CRISPR might have taken the world by storm but what’s next for gene editing technology? Ashley Jacobi, senior staff scientist at Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) examines what's next.
“We’re going to make the most of the time we have together,” Alexandra’s mother said to her. When Alexandra* was born, in the 1950s, her life expectancy was 12 to 13 years, like that of other babies born with β-thalassemia. From childhood, her mother told her to make the most of life but prepared her to not expect too much – like finishing or even starting high school, going to university, or getting married. β-thalassemia is a genetic blood disorder, where the β-protein chains of haemoglobin in red blood cells are either present at lower than normal levels or not synthesised at all. Individuals with β-thalassemia can suffer from severe anemia and other serious medical issues such as bone deformities, broken bones, and an enlarged spleen. Patients are treated with regular blood transfusions, but this can lead to the build-up of iron in the body, which can damage the heart and endocrine system.[1]
Spotlight on CRISPR
Since CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) gene editing was discovered in 2012, it has been taking the world by storm and generating excitement among diverse audiences including scientists, people suffering from currently untreatable diseases, patient advocates and the general public. CRISPR was one of the biggest and most important science stories in 2019. To put this into context, in 2011 there were fewer than 100 published papers on CRISPR. Today, there are almost 30,000 and that number keeps growing.[2]