Super-precise CRISPR tool enters US clinical trials for the first time
By Heidi Ledford,
Nature
| 09. 18. 2023
A high-precision successor to CRISPR genome editing has reached a milestone: the technique, called base editing, has made its US debut in a clinical trial. The trial tests more complex genome edits than those performed in humans so far.
Trial organizers announced on 5 September that the first participant had been treated using immune cells with four base-edited genes, equipping the cells to better target and destroy tumours. The hope is that the approach can tame trial participants’ difficult-to-treat form of leukaemia and serve as a gateway to more complex edits in the future.
“There are things still to be built into these cells to make them easier to use and persist longer,” says Waseem Qasim, a paediatric immunologist at the University College London Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. “And with so many groups working on it, things will get incrementally better.”
It’s been a strikingly quick evolution from the first reports of base editing in 2016 to clinical trials, but the CRISPR field has never been one to dawdle. And while researchers develop ever more...
Related Articles
By Emily Mullin, Wired | 11.14.2023
In a small initial test in people, researchers have shown that a single infusion of a novel gene-editing treatment can reduce cholesterol, the fatty substance that clogs and hardens arteries over time.
The gene-editing treatment aims to permanently lower cholesterol...
By Carissa Wong, Nature | 11.16.2023
In a world first, the UK medicines regulator has approved a therapy that uses the CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing tool as a treatment. The decision marks another high point for a biotechnology that has been lauded as revolutionary in the decade since...
By Emily Mullin, Wired | 11.16.2023
The first medical treatment that uses Crispr gene editing was authorized Thursday by the United Kingdom.
The one-time therapy, which will be sold under the brand name Casgevy, is for patients with sickle cell disease and a related blood disorder...
By Alexis Heng, UCA News | 11.13.2023
In recent years, Singapore has increasingly leveraged new reproductive technologies to overcome the country's rapidly aging demographics and dismal fertility rate, which hit a new low in 2022.
Hence, it would be timely for Singapore’s Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC) to...