The Food and Drug Administration’s approval on Friday of two groundbreaking gene therapy treatments for sickle cell disease has brought a rare moment of hope and celebration to people with the agonizing blood disorder. But there is no clear path for the new therapies — one-time treatments so effective in clinical trials that they have […]
Read MoreTag: Crispr (DNA)
F.D.A. Approves Sickle Cell Treatments, Including One That Uses CRISPR
On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first gene editing therapy ever to be used in humans, a debilitating blood disorder caused by a single mutated gene. The agency also approved a second treatment using conventional gene therapy for sickle cell that does not use gene editing. For the 100,000 Americans with the […]
Read MoreAn A.I. Pin Drops + YouTube’s Take on Deepfakes + a Lab-Grown Thanksgiving
Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube The tech start-up Humane launched a new device, an A.I. pin meant to be worn on our clothing. Might this be the device that replaces the iPhone? It’s the question on Silicon Valley’s mind. The pin allows users to take phone calls, catch […]
Read MoreSickle-Cell Treatment Created With Gene Editing Wins U.K. Approval
Regulators in Britain on Thursday approved the first treatment derived from CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing method. Called Casgevy, the treatment is intended to cure sickle-cell disease and a related condition, beta thalassemia. The manufacturers, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, based in Boston, and CRISPR Therapeutics, based in Switzerland, say about 2,000 patients in Britain with sickle-cell disease or […]
Read MorePanel Tells F.D.A. That CRISPR Sickle Cell Cure Is Safe Enough for Patients
A panel of experts said on Tuesday that a groundbreaking treatment for sickle cell disease was safe enough for clinical use, setting the stage for likely federal approval by Dec. 8 of a powerful potential cure for an illness that afflicts more than 100,000 Americans. The Food and Drug Administration had previously found that the […]
Read MoreScientists Use CRISPR to Make Chickens More Resistant to Bird Flu
Scientists have used the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR to create chickens that have some resistance to avian influenza, according to a new study that was published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday. The study suggests that genetic engineering could potentially be one tool for reducing the toll of bird flu, a group of […]
Read MoreCRISPR, 10 Years On: Learning to Rewrite the Code of Life
Ten years ago this week, Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues published the results of a test-tube experiment on bacterial genes. When the study came out in the journal Science on June 28, 2012, it did not make headline news. In fact, over the next few weeks, it did not make any news at all. Looking […]
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