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

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has already dodged two potentially fatal bullets -- a 2017 claim that it causes sky-high numbers of off-target effects was retracted in March, and a report of human immunity to Cas9 was largely shrugged off as solvable.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.

Comments

Impossible

[93 Escort Wagon]

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

Re:Impossible

[alvinrod]

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.

Shocked

[reanjr]

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

Re:Shocked

[nefertitian]

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.

Re:Let's hope so. This world isn't ready for CRiSP

[Nos.]

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.

Re:Nonsense

[stephanruby]

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).

Is anyone surprised?

[Wycliffe]

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.

Re:A silver lining?

[im_thatoneguy]

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.

The answer is obvious

[jbmartin6]

BLOCKCHAIN!