Drugs based on next-generation gene editing are moving toward the clinic faster than CRISPR 1.0

Later this year, the now-Nobel prize-winning paper authored by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier — in which they described how a primordial immune system in bacteria could be harnessed to edit the genomes of other organisms — will turn 10 years old. The discovery that CRISPR could be turned into an easily programmable tool for rewriting DNA launched biomedical research into warp drive.
In the 10 years leading up to 2012, 200 papers mentioned CRISPR. In 2020 alone, there were more than 6,000. The last decade has seen scientists use CRISPR to cure mice of progeria , fix muscular dystrophy in dogs , and eliminate symptoms for people with genetic blood disorders. Currently, there are more than two dozen human trials of the technology underway around the world. Read the rest…