CRISPR’s First Human Trial

A team of Chinese scientists has become the first to test CRISPR gene-edited cells in a human. The researchers, from Sichuan University in Chengdu, injected the cells into a patient with lung cancer. The experiment uses CRISPR — a cheap, easy, and accurate way to edit DNA in living cells—to disable a gene that suppresses immune response. By editing a small number of cells then growing them outside the body, the team was able to inject a large number back into the patient, with the intention of having them fight off the cancer. Human trials of CRISPR have been proposed in the U.S., but so far none have been carried out. Carl June, a researcher from the University of Pennsylvania who hopes to carry out some of the first such experiments in America, told Nature that he thinks that the news could “trigger ‘Sputnik 2.0’, a biomedical duel on progress between China and the United States.”