Category Archives: Gene Medicine

After years of fanfare and a few false starts, the era of genomic medicine has finally arrived.

Across the country, thousands of patients are being treated, or having their treatment changed, based on information gleaned from their genome. Its a revolution that has been promised since the human genome was first published in 2001. But making it real required advances in information technologyinfrastructure and a precipitous drop in price.

Today, the cost of whole exome sequencing, which reveals the entire protein-coding portion of DNA, is now roughly equivalent to an MRI exam in many parts of the country, says Louanne Hudgins, M.D., president of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics and director of perinatal genetics at Lucile Packard Children'sHospital Stanford, Palo Alto, Calif.

Genomic sequencing is a tool like any other tool in medicine, and its a noninvasive tool that continues to provide useful information for years after it is performed, she says.

Nowhere is this genomic transformation more apparent than in the realm of cancer treatment.

Companies like Menlo Park, Calif.-based Grail Inc. are forging ahead with large-scale genomic sequencing projects in collaboration with both academic medical centers and community health systems. Grails Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas study aims to identify genomic fingerprints shed from tumors that can be identified in a blood sample. The goal is to help identifycancers early when they are more treatable and to match a patients tumors to individualized treatment.

We are finding great enthusiasmas people want to participate in this effort, both patients and physicians, says Mark Lee, M.D., a practicing oncologist at Stanford and head of clinical development and medical affairs at Grail. Right now, he says, health systems and patients have an opportunity to participate in shaping the future of this genome-based medicine.

Supporting article:Maine Genomics Project Rethinks Cancer Care

Backed by investing giants like Amazon and Bill Gates, Grail has partnered with the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, the U.S. Oncology Networkand others to collect de-identified data from consenting patients for large-scale genomic studies.

And they have lots of company. The biotech company Regeneron has partnered with Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health System to enroll interested patients in a project dubbed MyCode Community Health Initiative. A discovery-focused initiative, MyCode is also using genomic data to guide treatment decisions today. Currently, the project has enrolled more than 150,000 consenting patients and has returned what are considered actionable results to 340 patients and providersand counting.

For example, MyCode participant Barbara Barnes chose to have her reproductive organs removed after an analysis of her DNA determined that she was at increased risk for developing breast and ovarian cancer. The surgeryrevealed that she already had a fallopian tube tumor that required treatment, and the early intervention may have saved her life. She shared her story in a Facebook video produced by Geisinger.

While anecdotal success stories provide a taste of whats possible, the Geisinger-Regeneron collaboration is aimed more toward matching genotypes with treatment on a population level, and that effort is starting to yield results.

In July, the group published a report in the New England Journal of Medicine describing a variant of the gene ANGPTL3 associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease detected in some MyCode participants. The gene variant codes for a protein that seems to lower cholesterol, and the company has developed a targeted treatment, evinacumab, that mimics the action of this protein. Evinacumab earned breakthrough therapy designation by the Food and Drug Administrationin April and is now in Phase 3 clinical trials for patients with an inherited tendency that manifests early in life to have high cholesterol levels, leading to deadly cardiovascular disease.

Another goal of Geisingers population-based study, says Andy Faucett, a principal investigator of MyCode and genomics researcher at Geisinger, is to determine how to scale the program and make it possible for more health systems to implement genomic screening for their patients.

We probably have a health system a week call us and ask us for help [setting up a genomics program], he says. We think its something that should be offered to every patient.

Genomic medicine has advanced to the point that genes and their variants now can be targets for drug treatments. Case in point: In May, the FDA approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to treat any unresectable or metastatic solid tumor with a specific genetic biomarker, irrespective of its location in the body.

This is an important first for the cancer community, Richard Pazdur, M.D., director of the FDA's Oncology Center of Excellence and acting director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products in the FDAs Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement made at the time of the approval. We have now approved a drug based on a tumors biomarker without regard to the tumors original location.

Clinical trials matching genomic markers with targeted treatment are well underway and are only expected to increase, making identification of genomic targets an essential part of care.

Targeted therapies got another advance in July when an advisory panel convened by the FDA gave its unanimous recommendation for approval of the first gene-based medical treatment in the U.S. Chimeric antigen receptor T, or CAR-T,cell therapy, expected to be approved in November for a particularly aggressive form of leukemia, is the first in a wave of living drugs engineered to seek out and destroy cancerous tumors.

CAR-T cell therapy represents the culmination of decades of research to identify genetic features that are unique to each specific form of cancer that can be targeted by the immune system. The approach, coaxing a patients own immune system to recognize and attack cancerous cells, also delivers on the promise of personalized medicine, as T cells are harvested from each patient, re-engineered to recognize and attack cancer, and returned to the patient.

In the case of Novartis CTL019, the treatment on the cusp of FDA approval, complete response rates in clinical trials for acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients whohad relapsed despite multiple conventional treatments, reached 80-90%.

Physician-scientists like Brian Till of Seattles Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, who has been working on CAR-T for years but was not involved in the development of CTL019, say these early results are encouraging.

We have enough data right now to be optimistic that this could become standard of care for some cancers, says Till.

He quickly added that there will likely always be a role for chemotherapy or other standard treatments and that CAR-T will probably be limited in its early days to centers that have experience managing potential toxicities. But, he added, CAR-T has the potential to be given as an outpatient treatment with careful management of side effects.

Many questions remain about whether it makes sense for healthy people to learn the secrets hidden in their DNA, but those concerns are likely to be overshadowed by a cavalcade of genomic sequencing projects and targeted therapies now hitting clinics nationwide. Simply put, genomic sequencing will be part of standard care within the next decade.

In the realm of rare-disease diagnoses and treatment, genomics already has been transformative. As recently as five years ago, patients with myriad vague symptoms, mostly infants and children, could bounce from doctor to doctor and invasive procedure to invasive procedure without ever receiving a definitive diagnosis. While some disorders still do evade diagnosis, whole genome sequencing has dramatically reduced that number.

Our ability to diagnose genetic conditions has improved dramatically, says Hudgins. And we are gaining a much better understanding of the biology behind these genetic changes. Because of these advances, therapy and management of these diseases are much improved. So the idea that there is no treatment for genetic disorders is just not true anymore.

The speed of DNA sequencing and analysis now permits near real-time diagnosis, moving it into the clinical workflow.

At Rady Childrens HospitalSan Diego, an array of Illumina sequencing machines churns through clinical samples in as few as 37 hours, according to Stephen Kingsmore, M.D., director of its Institute forGenomic Medicine.

The rapid sequence analysis has resulted in almost half of patients receiving a genomic diagnosis, while 80 percent had their care altered as a result of sequencing.

Kingsmore is consulting with a dozen other childrens hospitals that want to offer real-time genomic testing to their patients within the next year. Every hospital should have access to rapid sequencing and analysis within a few years, he says.

For prospective parents, prenatal and perinatal diagnosis has entered a new realm as well.

Cell-free DNA prenatal screening has dramatically decreased the number of invasive procedures such as amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling that pregnant women undergo, Hudgins says. In the last few years, it has decreased fivefold in many areas of the U.S.

Even the granddaddy of all genomic medicine, gene therapy, is enjoying a renaissance. Early efforts to treat disease by replacing defective genes suffered many setbacks over the years, mainly due to the difficulty of efficiently delivering genes to affected tissues and organs. But next-generation modified viral delivery systems have shown they can get the job done safely and efficiently.

Philadelphia-based Spark Therapeutics' biologics license application for voretigene neparvovec (Luxturna)for inherited retinal disease has been accepted for review by the FDA with a decision expected early next year. The experimental treatment of 31 patients was the first successful randomized, controlled Phase 3gene therapy clinical trial, leading to FDA orphan drug designation in July.

Spark is one of several companies developing gene-based treatment for vision loss in the U.S. and Europe.

Similarly, Bluebird Bio Inc.'s gene-therapy treatment for thalassemia and sickle cell disease has shown promise. Results presented at the European Hematology Association meeting in Vienna in June suggested that a child treated for severe sickle cell disease in France might have been cured.

The company is running clinical trials to treat severe sickle cell disease at six hospitals in the U.S., including the Medical University of South Carolina. Julie Kanter, M.D., director of sickle cell research at MUSC and a primary investigator on the U.S. trial, says the new generation of gene-delivery systems is more efficient with fewer side effects.

I think weve made incredible headway and we are going to see some great things coming, she says.

Amid tumbling genomic sequencing costs, more people are having their DNA sequenced to match an underlying genetic defect withan increasing variety of targeted treatment options. From an estimated 1,000 genetic tests available only five years ago, the field has exploded to more than 52,000 available in the U.S., and that number grows daily. To find out more about what's out there, visit the National Center for Biotechnology Information's Genetic Testing Registry website at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gtr.

Read the original here:
Genomic Medicine Has Entered the Building - Hospitals & Health Networks

Feng Zhang, a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and an associate professor in the Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and of Biological Engineering, has been named a winner of the 2017 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research.

Zhang, who is the Poitras Professor in Neuroscience at MIT and a core member of the Broad Institute, is recognized for his contributions to the development of CRISPR-Cas9 as a gene editing technology, which in the words of the prize announcement has revolutionized biomedical research and provided new hope for the treatment of genetic diseases and more.

The $500,000 prize has been given annually since 2001 to those who have altered the course of medical research, and is one of the largest prizes in medicine and science in the United States. Past recipients include eight Nobel Laureates.

In announcing the award, the Dean of Albany Medical College, Vincent Verdile, said: Rarely has such a recent discovery transformed an entire field of research, as CRISPR has in biological research. Its implications for biological processes, including human health and disease are promising and quite profound.

Zhang will share the prize with four other CRISPR researchers: Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Max Planck Institute; Jennifer Doudna of University of California at Berkeley; Luciano Marraffini of Rockefeller University; and Francisco Mojica of the University of Alicante.

Read the original post:
Feng Zhang to share Albany Medical Prize - MIT News

By KIMBERLY HOUGHTONUnion Leader CorrespondentAugust 14. 2017 11:06PM

This sequence of images shows the development of embryos after being injected with a biological kit to edit their DNA, removing a genetic mutation known to cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.(Oregon Health & Science University)

Bryan Luikart, an associate professor of molecular and systems biology at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College.

It is pretty amazing. It is a super-exciting time to be a scientist right now, said Bryan Luikart, an associate professor of molecular and systems biology at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College.

The study, which was published in the journal Nature, was detailed in a New York Times report. According to the article, Oregon researchers reported they repaired dozens of human embryos, fixing a mutation that causes a common heart condition that can lead to sudden death later in life.

The way they have dodged some ethical considerations is that they didnt go on to have that embryo grow into a person, said Luikart, explaining that if the embryos with the repaired mutation did have the opportunity to develop, they would be free of the heart condition.

At the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Luikart and his colleagues have already been using this concept with mouse embryos, focusing specifically on autism.

Researchers are using the gene-editing method called CRISPR-Cas9 in hopes of trying to more fully understand autism, which he said is the most critical step in eventually finding a cure.

I think the CRISPR is a tremendous breakthrough. The question really is where and when do you want to use it, Luikart said. I have no ethical concerns using it as a tool to better understand biology.

The new milestone, an example of human genetic engineering, does carry ethical concerns that Luikart said will trigger some debates. He acknowledged that while the advancement of gene-editing technology could eventually stop unwanted hereditary conditions, it also allows for creating babies with smarter, stronger or more attractive traits.

The ability to do that is now within our grasp more than it has ever been, he said.

More importantly, the breakthrough could ultimately eliminate diseases, Luikart said. As the technology advances, he said, genetic diseases that are passed down to children may be corrected before the child receives them.

He used another example of a brain tumor, which often returns after it is surgically removed. Now, once the brain tumor is removed, there is the possibility of placing something in the space to edit and fix the mutation that causes the brain tumor in the first place if physicians are able to find the right cell to edit, Luikart said.

People are definitely thinking along those lines, or cutting the HIV genome, said Luikart, who predicts that those advancements will occur in mice within the next decade, and the ability to do that in humans is definitely there.

The big question is whether that can occur without some sort of side effect that was not predicted, he said.

Columbia University Medical Center posted an article earlier this year warning that CRISPR gene editing can cause hundreds of unintended mutations, based on a study published recently in Nature Methods.

This past May, MilliporeSigma announced it has developed a new genome editing tool that makes CRISPR more efficient, flexible and specific, giving researchers more experimental options and faster results that can accelerate drug development and access to new therapies, according to a release.

CRISPR genome editing technology is advancing treatment options for some of the toughest medical conditions faced today, including chronic illnesses and cancers for which there are limited or no treatment options, states the release, adding the applications of CRISPR are far ranging from identifying genes associated with cancer to reversing mutations that cause blindness.

It is pretty big news, Luikart said.

khoughton@newstote.com

HealthHanover

The rest is here:
New Hampshire biologist reacts to gene-editing discovery - The Union Leader

In BriefResearchers from UC San Diego's School of Medicine have tested a modified CRISPR-Cas9 technique designed to target RNA instead of DNA. Rcas9 could potentially improve the lives of patients with ALS, Huntington's disease, or myotonic dystrophy by delaying the progression of their disorders.

The most efficient and effective gene-editing tool in use today is CRISPR-Cas9. Just this year, researchers have successfully used it fora wide variety of experiments, from modifying garden vegetables to encoding a GIF in bacterial DNA. Most recently, the tool was used to remove a genetic disease from a human embryo.

Although undeniably powerful, CRISPR-Cas9 does have its limitations; it can only target DNA. To extend its capabilities to includeRNA editing, researchers from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicinedeveloped amodification of CRISPR, and theyre calling their toolRNA-targeting Cas9 (RCas9).

In a study published in Cell, the UCSD team tested their technique by correcting the kinds of molecular mistakes that cause people to develop microsatellite repeat expansion diseases, such ashereditary amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)and Huntingtons disease.

During standard CRISPR-CAs9 gene editing, a guide RNA is instructed to deliver a Cas9 enzyme to a specific DNA molecule. The researchers from UCSD instead instructed it to target an RNA molecule.

Tests conducted in the laboratory showed that RCas9 removed 95 percent ofproblem-causing RNA for myotonic dystrophy types 1 and 2, Huntingtons disease, and one type of ALS. The technique also reversed 93 percent of the dysfunctional RNA targets in the muscle cells of patients with myotonic dystrophy type 1, resulting in healthier cells.

This is exciting because were not only targeting the root cause of diseases for which there are no current therapies to delay progression, but weve re-engineered the CRISPR-Cas9 system in a way thats feasible to deliver it to specific tissues via a viral vector, senior author Gene Yeo, a cellular and molecular medicine professor at UCSD School of Medicine, explained in a press release.

Across the globe, an estimated 450,000 patients are said to be living with ALS. Roughly 30,000 of those are from the U.S. where 5,600 people are diagnosed with the diseases every year. The exact number of Huntingtons disease cases, however, isnt quite as easy to pin down. One estimate says that around 30,000 Americans display symptoms of it, while more than 200,000 are at risk.

Regardless of the exact numbers, these two neurological diseases clearly affect a significant number of people. This prevalence and the absence of a known curemakes the UCSD teams research all the more relevant. Even more exciting is the fact that the same kinds of RNA mutations targeted by this study are known to cause more than 20 other genetic diseases.

Our ability to program the RCas9 system to target different repeats, combined with low risk of off-target effects, is its major strength, co-first author of the study Ranjan Batra said in the UCSD press release.

However, the researchers do know that what theyve accomplished is just a first step. While RCas9 works in a lab, they still have to figure out how it will fare when tested in actual patients.

The main thing we dont know yet is whether or not the viral vectors that deliver RCas9 to cells would elicit an immune response, explained Yeo. Before this could be tested in humans, we would need to test it in animal models, determine potential toxicities, and evaluate long-term exposure.

Ultimately, while RCas9 couldnt exactly deliver a cure, it could potentially extend patients healthy years. For disease like ALS and Huntingtons, thats a good place to start.

Read more from the original source:
A New Gene Editing Technique Could Finally Allow Us to Treat ALS - Futurism

Each year, some 30,000 patients undergo transplant surgery to receive an organ from a donor. Transplant medicine saves lives, but not enough people are willing to donate. Patients cant rely on the generosity of fellow humans to replace a heart, kidney or lungs. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), one patient is added to the U.S. transplant waiting list every 10 minutes, and 20 people on the national list die each day.

For decades, scientists have been hoping to address the organ shortage in more innovative ways, namely by tweaking the innards of other mammals to make them compatible with humans. Successfulanimal-to-human transplants (also known as xenotransplantation) would create a sustainable organ supply.

Pigs are the strongest contender for xenotransplantation because they have organs similar in size and physiological function to those found in humans. But pig organs on their own arent suitable for transplant. Human immune systems would most definitely reject pig organs. But an even greater challenge is the risk of animal viruses infectinghumans. Pigs carry active porcine endogenous retrovirus, and it remains unclear whether these viruses could becommunicable or fatal in humans. PERV infection would be dangerous becausetransplant recipients are routinely put on immunosuppressant drugs that make it difficult to fight off any bacteria or viruses.

Tech & Science Emails and Alerts - Get the best of Newsweek Tech & Science delivered to your inbox

If animal-to-human transplants can be achieved successfully, it would create a sustainable organ supply. Thanks to gene editing, this may be possible in the future. REUTERS

Nowa team of researchers affiliated with Harvard Medical School appear to have solved one of these problems. Not only have these scientistsmade a controversial possibilityanimal organs in humansmore likely, but theyve done so using a controversial technology: CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing.

Through gene editing, the team eliminated all traces of the PERV virus from the cell line and conducted in vitro fertilization. There are 25 strains of PERV, which is the only known active retrovirus found in pigs. In the study, published Thursday in the journal Science, biologist Luhan Yang and her team implanted the PERV-free embryos into surrogates. The fetuses did not become reinfected with the virus, and the newbornpiglets are the first animals born without PERV. Yangwho founded eGenesis a few years ago to harness advances in CRISPR-Cas9 for the worldwide organ shortagewill now monitor the animals for any long-term effects.

Im a strong believer that science can help us improve health care if we look holistically for a solution, says Yang, lead author on the paper and chief science officer of eGenesis, the biotechnology company funding advancements in the research. Because there are millions of patients who suffer from end-stage organ failure, their life could potentially be saved, or largely improved, by this potential organ resource.

CRISPR-Cas9, or CRISPR (pronounced crisper) for short, is an experimental biomedical technique. The technology utilizes snippets of certain bacteria that allow for selective modifications of DNA segments, such as changingthe misspellings of a gene that contributeto mutations. Since CRISPR was identified several years ago, scientists have been using it in the laboratory to alter the genetic codes of living organisms. The new technologyis already leading advances once considered the stuff of science fiction. In astudy published last week in Nature,scientistseliminated a genetic abnormality in a human embryo.

Yang has been determined tousegene editing to solve the organ shortage problemfor several years. In 2013, sheand her team published the first paper showing CRISPR could be used to accurately and effectively alter the immune system. In 2015, she eradicated 62 copies of the PERV virus from a pig cancer cell line, which she says is a world record for researchers using CRISPR. The next step, she says, is to tweak the porcine genome further to prove the organs can be compatible with the human immune system.

Resurrecting aScientific Vision

For decades, xenotransplantation research seemed impossibly dangerous and financially risky both for small biomedical companies and large pharmaceutical companies. In the early 2000s, Novartis stopped funding xenotransplantation research. The U.S. Food Administration, fearing a public health disaster, began placing regulations on research facilities, whichmade studies even more challenging. The projects were costly andtoo complicated, and animal rights activists frequentlytargeted the scientists. But CRISPR is reviving the area of research once again, says Yang.

Transgenic PERV-free pigs could provide a source for solid organs as well as islet cells, which are tiny cells scattered throughout the pancreas that secrete insulin. Some successful pilot studies looked at porcine islet cell transfusions as a potential treatment for diabetes.

Dixon Kaufman, president-elect of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and a transplant surgeon at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, says its only a matter of timeprobably a few yearsbefore xenotransplant studies are open to patients. I think it is a realistic, almost palpable opportunity, he says. Anything that will improve safety, such as deleting this risk of the PERV infection, makes this more viable.

Kaufman thinks kidneys and pancreases will be the first solid animal organs transplanted into humans. Because these are non-vital organs, failure wouldnt necessarily lead to death. Patients who need a kidney could still receive dialysis, and those who need a pancreas could still access insulin.

These advances are a boon for transplant surgeons like Kaufman, who regularly have to tell patientsthey will probably die before a donated organ becomes available. He doesnt think a pig organ would be a hard sell to most of these patients, who are otherwise facing certain death.

The field is inherently sort of risky to begin with, and I think a lot of patients have already processed that, he says. I tell patientsin the grand designwe were not meant to swap body parts between ourselves.

More:
How Gene Editing And Pig Organs Can End The Human Transplant Shortage - Newsweek

It may sound like a script for a science fiction movie, but scientists have created the worlds first mutant ants.

Two independent research teams have harnessed the gene editing technology CRISPR to genetically alter the ants. In one study, researchers at Rockefeller University modified a gene essential for sensing the pheromones that ants use to communicate. Experts say that the resulting deficiencies in the ants social behaviors and their ability to survive in a colony, sheds light on social evolution.

It was well known that ant language is produced through pheromones, but now we understand a lot more about how pheromones are perceived, said Daniel Kronauer, head of Rockefeller Universitys Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior, in a statement. The way ants interact is fundamentally different from how solitary organisms interact, and with these findings we know a bit more about the genetic evolution that enabled ants to create structured societies.

GENE EDITING BREAKTHROUGH COULD PAVE WAY FOR PIG-TO-HUMAN ORGAN TRANSPLANTS

CRISPR, which has been compared to a pair of molecular scissors, lets scientists alter or replace specific sections of DNA.

Scientists used CRISPR to disrupt a gene known asOrco in the clonal raider ant,species Ooceraea biroi, but then faced the challenge of keeping the mutant ants alive. We had to convince the colonies to accept the mutants. If the conditions werent right, the worker ants would stop caring for larvae and destroy them, said Rockefeller University graduate fellow Waring Trible, in the statement. Once the ants successfully made it to the adult phase, we noticed a shift in their behavior almost immediately.

While ants typically travel single file, researchers noticed that the mutant ants couldnt fall in line, along with other behavioral abnormalities.

DNA BREAKTHROUGH: SCIENTISTS REPAIR GENES IN HUMAN EMBRYOS TO PREVENT INHERITED DISEASES

The results of the study are published in the journal Cell.

This image shows a Harpegnathos saltator worker ant in the process of stinging a cricket to paralyze it and drag it into the nest as part of its hunting duties. (Credit: Brigitte Baella)

A separate study, also published in the journal Cell, saw scientists target the Orco gene in the Indian jumping ant,Harpegnathos saltator. Experts note that the Indian jumping ant is unlike other ant species because only the queen can mate and pass genes onto the next generation. However, any adult female worker of the species can become a pseudo queen in the queens absence.

The second study was led by researchers from New York University, NYU School of Medicine, Arizona State University, the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University.

Ant queens suppress the ability of female workers to mate and lay eggs, although if the queen is removed, the most aggressive females, after winning a series of antenna duels with rivals, can go on to lay eggs.

DNA DISCOVERY UNRAVELS THE MYSTERY OF EARLY GREEK CIVILIZATIONS

The study engineered three mutant ants to lack the Orco gene. Without the gene, females cannot process pheromones, making them less likely to engage in dueling.

"While ant behavior does not directly extend to humans, we believe that this work promises to advance our understanding of social communication, with the potential to shape the design of future research into disorders like schizophrenia, depression or autism that interfere with it," said Claude Desplan, professor at NYU's Department of Biology, and one of the reports authors, in a statement.

In a third related study by the University of Pennsylvania, scientists injected the brain chemical corazonin into ants transitioning to become a pseudo-queen, which simulated worker-like hunting behaviors, while inhibiting pseudo-queen behavior, such as dueling and laying eggs.

DNA DISCOVERY IDENTIFIES LIVING DESCENDANTS OF BIBLICAL CANAANITES

These results are also published in the journal Cell.

Gene editing has been generating plenty of buzz recently. Earlier this week, scientists announced the elimination of viruses in pigs that could be harmful to people, utilizing the CRISPR technology. The discovery could potentially lay the foundations for pig-to-human organ transplants.

GENE EDITING BREAKTHROUGH COULD PAVE WAY FOR PIG-TO-HUMAN ORGAN TRANSPLANTS

In another project, researchers used gene-editing to correct a disease-causing gene mutation in human embryos, preventing the mutation from passing to future generations. In the stunning discovery, a research team led by Oregon Health and Science University reported that embryos can fix themselves if scientists jump-start the process early enough.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers

Originally posted here:
Scientists create world's first mutant ants with gene editing technology - Fox News