CRISPR is fast emerging one of the most potent new technologies in genetic engineering. Nature just took a comprehensive at the genesis of CRISPR, as well as its potential and pitfalls. In the process, it’s created a series of infographs
CRISPR, truly just about three years old, allows researchers to potentially change the DNA of any organism – including humans. It’s an inexpensive, fast-working technology that has researchers envisioning new ways to eliminate disease, create hardier plants, wipe out pathogens and more, Nature points out. Here’s a timeline of the work going on surrounding CRISPR:
The breakneck pace of CRISPR development has researchers spinning out publication after publication. The technology is beginning to outstrip other hot fields – like TALEN and iPS work. Institutions are scrambling for strong patent work and funding is increasing exponentially, as there’s a collective understanding of the sheer power offered by the technology:
“This power is so easily accessible by labs — you don’t need a very expensive piece of equipment and people don’t need to get many years of training to do this,” says Stanley Qi, a systems biologist at Stanford University in California. “We should think carefully about how we are going to use that power.”
So how does CRISPR work? And how might it impact a population?
But many researchers are deeply worried that altering an entire population, or eliminating it altogether, could have drastic and unknown consequences for an ecosystem: it might mean that other pests emerge, for example, or it could affect predators higher up the food chain. And researchers are also mindful that a guide RNA could mutate over time such that it targets a different part of the genome. This mutation could then race through the population, with unpredictable effects.
“It has to have a fairly high pay-off, because it has a risk of irreversibility — and unintended or hard-to-calculate consequences for other species,” says George Church, a bioengineer at Harvard Medical School in Boston. In April 2014, Church and a team of scientists and policy experts wrote a commentary in Science6 warning researchers about the risks and proposing ways to guard against accidental release of experimental gene drives.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
