CRISPR innovator Feng Zhang on treating human diseases: ‘We’re still a ways from that’

feng zhang lemelson mit prize
Feng Zhang. Image credit: Justin Knight/McGovern Institute
[Biologist Feng Zhang] has already made two discoveries tipped to win Nobel Prizes. The big one, the one that shot Zhang to scientific celebrity, is CRISPR: a gene-editing tool that could allow precise alterations to human DNA. CRISPR is already being hyped as a cure for genetic diseases, a treatment for cancer, and a potential tool for creating designer babies.

Sarah Zhang: What are the challenges you see to using CRISPR to treat human diseases?

Feng Zhang: The types of delivery systems we have are still really limited. For many of those diseases, we just don’t have the right delivery systems. Right now, we can get access to the blood cells, the eye, maybe the ear. But if we want to do something that’s body-wide, we don’t really have good ways to do that yet.

[Feng Zhang]: One thing I’m really excited to focus on is how do we turn CRISPR into a real therapeutic tool, so that we can treat disease. We’re still a ways from that. Designer babies and so forth, I think those are even further out. We don’t even understand biology enough to even contemplate what those things would be. We can’t even treat a single mutation that causes sickle-cell disease right now.

Read full, original post: A CRISPR Pioneer on Gene Editing: ‘We Shouldn’t Screw It Up’

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