Gene editing tool may raise cancer risk

5 dead in reemergence of Rift Valley Fever in Kenya

LONDON, June 12, (RTRS): A geneediting technology that is being explored by scientists worldwide as a way of removing and replacing gene defects might inadvertently increase cancer risk in cells, scientists warned on Monday.

Researchers from the Britain’s Cambridge University and Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said more research needs to be done to assess whether using CRISPR-Cas9 — a type of molecular “scissors” that make gene editing a possibility — might lead to the development of treatments that have added cancer risk.

The team, led by Jussi Taipale at Cambridge, found that CRISPR-Cas9 triggers a mechanism designed to protect cells from DNA damage, making gene editing more difficult.

Cells which lack this mechanism are easier to edit than normal cells, and this can lead to a situation where genome-edited cell populations have higher numbers of cells in which the key mechanism protecting against DNA damage is missing.

In research published in the journal Nature Medicine, the scientists warned that the absence of the protective mechanism in cells makes them more likely to become tumorous, since DNA damage can no longer be corrected.

“Although we don’t yet understand the mechanisms ... we believe that researchers need to be aware of the potential risks when developing new treatments,” Taipale said in a statement as the work was published. “This is why we decided to publish our findings as soon as we discovered that cells edited with CRISPR-Cas9 can go on to become cancerous.”

A second team at the Novartis Research Institute in Boston in the United States has found similar results, which were also published on Monday in the same journal.

Darren Griffin, a genetics expert at Kent University who was not involved in either study, said the findings give “reason for caution, but not necessarily alarm”.

“Almost any treatment that has the power to do good, has the power to do harm and this finding should be considered in this broader context,” he said in an emailed comment. “As we learn more about the CRISPR-Cas9 system and how it can be used, this study will inevitably be considered a significant finding.”

Taipale also said he did not want to sound “alarmist” and stressed that his team was not saying CRISPR-Cas9 is bad or dangerous. “This is clearly going to be a major tool for use in medicine,” he said.

He added that once scientists better understand how the response is triggered by CRISPR it may be possible to

find ways of overcoming the problem.

NAIROBI:

Also:

Five people in Kenya have died of the Rift Valley Fever disease in the past week, a health official said on Monday, in the first reports of the disease since an outbreak killed more than 200 people a decade ago.

The highly contagious disease is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes or close contact with contaminated animals’ blood or organs, according to the World Health Organization.

Abdihakim Billow, county executive committee member for health for Wajir County in northeastern Kenya where the deaths were reported, said two people died in hospital while the other three died at home. The first death occurred last Monday.

Billow said another two people thought to be ill from the disease had been hospitalised.

As a preventive measure, the county on Monday banned the sale of meat for 10 days, after which they will decide whether to renew or lift the ban, he said.

Officials estimate that about 50 livestock, mainly camels and sheep, had died since the start of this month.

The last outbreak of Rift Valley Fever in Kenya occurred from November 2006 to March 2007 and resulted in 234 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

With no specific treatment or effective human vaccine, Rift Valley fever can cause blindness and severe haemorrhaging, leading the victim to vomit blood or even bleed to death.

Last month the government issued an alert for a possible outbreak of the disease in different parts of the country due to months of heavy rainfall.

LONDON:

Paraguay is officially free of malaria, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday, making it the first country in the Americas in 45 years to have wiped out the deadly disease which is back on the rise globally.

Nearly half a million people — most of them babies and children in Africa — died in 2016 from mosquito-borne malaria, while at least 216 million were infected, an increase of five percent over 2015, WHO said.

With no recorded cases of malaria in five years, Paraguay became the first country in the region to have eliminated malaria since Cuba in 1973, the WHO said. It was the first country to be declared malaria free since Sri Lanka in 2016.

“It gives me great pleasure today to certify that Paraguay is officially free of malaria,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of WHO, said in a statement.