Beam completes dosing in its sickle cell BEACON trial
explorebiology (XBio), via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)CC BY
Beam Therapeutics said on 4 August 2026, alongside its second-quarter results, that dosing is complete in all adult and adolescent patients enrolled in the Phase 1/2 BEACON trial of ristoglogene autogetemcel — risto-cel, formerly BEAM-101 — an investigational autologous cell therapy for sickle cell disease.
Dosing completion is the point at which a trial stops recruiting and starts waiting. Every participant has received the therapy, so the remaining work is follow-up rather than enrolment, and the readout becomes a matter of calendar time. Beam expects to report updated BEACON data by the end of 2026 and says it could submit a biologics license application for risto-cel as early as year-end 2026.
An autologous cell therapy is made from the patient’s own cells: they are collected, modified outside the body, and returned. Sickle cell disease is caused by a mutation that deforms haemoglobin, so red blood cells stiffen into the crescent shape that blocks small vessels and causes the pain crises and organ damage that define the illness.
The same release disclosed that Beam dosed the first patient in the global pivotal cohort of its separate BEAM-302 trial in alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.
No new efficacy figures accompanied the dosing announcement, and the release does not describe how risto-cel’s edit is made.