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Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

(www.nytimes.com)
1163 points jbredeche | 3 comments | 15 May 25 18:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.539s | source
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tuna-piano ◴[16 May 25 00:31 UTC] No.44000717[source]▶
If someone in the year 2050 was to pick out the most important news article from 2025, I won't be surprised if they choose this one.

For those who don't understand this stuff - we are now capable of editing some of a body's DNA in ways that predictably change their attributes. The baby's liver now has different (and better) DNA than the rest of its body.

We still are struggling in most cases with how to deliver the DNA update instructions into the body. But given the pace of change in this space, I expect massive improvements with this update process over time.

Combined with AI to better understand the genome, this is going to be a crazy century.

Further reading on related topics:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JEhW3HDMKzekDShva/significan...

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DfrSZaf3JC8vJdbZL/how-to-mak...

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yT22RcWrxZcXyGjsA/how-to-hav...

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1. kjkjadksj ◴[16 May 25 05:37 UTC] No.44002146[source]▶
Easiest way to do this stuff is before fertilization when you have one egg and one sperm to work with. Delivering change through a multicellular organism is very challenging. All this stuff like transgenic mice are set up in mutant crosses before this stage, before mating really.

Eventually this will be the outcome of our species to edit the gametes themselves. The issue to overcome for this again won’t be technological as that is pretty much solved but getting people over their own “ick” factor.

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2. something098 ◴[16 May 25 09:03 UTC] No.44003233[source]▶
>>>Easiest way to do this stuff is before fertilization when you have one egg and one sperm to work with. Yes. But it seems, that nature so far is still better than we at picking better quality cells in laboratory environment. Not all eggs and sperms are equal - the difference in DNA quality varies.

>>>Eventually this will be the outcome of our species to edit the gametes themselves. The issue to overcome for this again won’t be technological as that is pretty much solved but getting people over their own “ick” factor. This is a new fear unlocked, as this will be like another cosmetic surgery procedure, which from my minimal understanding does not affect DNA that is delivered to offsprings - that could be changed but require a lot more work, but like you mentioned - it is easier to do before fertilization :). It is catch22 situation rn.

3. DoctorOetker ◴[16 May 25 22:04 UTC] No.44010183[source]▶
>The issue to overcome for this again won’t be technological as that is pretty much solved but getting people over their own “ick” factor.

Probably requires getting investors over their profit incentive first, why treat a heritable disease for the offspring if you can charge them on a per person basis?