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The Food and Drug Administration has approved the world's first medicine employing CRISPR gene-editing technology to treat sickle cell disease, giving thousands new hope to treat the painful disease. "Sickle cell disease is a rare, debilitating and life-threatening blood disorder with significant unmet need, and we are excited to advance the field especially for individuals whose lives have been severely disrupted by the disease by approving two cell-based gene therapies today," said Nicole Verdun, director of the Office of Therapeutic Products within the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Two new treatments, Casgevy and Lyfgenia, were approved on Friday...

Past studies have used the gene-editing technology CRISPR to remove genes from immune system cells to make them better at fighting cancer. Now, PACT Pharma and UCLA have used CRISPR to remove and add genes to these cells to help them recognize a patient’s specific tumor cells. “It is probably the most complicated therapy ever attempted in the clinic,” study co-author Antoni Ribas told Nature. “We’re trying to make an army out of a patient’s own T cells.” T cells are our immune systems’ built-in defense against cancer. Natural cancer killers: Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells....

If British scientists have their way, two medium-sized tomatoes a day could keep the doctor away. A research team led by scientists at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have edited the genetic makeup of tomatoes to become a robust source of vitamin D, which regulates nutrients like calcium that are imperative to keeping bones, teeth and muscles healthy. Although vitamin D is created in our bodies after exposure to sunlight, its major source is food, largely in dairy and meat.

The British biotech company Oxitec is moving ahead with its controversial plan to release hundreds of millions of gene-hacked mosquitoes, an experimental new form of targeted pest control, in the Florida Keys.The goal is essentially to introduce a new genetically altered version of the Aedes aegypti mosquito — which can spread diseases like dengue and malaria — that can only hatch male, non-biting offspring, in order to gradually reduce the population.A connection that has gone mostly unremarked during the experiment’s rollout is the involvement of Microsoft co-founder and public health philanthropist Bill Gates in the funding of the company, confirmed...

Researchers are injecting human stem cells into monkey embryos and even scientists are disturbed by the ethical implications. For the Biblically minded, the implications are clear. MIXING MONKEY AND HUMAN CELLS Researchers in California published their results in The Cell on Thursday describing how they successfully "created" embryos that were a mixture of monkey and human cells. The abstract, titled "Chimeric contribution of human extended pluripotent stem cells to monkey embryos ex vivo", explains that the study was focused on creating cells that could be used to produce organs for people who need transplants. Chimerism is a condition whereby an...

Didn’t anyone watch The Wrath Of Khan? Don’t we already know that trying to engineer a master race always goes wrong. Isn’t Russia kicked out of world competition? Do we even have a James T. Kirk who can defeat a superior enemy?Gene Editing Through Crisper-CasWe are witnessing the manipulation of DNA through eRNA as a Covid-19 vaccine. We have no idea what the long term effects are going to be.Crisper is a gene editing technology that allows for cutting, inserting or deleting DNA in an individual. It can be used to cure diseases or potentially eliminate defects or perhaps create...

Scientists have created gene-edited pigs, goats and cattle to produce sperm with traits such as disease resistance and higher meat quality in what they say is a step towards genetically enhancing livestock to improve food production. The animals, created for the first time by researchers in the United States and Britain using a gene-editing tool called CRISPR-Cas9, could be used as “surrogate sires”, essentially sterile blank slates that could then be transplanted with stem cells that produce the desired sperm, the scientists said. The process could help farmers rear healthier, more productive animals using fewer resources such as feed, medicines...

With an extraordinary new technology called CRISPR, we can now edit DNA—including human DNA. But how far should we go? Gene editing promises to eliminate certain genetic disorders like sickle cell disease. But the applications quickly raise ethical questions. Is it wrong to engineer soldiers to feel no pain, or to resurrect an extinct species? And is there harm in allowing parents to choose their child’s features, like eye color or height? The scientists who pioneered human genome studies and CRISPR grapple with these questions. (Premiered September 9, 2020)

[PHOTO:TELESUR] For years, I’ve worried and warned about the dangers posed by gene-editing technologies, such as CRISPR. In the words of one of its inventors, CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) makes the human genome “as malleable as a piece of literary prose at the mercy of an editor’s red pen.” At least, that’s the promise that has yet to materialize. In 2018, a Chinese scientist announced he’d used CRISPR to genetically modify human embryos. At the time, more “respectable” scientists denounced his actions as “unethical,” given how new the technology was and how little ethical oversight there was...

As I said in a BreakPoint commentary last month, gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR and what’s being called “Prime Editing” are “existential threats.” We have no idea what our attempts to play god with the human genome will unleash on humanity. Yet, we insist on charging ahead despite our imperfect knowledge with an unbounded confidence in our abilities.Coming from a concerned non-scientist like me, these concerns can be easily dismissed as alarmist, but what if the concern comes from the Director of the National Institutes of Health?It turns out that Francis Collins is also concerned. In a recent article in...

Food and Drug Administration scientists who had a closer look at the genome sequence of one of the edited animals, a bull named Buri, have discovered its genome contains a stretch of bacterial DNA including a gene conferring antibiotic resistance. The “unintended” addition of DNA from a different species occurred during the gene-editing process itself, the government says. It went undetected by the company even as it touted the animals as 100% bovine and assailed the FDA for saying the animals needed to be regulated at all. “It was not something expected, and we didn’t look for it” says Tad...

A scientist in New York is conducting experiments designed to modify DNA in human embryos as a step toward someday preventing inherited diseases, NPR has learned. For now, the work is confined to a laboratory. But the research, if successful, would mark another step toward turning CRISPR, a powerful form of gene editing, into a tool for medical treatment. A Chinese scientist sparked international outrage in November when he announced that he had used the same technique to create the world's first gene-edited human babies. He said his goal was to protect them from infection with HIV, a claim that...

A daring effort is under way to create the first children whose DNA has been tailored using gene editing. When Chinese researchers first edited the genes of a human embryo in a lab dish in 2015, it sparked global outcry and pleas from scientists not to make a baby using the technology, at least for the present. It was the invention of a powerful gene-editing tool, CRISPR, which is cheap and easy to deploy, that made the birth of humans genetically modified in an in vitro fertilization (IVF) center a theoretical possibility. Now, it appears it may already be happening....

Last week was a momentous one for the future of genetically engineered foods, both in the U.S. and in Europe. On July 24, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the Impossible Burger, an all-veggie burger that "bleeds" and sizzles just like meat. The burger's star ingredient — a protein called heme that renders blood red and helps make meat a carnivore's delight — was granted GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status. In 2015, the FDA had required that the $400 million Silicon Valley startup, Impossible Foods, demonstrate that their heme, made by genetically modified yeast, was safe. But across...

CRISPR-Cas9 is a gene-editing system developed this past decade from a bacterial self-defense system. It provides a way to accurately cut a target strand of DNA in order to delete or replace base pairs, the pairs of As, Cs, Ts, and Gs that comprise the genetic code. It’s become popular in research and there are already clinical trials studying the use of CRISPR-Cas9 edited c The new research demonstrates some drawbacks to the system, and proposes that it hasn’t been studied enough in cells that can fix their own DNA. The scientists tried removing a gene in male mouse embryonic...

Researchers are hailing a breakthrough after they used cutting-edge gene editing to to significantly reduce repetitive behaviour associated with the disorder. The technique, which was performed on mice, could also be developed to treat conditions ranging from opioid addiction and neuropathic pain to schizophrenia and epileptic seizures. Scientists injected gold nanoparticles covered in a “forest” of DNA chains to alter the  the genetic code of mouse models with a form of autism called fragile X syndrome (FXS). The technique, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, resulted in in a 30 per cent drop in repetitive digging, and a 70 reduction in leaping, both...

Despite what you might've seen in 1950s monster movies, it's difficult to raise mutant ants. For years biologists have altered the genetics of organisms as varied as mice and rice. Mutant fruit flies are a laboratory staple. But ants' complex life cycle hampered efforts to grow genetically engineered ants — until now. On Thursday, two independent research teams described their work deleting ant genes. Two papers chronicling the first mutant ants appeared in the journal Cell, along with a third study that altered ant behavior using an insect brain hormone. Claude Desplan, a New York University biologist and an author...