Imagine CRISPR cures
By Fyodor D. Urnov,
Molecular Therapy
| 10. 27. 2021
A decade of progress in sequencing and in CRISPR/Cas technologies has created a situation without precedent in the history of medicine. Starting with an individual patient, next-generation sequencing can diagnose, in less than 24 h, the genetic basis of a Mendelian disorder.1 Once the causative mutation is found, CRISPR/Cas, in principle, represents a targeted therapy, a first-pass iteration of which can be designed in silico within minutes thanks to straightforward principles of target locus recognition by Cas9.2 The juxtaposition of the two to yield a treatment is not a hypothetical. For Mendelian disorders of hematopoiesis and those that can be treated by editing genes in the liver or the eye, a charted path exists to (1) engineer a CRISPR/Cas-based therapeutic, (2) complete IND-enabling preclinical safety, efficacy, and manufacturing studies, and (3) perform a phase 1/2 clinical trial. Three ongoing such trials have reduced all of this to practice,3,4 with a good safety record in ∼22 (sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia), 6 (TTR amyloidosis), and 6 (Leber's congenital amauropathy) subjects dosed to date; in the first case, all subjects for whom...
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Bioethics needs an update
The National Research Act is now 50 years old. It was signed into law on July 12, 1974, as a direct response to publicity about the 1932 “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The Hastings Bioethics Forum celebrated its anniversary with an...