Crispr’s Next Frontier: Treating Common Conditions
By Amy Dockser Marcus,
The Wall Street Journal
| 05. 07. 2021
At the age of 38, Katherine Wilemon suffered a heart attack as she carried a ceramic pot into her backyard garden in Los Angeles. Now 53, the mother of two eats right, exercises and takes cholesterol-lowering medication—but it may still not be enough.
“I live with the anxiety of having another heart attack,” says Ms. Wilemon, whose genetic disorder causes high cholesterol levels and a risk for heart attack or stroke that is up to 20 times that of people without it.
In the next decade, Crispr-Cas9 and other new gene-editing techniques may protect the health not only of Ms. Wilemon and others with familial hypercholesterolemia but millions of people with a range of conditions, including chronic pain and diabetes. Rather than take drugs for years or even decades, for example, at-risk people might be able to protect themselves with a one-and-done Crispr therapy.
It has been a year of profound change that is still transforming all aspects of society. Science has brought revolutionary technologies from the lab into people’s daily lives. Covid-19 vaccines and Crispr gene editors both built...
Related Articles
By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times | 03.10.2024
In 1889, a French doctor named Francois-Gilbert Viault climbed down from a mountain in the Andes, drew blood from his arm and inspected it under a microscope. Dr. Viault’s red blood cells, which ferry oxygen, had surged 42 percent. He...
By Ian Sample, The Guardian | 03.08.2024
Scientists are a step closer to making IVF eggs from patients’ skin cells after adapting the procedure that created Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, more than two decades ago.
The work raises the prospect of older women being...
By Mariella Bodemeier Loayza Careaga, The Scientist | 03.15.2024
Scientists have genetically modified isolated microbes for decades. Now, using CRISPR, they intend to target entire microbiomes.
Humans are never alone. Even in a room devoid of other people, they are always in the company of billions of microscopic beings...
Sheep have been domesticated for roughly 12,000 years. Sheep have also been cloned since 1996; Dolly (pictured) was the first mammal to suffer that indignity. But this news was featured in the March 14 issue of Business Insider:
Montana rancher paid $4,200 to clone a dead sheep and launched a farm of super hybrids worth up to $550,000
Some people — not just Montanans but Texans too and probably others — pay to indulge in “captive hunting,” and large...