CRISPR babies Archives

Cathy Tie, He Jiankui’s ex-wife, starts ‘Manhattan Project’ to make CRISPR babies

August 27, 2025 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / Leave a Comment

A tech entrepreneur named Cathy Tie is talking about eventually making gene-edited babies in the U.S. via something she is calling the Manhattan Project. What should we make of this? The fact that she recently married He Jiankui who made those three CRISPR’d babies is relevant here even if they may have recently also gotten […]

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He Jiankui says he’s back in the lab after prison for CRISPR babies

November 29, 2022 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / Leave a Comment

Earlier this year Chinese researcher He Jiankui finished his prison sentence. When I saw that news I wondered about the next chapter for him. It seems he’s already back in the lab doing genetics research. At least that’s according to a blog by He Jiankui himself. Can we trust that what he has written on his website is

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Weekly reads: escape to New York, CRISPR baby patents, ISSCR guidelines, pubs

May 30, 2021 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 1 Comment

My to-read list this weekend includes a range of papers along with various news & media including a report of two US research groups aiming to get CRISPR baby patents. More on that below. At long last a trip + fun thing to do in NYC Last week I took my first trip in more

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Ukraine clinic plans to sell CRISPR enhancements: hair color, skin, & breast size

April 28, 2021 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 3 Comments

It was a couple of years back that researcher He Jiankui claimed he made three “CRISPR babies.” No one would think about doing any kind of rogue gene-editing again, right? Not even somatic gene edits. After all, as far as we know he’s in jail. We still don’t know the health risks that these three

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Weekly reads on organoids, COVID, CRISPR, cold chromatin, more

October 11, 2020 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D.

As a researcher, is there ever enough time to get to everything that you want to read especially in newer areas like stem cells, organoids, and CRISPR, without even including non-scientific reads like Shakespeare or a new novel or something like that? Hopefully, putting together lists of recommended reads like today’s post is helpful. I

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New human genome editing (HHGE) academy report: solid, but key gaps

September 8, 2020 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D.

The-International-Commission-on-the-Clinical-Use-of-Human-Germline-Genome-Editing-HHGE

Something called, “The International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing” has issued a new report on heritable human genome editing (HHGE). The Commission was convened by the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.K.’s Royal Society. This post is my initial take on the summary of

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CRISPR often damages human embryo chromosomes

July 1, 2020 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 3 Comments

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

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Perspectives on CRISPR baby guy He Jiankui (贺建奎) going to jail

December 31, 2019 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 2 Comments

Jiankui-He-who-claims-CRISPR-baby-production

Scientist He Jiankui(贺建奎) has been sentenced to 3 years in prison by Chinese authorities. Two collaborators also will go to jail. A piece in Science by Dennis Normile on the sentencing of He Jiankui ID’d the other two: “His collaborators were identified as Zhang Renli, of a medical institution in Guangdong province, and Qin Jinzhou, from a Shenzhen

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Weekend reads include stem cell pubs, cancer link to heart disease, CRISPR babies & of course emu oil

November 29, 2019 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D.

stem-cells-heart-disease-trigger-immune-response

Here in the U.S. we just had our big Thanksgiving holiday, but science goes, stem cells keep growing and needing attention, and it’s another weekend chance to catch up on our paper reading. Here’s this weekend edition of recommended reads including news items and pubs. From Cell Stem Cell: Single-Cell Transcriptome Analysis of Uniparental Embryos Reveals

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Calling Out Denis Rebrikov CRISPR Babies Plan

June 26, 2019 / Professor Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D. / 1 Comment

A Russian Scientist named Denis Rebrikov told Nature and then other media including NPR last week that he plans to make CRISPR babies. In other words, babies with heritable genetic modifications. I don’t doubt that Rebrikov (pictured in ResearchGate image) might want to do this nor that he might try it, but rather I’m writing

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