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Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

(www.nytimes.com)
1257 points jbredeche | 12 comments | 15 May 25 18:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.832s | source | bottom
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MrZander ◴[15 May 25 19:30 UTC] No.43998447[source]▶
> To accomplish that feat, the treatment is wrapped in fatty lipid molecules to protect it from degradation in the blood on its way to the liver, where the edit will be made. Inside the lipids are instructions that command the cells to produce an enzyme that edits the gene. They also carry a molecular GPS — CRISPR — which was altered to crawl along a person’s DNA until it finds the exact DNA letter that needs to be changed.

That is one of the most incredible things I have ever read.

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1. jjtheblunt ◴[15 May 25 20:51 UTC] No.43999228[source]▶
> That is one of the most incredible things I have ever read.

This is even more great reading behind the above:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna

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2. bengale ◴[15 May 25 21:33 UTC] No.43999535[source]▶
Walter Isaacson's book "The Code Breaker" is about this subject. I couldn't put it down.
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3. ascorbic ◴[15 May 25 21:53 UTC] No.43999713[source]▶
A rare case where the list of awards she's received is so long it needs a separate Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_honors_rece...
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4. blangk ◴[15 May 25 22:09 UTC] No.43999843{3}[source]▶
This seems like a non sequitur.
5. jcims ◴[15 May 25 23:05 UTC] No.44000247[source]▶
She's got a couple of great appearances on RadioLab.
6. beoberha ◴[15 May 25 23:41 UTC] No.44000439[source]▶
All his books are like that. The Innovators is my personal favorite.
7. sgustard ◴[15 May 25 23:43 UTC] No.44000450{3}[source]▶
I assign only the most nefarious motives to those clowns, but at least her govt profile is intact:

https://www.lbl.gov/people/excellence/nobelists/jennifer-dou...

The fact that this treatment "built on decades of federally funded research" is the scary part, given that such funding may disappear.

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8. jjtheblunt ◴[16 May 25 02:46 UTC] No.44001394[source]▶
Also

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuelle_Charpentier

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9. amelius ◴[16 May 25 10:48 UTC] No.44003798[source]▶
A darker passage in the history of gene editing, but still an interesting story and something not to forget:

https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-death-of...

10. lysace ◴[16 May 25 16:16 UTC] No.44007193[source]▶
They shared the Nobel prize for CRISPR. Yet you chose to lead with the American one. :/
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11. jjtheblunt ◴[16 May 25 16:31 UTC] No.44007350{3}[source]▶
That's because the link I shared immediately cites Doudna and Charpentier as a team.

After edits were disabled, I thought perhaps there's a page for Charpentier too, which there was, but later than i could edit.

They're both amazing scientists.

12. UltraSane ◴[17 May 25 17:54 UTC] No.44015868{4}[source]▶
Hopefully only until the next administration.