Gene editing could help eliminate HIV

Around five years ago, when the gene editing technology CRISPR was still new, Kamel Khalili started work on ways to use the system to treat and cure HIV. Khalili, director of the Comprehensive NeuroAIDS Center at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, showed then that CRISPR could effectively clear HIV in both cells and in animals.

CRISPR is now being used on humans in the U.S.

The first U.S. trial of CRISPR in humans has begun, NPR reported Tuesday. Two patients are currently being treated as part of a University of Pennsylvania study. Per NPR, both have difficult-to-treat forms of cancer and both have relapsed after regular treatments. As part of the trial, researchers are taking immune cells from the patients’ own bodies and editing them with CRISPR before putting them back in. The hope is that these edited cells will be better at identifying and attacking the cancer than their unaltered counterparts. According to the U.S. government clinical trial registry, the researchers are hoping to enroll 18 people in their study. But it’s not certain yet whether they’ll be approved for that many subjects, reports Jon Fingas for Engadget.

The USDA Just Gave the Green Light to CRISPR’d Food

For nearly two years now, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been quietly giving the go-ahead to a handful of crops that have been genetically engineered using CRISPR. Editing the DNA of people and animals may be controversial, but when it comes to plants, the agency has taken the stance that as long as the gene-edited plants don’t include any foreign genetic material, CRISPR’d crops aren’t subject to special regulation.

How Editing RNA—Not DNA—Could Cure Disease in the Future

DNA is the code of life, and so advances that allow us to edit that code have unlocked vast potential, from simply editing away the buggy code of disease, to engineering animals that don’t spread illness, to, maybe one day in a distant future, creating so-called designer babies. But editing another essential molecular component of our biology—RNA, the messenger used by cells to turns DNA instructions into proteins—also holds great promise.

Researchers use CRISPR to detect HPV and Zika

Science published three studies today that all demonstrate new uses for CRISPR. The gene editing technology is typically thought of for its potential use in treating diseases like HIV, ALS and Huntington’s disease, but researchers are showing that applications of CRISPR don’t stop there.

Scientists Used CRISPR to Reverse Huntington’s Disease in Mice

The gene-editing technique CRISPR is often touted as an eventual cure-all for all that ails us, from fatal genetic diseases to food shortages. But when it comes to disease, it’s likely that it will have the most impact on disorders caused by mutations in one single gene. New research published this week in the Journal of Clinical Investigation suggests that Huntington’s Disease may be a good candidate for a CRISPR cure.

Scientists are using gene editing to try to slow cancer growth

When you think of gene editing technologies like CRISPR, you might imagine editing genes that relate to height, eye color, or our risk of getting certain diseases. But in truth, our DNA and RNA are full of countless proteins whose jobs have tiny yet important effects on our health. Some, for example, are heavily involved in the cell cycle, which regulates how all cells grow and divide—including cancer cells. A group of researchers out of the University of Rochester Medical Center recently used the CRISPR gene editing technique to try to eliminate one of the key proteins that allow cancer cells to proliferate out of control. While it’s just a first-of-its-kind study, the researchers think that in the future, it could be incorporated into a therapy to treat the disease.

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