The gene-editing tool is being tested in people, and the first treatment could be approved this year:
Forget about He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who created gene-edited babies. Instead, when you think about gene editing you should think of Victoria Gray, the African-American woman who says she's been cured of her sickle-cell disease symptoms.
[...] But the designer-baby debate is a distraction from the real story of how gene editing is changing people's lives, through treatments used on adults with serious diseases.
In fact, there are now more than 50 experimental studies underway that use gene editing in human volunteers to treat everything from cancer to HIV and blood diseases, according to a tally shared with MIT Technology Review by David Liu, a gene-editing specialist at Harvard University.
Most of these studies—about 40 of them—involve CRISPR, the most versatile of the gene-editing methods, which was developed only 10 years ago.
[...] To scientists, CRISPR is a revelation because of how it can snip the genome at specific locations. It's made up of a cutting protein paired with a short gene sequence that acts like GPS, zipping to a predetermined spot in a person's chromosomes.
[...] The first generation of CRISPR treatments are also limited in another way. Most use the tool to damage DNA, essentially shutting off genes—a process famously described as "genome vandalism" by Harvard biologist George Church.
[...] Liu's lab is working on next-generation gene-editing approaches. These tools also employ the CRISPR protein, but it's engineered not to cut the DNA helix, but instead to deftly swap individual genetic letters or make larger edits. These are known as "base editors."
[...] Now that gene editing has had its first successes, Urnov says, there's an "urgent need" to open a "path to the clinic for all."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2023, @01:05PM (1 child)
Wait until AI gets to make us CRISPR.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday March 10 2023, @06:22PM
Maybe people will be asking AI to make them CRISPR.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday March 10 2023, @04:11PM (3 children)
Was that he violated medical ethics by circumventing controls on experimental treatments to jump to human trials in order to be famous. It's not the the specific treatment he was applying was particularly unreasonable or that gene editing cannot be allowed, but that when we experiment on humans we have a moral, legal, and ethical obligation to do so responsibly.
When you see someone blow through a red-light while speeding, you don't think "no one should ever drive a car"
(Score: 2, Touché) by DadaDoofy on Friday March 10 2023, @05:40PM (1 child)
The fact that people regularly speed through red lights makes it obvious this technology will be misused.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Saturday March 11 2023, @05:37PM
Okay, you caught me, I'm a bit of a "ban cars" guy.
But dammit what else are you supposed to make metaphors about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2023, @05:40PM
I prefer the mad scientists who work in secret for the cause not the fame, only getting caught after they've already produced hundreds of designer babies or clone armies in vats.