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A Serious New Hurdle For CRISPR: Edited Cells Might Cause Cancer, Find Two Studies (statnews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

Editing cell genomes with CRISPR-Cas9 might increase the risk of developing cancer, two studies published Monday warn. From a report: Editing cells' genomes with CRISPR-Cas9 might increase the risk that the altered cells, intended to treat disease, will trigger cancer, two studies published on Monday warn -- a potential game-changer for the companies developing CRISPR-based therapies. In the studies, published in Nature Medicine, scientists found that cells whose genomes are successfully edited by CRISPR-Cas9 have the potential to seed tumors inside a patient. That could make some CRISPR'd cells ticking time bombs, according to researchers from Sweden's Karolinska Institute and, separately, Novartis. CRISPR has already dodged two potentially fatal bullets -- a 2017 claim that it causes sky-high numbers of off-target effects was retracted in March, and a report of human immunity to Cas9 was largely shrugged off as solvable. But experts are taking the cancer-risk finding seriously.

18 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Impossible by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Funny

    We possess utterly complete, perfect knowledge regarding all possible aspects of DNA. Otherwise we wouldn't be doing this, right?

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    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Impossible by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nah. Most of human progress has been less perfect knowledge and careful action and more "hold my beer and check this shit out!"

      Anyone who's delivered software should intuitively realize this to be true.

    2. Re:Impossible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Software isn't a great example of human progress in any real way. Maybe you're not considering human progress correctly.

      Says the person using software running on their device, talking to dozens if not hundreds of others devices, all running their own software, to share their comment with us.

  2. Let's hope so. This world isn't ready for CRiSPr by Seven+Spirals · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Otherwise, we are going to have designer babies, cosmetic gene editing, and super-brain edits before anyone lifts a finger to cure cancer or fix Parkinson's etc.. Oh and not to mention designer viruses. Combo AIDS + Smallbox + Ebola that only kills black/white/asian people anyone?

  3. A silver lining? by TheDarkDaimon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If CRISPR does cause cancer, researchers might be able to use that to find causes and treatments.

    1. Re:A silver lining? by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 4, Informative

      The article addresses this. P53 is like the ECC of the DNA. It detects errors and then either self destructs the cell or fixes the 'damage'. The concern is that CRISPR weakens the p53 response and therefore the natural Error Correction processes of the cells which normally terminate tumorous dna damage.

      However, the cancer treatments using CRISPR (and several other CRISPR therapies) don't rely on p53

      CRISPR-based editing of T cells to treat cancer, as scientists at the University of Pennsylvania are studying in a clinical trial, should also not have a p53 problem. Nor should any therapy developed with CRISPR base editing, which does not make the double-stranded breaks that trigger p53.

  4. Shocked by reanjr · · Score: 4, Funny

    I for one am shocked that gene editing can lead to a disease caused by altered genes.

    1. Re:Shocked by nefertitian · · Score: 3, Informative

      There are apparently two methods by which CRISPR alters the genes. One is by slicing the bad parts of the gene (this is the approach I believe is being used for the First-in-human Phase 1 trials about to begin in US), and the other is by replacing the bad parts of the gene by healthy parts. The latter method is what apparently increases the risk of tumors.

  5. cure and cause by sreever · · Score: 2

    I thought one of the things they were looking at was using it as a solution to cancer cells. Would it be approved to use if it could cure an 'incurable' form of cancer, only to risk causing another cancer? Could it be used to cure the cancer that itself caused?

    1. Re:cure and cause by alvinrod · · Score: 2

      Could it be used to cure the cancer that itself caused?

      Infinite recursion detected.

      Though if you tell that to the pharmaceutical companies, they'll fund the fuck out of it.

  6. Re:Let's hope so. This world isn't ready for CRiSP by Nos. · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe not as a designer baby maker, but CRISPR is a lot more than that, being a potential cure for a huge number of genetic diseases that are devastating to those that have them.

  7. Re:Nonsense by stephanruby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think that the scientists are unworthy of grants.

    So because you don't like the results, you want to take away their grants? Are you kidding me? That's not how science works.

    In any case, like you, I also hope that the results are wrong, but even if I hate the results, I just can't wish them away (assuming their results are correct, I have no idea if they are, or not).

  8. Is anyone surprised? by Wycliffe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Cancer is basically cells that went rogue. You telling me that slicing and dicing DNA (sometimes accidentally in non-target locations) can sometimes cause a cell to not do what it was suppose to? CRISPR is more targetted than say getting hit with a blast of radiation which causes random mutations but you are still changing the programming of a highly complex instruction set written in obfuscated code that we barely understand.

  9. News flash. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2

    Scientists found that cells whose genomes are successfully edited by CRISPR-Cas9 have the potential to seed tumors inside a patient.

    Regular cells, that haven't been edited by CRISPR, have the potential to seed tumors inside a patient -- that's how people usually get cancer.

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    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  10. As if this wasn't known? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is an obvious and expected issue. Only the particulars are new science. Seems to be solid work, and gives us something else to "tune" in order to make gene editing a reality.

  11. The answer is obvious by jbmartin6 · · Score: 3, Funny

    BLOCKCHAIN!

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    This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
  12. Oh my how absolutely SHOCKING! by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2

    Wow, you mean mucking about in our DNA with an editor when we don't really know how everything works might give us a fatal disease? Shocking, I tell you, shocking!

  13. Science is waaay ahead of ... this other science by DiniZuli · · Score: 2

    So in very related news, that might render this problem void:
    CRISPR-Cas9 Improved 10,000-Fold by Synthetic Nucleotides
    "Scientists at the University of Alberta in Canada have developed a technology that can dramatically improve the specificity of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing. The approach uses synthetic guide molecules known as bridged nucleic acids (BNAs) in place of the system’s native guide RNAs (gRNAs) to direct the Cas9 enzyme to its target DNA sequence, and so reduce off-target DNA cleavage."
    https://www.genengnews.com/gen...