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China CRISPR gene editing Genes Science

A scientist says he altered the genes of two baby girls. How big a line did he just cross?

sudshr47 November 28, 2018

If genetics researcher He Jiankui has provided an honest account of his new experiment, there are twin baby girls alive in China right now, and He altered and edited their genes.

This news — if proven to be true — is an unprecedented event for our species; an event that is all at once daring, irresponsible, and revolutionary. And at some point in the future, this event could be the means of staving off afflictions like cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

He revealed the successful birth of the twins to the Associated Press on Monday and again at a conference on Wednesday. He used a powerful but still new gene-editing tool, known as CRISPR, to rewrite a portion of the girls’ DNA. Specifically, He altered a gene to make the cells more resistant to the HIV virus. On the surface, this is a laudable goal. But scientists emphasize that altering human DNA is still too new a technology, and with it may come unforeseen, permanent risks to the human body. Read more…

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CRISPR DNA editing may cause serious genetic damage, researchers warn

sudshr47 July 16, 2018

CRISPR-Cas9, the gene editing tool that is currently the darling of biotech and many other fields, may not be quite as miraculous as early tests suggested. A new study finds that what scientists thought of as a scalpel may be more like a felling axe, causing damage hundreds of times what was previously observed.

Blindness Genes Genetic Mutation Health Science

Doctors inject lab-grown genes into boy’s eyes to treat blindness

sudshr47 March 24, 2018

On the morning of March 20, eye surgeon Jason Comander injected viruses carrying lab-grown genes into the eyes of a boy whose vision had been gradually disappearing.

If all goes as planned, the 13-year-old patient — who lives with an inherited genetic defect that causes blindness — will experience an improvement in eyesight in about a month.

After a series of tests, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved this gene-therapy treatment, called Luxturna, in December 2017.

Three months later, the procedure Comander performed at Massachusetts Eye and Ear served as the first time an FDA-approved gene therapy was used on a person living with an inherited, and incurable, genetic disease. There are no other effective treatments for this specific retinal disease. Read more…

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Cloned monkeys born in Chinese lab pave way for new medical studies

sudshr47 January 24, 2018

Primates have been cloned before, but this is the first time monkeys were duplicated using the same technique — called somatic cell nuclear transfer —that scientists used to clone Dolly the sheep, in 1996.

Beyond the obvious scientific achievement — whose results were published today in the journal Cell — the important advancement here is that these scientists plan to produce more cloned monkeys in the coming months, and believe they can make primate cloning relatively cheap. The scientists underscore that these genetically identical animals, akin to identical human twins, are to be used only to advance human medicine. Read more…

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