CRISPR Digest #5

Since the last CRISPR update there have been some developments regarding this new genome-editing technique. Leading scientists in the field (Baltimore et al (2015)) met in Napa, California at a bioethics conference organised by the Innovative Genomics Initiative (IGI) to discuss CRISPR policy and make discussion of...
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Cellectis signed CRISPR/Cas9 licensing deal with University of Minnesota

Cellectis Plant Sciences recently announced it has signed an exclusive licensing agreement with the University of Minnesota, granting the firm worldwide rights to patents covering the use of CRISPR/Cas9 technology in plants. The technology, developed for genome engineering in plants by University of Minnesota Professor...
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Hijacking CRISPR to Fight HIV

Hijacking CRISPR to Fight HIV All the cool techniques people are developing with CRISPR-Cas9 are great and all, but sometimes a repurposed natural genetic system just has to go back to its roots. If CRISPR was originally a virus defense system in bacteria, why not...
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Controlling CRISPR

As our understanding of CRISPR technology grows, the extraordinary potential of this gene-editing system in the realm of therapeutic development comes closer and closer to realization. However, ownership of the intellectual property (IP) behind this technology is set to spark a protracted patent feud between...
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CRISPR Chain Reaction

A rare mosaic female fly, with a lighter left half mutated by MCR and a wild-type darker right half. A new genetic-editing technique based on integrating CRISPR/Cas9 technology into a Drosophila melanogaster genome can make homozygous mutants in half the time it would take using...
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A CRISPR Solution to ‘Bubble Boy’ Disease?

They named him Phoenix because he was born five weeks early while his parents were on vacation, and spent his first few weeks in an incubator. Kristen and Patrick Wilkinson thought they knew exactly which ashes their son might soon rise from. But when they...
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Building a genomic GPS with CRISPR

A new “app” for finding and mapping chromosomal loci using multicolored versions of CRISPR/Cas9, one of the hottest tools in biomedical research today, has been developed by scientists at UMass Medical School. This labeling system could be a key to understanding the spatial and temporal...
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Scientists Call for a Summit on Gene-Edited Babies

A group of senior American scientists and ethics experts is calling for debate on the gene-engineering of humans, warning that technology able to change the DNA of future generations is now “imminent.” In policy recommendations published today in the journal Science, eighteen researchers, including two...
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