A federal safety board next week will consider the first human use of the gene-editing technology CRISPR, according to the National Institutes of Health. The proposed treatment is an immune therapy in which a patient's own blood cells will be removed and genetically altered using the technology, a type of molecular scissors able to precisely cut DNA. The cancer treatment, in development by the University of Pennsylvania, is designed to target myeloma, melanoma, and sarcomas, according to the NIH. CRISPR technology was invented less than four years ago but has rushed toward clinical application. A Cambridge company, Editas Medicine, previously said it intends to begin a trial in 2017 using CRISPR
A virus that infects major freshwater bacteria appears to use stolen bits of immune system DNA to highjack their hosts' immune response. Microbiologists have discovered that the virus, Cyanophage N1, carries a DNA sequence--a CRISPR--that is generally used by bacteria to fight off viral infection. "This is the first evidence we've seen that a virus can donate an immunity system via CRISPR," says University of British Columbia virologist Curtis Suttle. "This is like a hacker compromising a computer system, and then immediately patching it to ensure other hackers can't break in." CRISPR--or clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats--are libraries of DNA typically used by bacteria
Today at 10:40 a.m. Eastern Time, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania will ask a government panel for permission to be the first to use CRISPR, a new type of genetic engineering, to treat a disease in people. The effort is being funded by The Parker Institute, the new philanthropy created by Facebook billionaire Sean Parker to battle cancer. The idea, June explained at the Forbes Philanthropy Summit earlier this month, is to make T cells, a type of white blood cell, “better than nature made them.” The cells will be edited to lack several genes, including one that allows them to respond to a protein called PD-1, which acts as an off-switch that some cancers hijack to evade the immune system.
