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posted by martyb on Friday July 22 2016, @04:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the CRISPR-sounds-like-a-new-snack-food dept.

Nature is reporting that a Chinese team will attempt to treat lung cancer with CRISPR-modified cells in August. From the article:

A team led by Lu You, an oncologist at Sichuan University's West China Hospital in Chengdu, plans to start testing such cells in people with lung cancer next month. The clinical trial received ethical approval from the hospital's review board on 6 July.

"It's an exciting step forward," says Carl June, a clinical researcher in immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

There have been a number of human clinical trials using an alternative gene-editing technique, including one led by June, that have helped patients combat HIV. June is also a scientific adviser on a planned US trial that would also use CRISPR-Cas9-modified cells for the treatment of cancer.

Last month, an advisory panel of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) approved that project. But the trial also requires a green light from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a university review board. The US researchers have said they could start their clinical trial by the end of this year.

[Continues...]

[...] Lu says that the review process, which took half a year, required that the team invest a lot of time and human resources, including close communication with the hospital's internal review board (IRB). "There was a lot of back and forth," he says. The NIH's approval of the other CRISPR trial "strengthened ours and our IRB's confidence in this study", he adds.

China has had a reputation for moving fast -- sometimes too fast -- with CRISPR, says Tetsuya Ishii, a bioethicist at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan.

According to Lu, his team was able to move fast because they are experienced with clinical trials of cancer treatments.

June is not surprised that a Chinese group would jump out in front on a trial such as this: "China places a high priority on biomedical research," he says.

Ishii notes that if the clinical trial begins as planned, it would be the latest in a series of firsts for China in the field of CRISPR gene editing, including the first CRISPR-edited human embryos, and the first CRISPR-edited monkeys. "When it comes to gene editing, China goes first," says Ishii.

"I hope we are the first," says Lu. "And more importantly, I hope we can get positive data from the trial."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 22 2016, @06:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 22 2016, @06:04PM (#378688)

    I saw a movie about this once, it doesn't turn out well for the humans.

  • (Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Friday July 22 2016, @07:44PM

    by Zz9zZ (1348) on Friday July 22 2016, @07:44PM (#378740)

    There are a decent number of movies that this could be, care to share the name?

    --
    ~Tilting at windmills~