The Times view on a breakthrough in treating heritable disease: Gene Therapy – The Times

October 22 2019, 12:01am,The Times

Progress in gene editing has huge potential and should be welcomed

A leap forward in genetic science has the potential to improve the life of our species. It builds on the momentous 2012 discovery of the Crispr/Cas9 technique, which made it vastly easier to edit genes. This breakthrough revolutionised the study of heritable human diseases by allowing scientists to reproduce them more easily in laboratory animals, and opened up the tantalising possibility of one day curing them by editing embryos or even the genes of adult patients. The new advance, by scientists at Harvard and MITs Broad Institute, makes the technique far more effective, meaning that its use in treating diseases is becoming a real prospect. We should embrace it.

The new technique tackles a key weakness in Crispr/Cas9 gene editing. In 2012 scientists realised that

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The Times view on a breakthrough in treating heritable disease: Gene Therapy - The Times