![]() ![]() Like many other advances in science and medicine, CRISPR was inspired by nature. In a small study, for example, researchers tested a cancer treatment involving immune cells that were CRISPR-edited to better hunt down and attack cancer.ĭespite all the excitement, scientists have been proceeding cautiously, feeling out the tool’s strengths and pitfalls, setting best practices, and debating the social and ethical consequences of gene editing in humans. Now CRISPR is moving out of lab dishes and into trials of people with cancer. “CRISPR is becoming a mainstream methodology used in many cancer biology studies because of the convenience of the technique,” said Jerry Li, M.D., Ph.D., of NCI’s Division of Cancer Biology. ![]() As soon as CRISPR made its way onto the shelves and freezers of labs around the world, cancer researchers jumped at the chance to use it. The new tool has taken the research world by storm, markedly shifting the line between possible and impossible. Although several methods of gene editing have been developed over the years, none has really fit the bill for a quick, easy, and cheap technology.īut a game-changer occurred in 2013, when several researchers showed that a gene-editing tool called CRISPR could alter the DNA of human cells like a very precise and easy-to-use pair of scissors. ![]() Credit: Ernesto del Aguila III, National Human Genome Research InstituteĮver since scientists realized that changes in DNA cause cancer, they have been searching for an easy way to correct those changes by manipulating DNA. ![]()
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