Chinese Scientist Reportedly Creates Genetically Engineered Babies Immune to HIV
By Ryan Whitwam on November 26, 2018 at 2:22 pm
Scientists have been abuzz with excitement ever since it became clear that CRISPR would unlock a new world of powerful gene editing techniques. Teams around the world have experimented with CRISPR-based gene editing techniques in human embryos, but no one has allowed those embryos to become living, breathing people — until now. A Chinese team claims to have used CRISPR to make two infants that are resistant to HIV infection.
The CRISPR/Cas9 system was derived from bacterial cells and allows scientists to make precise cuts in DNA. Cas9 is the enzyme that actually makes the cut, but it needs CRISPR DNA sequences as a guide to find the right location in a genome. Researchers have used CRISPR in the lab to neuter disease-carrying mosquitoes, halt HIV replication inside cells, and engineer bacteria that can eat plastic. There is no scientific consensus on the ethics of editing genes in human embryos for the purpose of reproduction, but now we may be seeing the world’s first “designer babies.”
According to He Jiankui of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, his team used CRISPR to edit the genes of human embryos that eventually became twin girls Lulu and Nana. The change to the twins’ CCR5 gene causes their cells to carry a mutated form of the CCR5 protein. This mutation should protect them from HIV infection.
In a video posted after the announcement, He Jiankui explains why they chose to focus on HIV first. While medication can control HIV and prevent the development of AIDS, we know some people won’t develop an infection even when exposed to the virus. HIV uses CCR5 to gain access to white blood cells, where it replicates and goes on to infect more cells. As a result, the CCR5 gene is one of the most studied in the human genome, and we’ve identified a variant that blocks HIV. Those with the mutated CCR5 gene don’t have the matching cell surface protein for HIV, so the virus particles can’t get into cells. The gene editing procedure in China replicated this mutation in day-old embryos to imbue the resulting babies with the same resistance.
The team created 16 edited embryos and implanted 11 of them in women before the twin pregnancy occurred. He Jiankui says the twins are healthy and have undergone genetic testing to ensure the modified gene was present and no other genes had been changed.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/281232-chinese-scientist-reportedly-creates-genetically-engineered-babies-immune-to-hiv
Biotechnology
The creator of the CRISPR babies has been released from a Chinese prison
He Jiankui created the first gene-edited children. The price was his career. And his freedom.
By
Antonio Regaladoarchive page
April 4, 2022
The daring Chinese biophysicist who created the world’s first gene-edited children has been set free after three years in a Chinese prison.
He Jiankui created shock waves in 2018 with the stunning claim that he’d altered the genetic makeup of IVF embryos and implanted them into a woman’s uterus, leading to the birth of twin girls. A third child was born the following year.
Following international condemnation of the experiment, He was placed under home arrest and then detained. In December 2019, he was convicted by a Chinese court, which said the researcher had “deliberately violated” medical regulations and had “rashly applied gene editing technology to human assisted reproductive medicine.”
His release from prison was confirmed by people familiar with the situation and He answered his mobile phone when contacted early today. “It’s not convenient to talk right now,” he said before hanging up.
He’s team from the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen made use of CRISPR, the versatile genetic engineering tool, to alter the girls’ DNA so that they would be resistant to infection by HIV.
It’s unclear whether He has plans to return to scientific research in China or another country. People who know him have described the biophysicist, who was trained at Rice University and Stanford, as idealistic, naïve, and ambitious.
Before his world collapsed around him, He believed he’d created a new way to “control the HIV epidemic” that would be considered for a Nobel Prize.
The existence of the CRISPR baby project was uncovered by MIT Technology Review on the eve of an international genome-editing summit in Hong Kong, held in November 2018. Following our report, He immediately posted several videos on YouTube announcing the birth of the fraternal twins, who he called Lula and Nana….
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/04/1048829/he-jiankui-prison-free-crispr-babies/