Two gene-editing companies are hitting back at a scientific publication that caused their stocks to plummet, calling it wrong, filled with errors, and saying it shouldn’t have been published.
In separate letters sent to Nature Methods, scientists from Intellia Therapeutics and Editas Medicine criticized a report in the journal that claimed the gene-editing tool CRISPR had caused unexpected mutations in the genomes of mice and which cast a shadow over efforts to initiate human studies using the technique.
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A spokesperson at Springer Nature, which publishes Nature Methods, said the organization had received “a number of communications” already about the paper. “We are carefully considering all concerns that have been raised with us and are discussing them with the authors,” the journal said.
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On Twitter and elsewhere, other scientists quickly pointed out basic mistakes in the paper, including misidentifying genes, the small number of animals involved and, most seriously, that it had mislabeled normal genetic differences between animals as the result of CRISPR editing.
“In our opinion the conclusions drawn from this study are unsubstantiated by the disclosed experiments,” wrote Vic Myer, chief technology officer of Editas, in a letter signed by 11 other company scientists….
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Gene Editing Companies Hit Back at Paper That Criticized CRISPR
