Will your grandchildren be disease-resistant?
Scientists have now shown that gene editing can improve the survival of some human embryos by reducing the risk of deadly hereditary diseases.

In 10 seconds? Efficient removal of genetic defects in humans at birth has now been achieved with CRISPR gene editing, but scientists are cautious about unpredictable side effects. (Read the science here)
Last time I heard it was just animals? Plants too, but the animal studies have more directly applicable implications for humans. Most recently, Chinese researchers showed that transplanting stem cells with modifications in a gene called CCR5 into mice could enhance their resistance to HIV infection. (Read more here)
So what’s this breakthrough in humans? This April, a team at Oregon Health and Science University successfully used CRISPR to modify human embryos, and showed that their approach could increase the survival rate of embryos in an in vitro fertilisation procedure from 50% to ~72%. (See the science here)
What did they change in the embryos? They edited a mutation in the MYBPC3 gene, which is linked to a dangerous condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, where a portion of the heart’s muscle is unusually enlarged.(See the science here)
Is this really safe? Scientists are certainly wary of unintended side-effects, and there’s no consensus yet. An ongoing challenge in gene editing is to prevent the formation of mosaics, or populations of cells with different genetic codes. Last year, Chinese scientists were able to reduce mosaic mutations in monkeys by tweaking the function of the key enzyme involved in CRISPR gene editing, but more evidence will be needed to prove that gene-edited embryos can develop into healthy humans. (See the study here)
Does that mean we can create disease-free babies? If proven to be safe, CRISPR gene editing could well become a preventive tool to lower a newborn’s life-time risk of developing genetic diseases, like cancer and hereditary disorders, but our understanding of the biology underlying these diseases needs to catch up with our ability to edit genes. (Read more here)
Remind me, how does CRISPR gene editing actually work?
CRISPR molecules are short pieces of DNA that can be designed to target a specific sequence in the genome. They occur naturally in bacteria as a defence mechanism against viruses.
Once designed, a custom CRISPR sequence is guided by the enzyme Cas9 in animal and plant cells to cut and paste up to 20 bases of their genomic DNA sequence.
CRISPR gene editing is very popular due to its lower cost, higher accuracy and more rapid development time compared with previous methods. (Learn more in this video)
This research was curated by Javier Galdon-Armero, PhD student working on leaf development in tomatoes at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK

Surgeons at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia proposed a system that could act as an urgently needed bridge between the mother’s womb and the outside world for extremely premature babies born at 23 to 28 weeks, or with health complications. The researcher leading this project, Alan Flake, MD, does highlight that the device would not replace earlier stages of pregnancy — such use would fundamentally redefine our ideas of gender, family and equality.
(Psst, Javier distilled 8 research papers to save you 265.3 min)

