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 …
Two prominent scientists, Robin Lovell-Badge and George Daley, have been amongst the most outspoken proponents of leaving the door open to heritable human genetic modification via CRISPR. While they each have articulated their reasons in somewhat different ways at times, their core reasons arguing in favor of future heritable CRISPR appear largely the same. In …
Counterpoints to Lovell-Badge & Daley’s CRISPR baby rationales Read More »
The votes are in and the community has picked its top 10 Stem Cell Person of the Year Award finalists. Both the 20 nominees and now the 10 finalists are a diverse group. The finalists include six women and four men, from five countries and four different continents. We also got votes from readers of the blog …
10 Stem Cell Person of the Year Award Finalists 2017 Read More »
Nominations have closed for the 2017 Stem Cell Person of the Year Award and we have a great group of nominees. I’ve listed them below in alphabetical order, along with a bit of description of who they are, which includes in some cases the language used by the nominator(s). Where possible I’ve included a link …
20 Stem Cell Person of The Year 2017 Award Nominees Read More »
It’s germline, heritable human CRISPR time, right? Wrong. But the particularly enthusiastic supporters of heritable human CRISPR often cite hypothetical benefits in glowing terms, but either don’t mention risks or strongly downplay them. These fans also tend to leave alternative, proven and safe technologies such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) out of the discussion or …
Countering that Pro-Heritable Human CRISPR WSJ Piece 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 »
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 »
What really happened at the DNA level in the experiments in that high-profile CRISPR of human embryos paper from a team led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov at OHSU? Is the team right that they successfully conducted CRISPR of human embryos to correct a mutant gene, as they reported in their Ma, et al. Nature paper? Or is the Egli, …
Mulling over that Mitalipov human embryo CRISPR pub, still many questions Read More »
We can be confident that human genetic modification via CRISPR’ing of embryos soon will be safe and effective after that new exciting Mitalipov team paper, right? Wrong. The reality is far more complicated and interesting on the tech side. In a nutshell, I see the paper as a significant scientific, but not necessarily medical advance. …
4 key reasons Mitalipov paper doesn’t herald safe CRISPR human genetic modification Read More »
The FDA sent a stern letter today to Dr. John Zhang, PhD, MD, the physician who last year created a genetically modified human embryo in the U.S. and then exported it to Mexico where he self-reported creating a genetically modified baby boy. While the genetically modified baby created in Mexico was reportedly seemingly OK, it’s not clear …
FDA chides US doc who genetically modified human embryo in reported 3-person IVF Read More »
