UK biologist Kathy Niakan has asked governmental permission to make GM human embryos using CRISPR. Earlier this year, a research team in China crossed a scientific line for the first time in history by using gene editing technology called CRISPR-Cas9 to make genetically modified (GM) human embryos. Other researchers around the world including now one […]
UK Biologist Niakan Asks to Make GM Human Embryos For Research Read More »
Three new studies reported in preprints all show severe DNA damage to human embryos from CRISPR a surprisingly high percentage of the time including in some cases loss of heterozygosity (LOH). Anywhere from about a quarter to half of CRISPR’d embryos exhibited major genome damage. As readers of The Niche know, I never was a
CRISPR often damages human embryo chromosomes Read More »
Each year I make a list of stem cell predictions for the following year and I’ll release my predictions for 2019 soon, but first I’m grading how my 20 predictions for 2018 turned out. It seems I did better than usual predicting what would happen this year. I only got a couple partial credit or
Good final grades on my 20 x 2018 stem cell predictions Read More »
Every year in December I go out onto a limb and make stem cell predictions for the coming year as I did in late 2017 for this year. Then usually around the 1/2-way point through the year I check in on how the predictions are faring so far at that point. In this post I give
Midterm grades on my 20 x 2018 stem cell predictions Read More »
Every year I look into my stem cell crystal ball and make predictions for our field including regenerative medicine. Well, I don’t really look into a crystal ball, but I try to use a combination of what I’m hearing through the grapevine, stuff I’m reading, some info that is not yet in the public domain,
20 predictions for stem cells & regenerative medicine in 2018 Read More »
The debate over whether the main conclusions of the Nature paper on human embryo CRISPR led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov’s lab at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) are correct remains unresolved. Note that Nature just added an editorial alert just above the references section to their paper: “Updated online 02 October 2017. Editorial Note: Readers are alerted that some
Why Mitalipov’s ‘magic’ room for human embryo CRISPR may give us pause Read More »
Science hype is one of the more troublesome issues in our field today especially at its interface with the media, and unfortunately a ‘great’ example of that came this past week in a headline from the Daily Mail on the new CRISPR of human embryos paper from Kathy Niakan’s group in the UK. Although Niakan’s
Science hype award for worst CRISPR headline Read More »
Scientist make knockout human embryos with CRISPR? Today we see a new Nature paper (Fogarty, et al.) on CRISPR “gene editing” of human embryos, this time from the UK from Kathy Niakan’s group. Niakan got UK permission about 18 months ago to CRISPR healthy human embryos so they’ve been hard at work since. Because Fredrik
1st Knockout Human Embryos Made with CRISPR: My Take on the Pub Read More »
Are designer babies made using CRISPR or other genetic modification technologies closer to reality today? If so, what exactly should we do about it? Researchers can use CRISPR to genetically modify just about any organism or its cells, but targeting humans is the subject of the most intense discussion including using CRISPR in the human germline
CRISPR, human genetic modification, & a needed course correction Read More »
In the past year there has been a great deal of attention given to the potential use of CRISPR-Cas9 for gene editing in human embryos. An important recent development, described in a new NPR article by Rob Stein, is the use of CRISPR-Cas9 in healthy human embryos for developmental biology research by assistant professor Fredrik
Interview with Fredrik Lanner who is CRISPR’ing healthy human embryos Read More »