of the startup’s three-person leadership team would stay on. AdvertisementThe company appears to have been undercut by Beam Therapeutics, a larger and more established competitor. Just a month after Aurora launched, Beam announced it was already advancing its own set of custom gene editors for the exact same disease.