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Gene-editing research in human embryos gains momentum
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Callaway, Ewen |
| Copyright Year | 2016 |
| Abstract | At the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Fredrik Lanner is preparing to edit genes in human embryos. It’s the kind of research that sparked an international frenzy in April last year, when a Chinese team revealed that it had done the world’s first such experiments. But Lanner doesn’t expect his work, which will explore early human development, to cause such a fuss. A year of discussion about the ethics of embryo-editing research, and perhaps simply the passage of time, seems to have blunted its controversial edge — although such work remains subject to the same ethical anxieties that surround other reproductivebiology experiments. “At least in the scientific community, I sense more support for basicresearch applications,” says Lanner, who gained approval for his experiments last June. His instinct seems to be borne out by the fairly muted reaction to a 6 April report of an experiment to edit human embryos — only the second to be published. A team led by Yong Fan at Guangzhou Medical University in China used the gene-editing technology CRISPR–Cas9 to try to introduce a mutation that makes humans resistant to HIV infection. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with what these scientists have done,” says Sarah Chan, a bioethicist at the University of Edinburgh, UK. “This work isn’t seeking to do what is still ethically in question. It’s not seeking to create genetically modified human beings.” The ethics committee of the universityaffiliated hospital that approved Fan’s work says that it has green-lighted two other embryoediting projects; such research is ethically sound because it will lead to improvements in geneediting technology and could help to prevent diseases, a committee spokesperson says. Last December, an international summit of scientists and ethicists declared that gene editing should not be done in human embryos A N N A T Ä R N H U V U D |
| Starting Page | 289 |
| Ending Page | 290 |
| Page Count | 2 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1038/532289a |
| PubMed reference number | 27111607 |
| Journal | Medline |
| Volume Number | 532 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.19767.1461147262!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/532289a.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.19767!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/532289a.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1038/532289a |
| Journal | Nature |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
