CRISPR is Making News Again

Below is an excerpt of a good article on the National Public Radio website. Clink on the title below to read the entire article.

First U.S. Patients Treated With CRISPR As Human Gene-Editing Trials Get Underway

"...scientists have long hoped CRISPR — a technology that allows scientists to make very precise modifications to DNA — could eventually help cure many diseases. And now scientists are taking tangible first steps to make that dream a reality.

For example, NPR has learned that a U.S. CRISPR study that had been approved for cancer at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has finally started. A university spokesman on Monday confirmed for the first time that two patients had been treated using CRISPR.
The revelation comes as several other human trials of CRISPR are starting or are set to start in the U.S., Canada and Europe to test CRISPR's efficacy in treating various diseases.

"2019 is the year when the training wheels come off and the world gets to see what CRISPR can really do for the world in the most positive sense," says Fyodor Urnov, a gene-editing scientist at the Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences in Seattle and the University of California, Berkeley.

Here are highlights of the year ahead in CRISPR research, and answers to common questions about the technology..."

So what's happening now with new or planned trials?

"We've finally reached the moment when CRISPR is moving out of the lab and into the clinic around the world..."

"...And yet another study, sponsored by Editas Medicine of Cambridge, Mass., will try to treat an inherited form of blindness known as Leber congenital amaurosis.

That study is noteworthy because it would be the first time scientists try using CRISPR to edit genes while they are inside the human body. The other studies involve removing cells from patients, editing the DNA in those cells in the lab and then infusing the modified cells back into patients' bodies.

Finally, several more U.S. cancer studies may also start this year in Texas, New York and elsewhere to try to treat tumors by genetically modifying immune system cells..."

When might we know whether any of these experimental CRISPR treatments are working?

"...All of these studies are very preliminary and are primarily aimed at first testing whether this is safe. That said, they are also looking for clues to whether they might be helping patients. So there could be at least a hint about that later this year. But it will be many years before any CRISPR treatment could become widely available..."