UK ‘should use gene editing to prevent diseases’
BRITAIN should take the lead in the use of human embryo gene editing to eradicate inherited diseases, the scientist behind a breakthrough study suggested yesterday.
Scientists in the US reached a new milestone by successfully altering DNA in defective embryos so they were no longer programmed to develop heart failure. It is the first time the powerful gene-editing tool Crispr-cas9 has been used to fix a mutation responsible for a common inherited disease.
The highly controversial technique is still at an early experimental stage and there is no question of any attempt being made to create babies with the genetic modification, which would be illegal both in the US and the UK.
The Telegraph revealed the procedure had been carried out last week, but now a leading member of the team has hinted that first steps towards bringing the treatment to patients
could take place in the UK under the direction of the fertility regulator the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).
Dr Shoukhrat Mitalipov, from Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, said: “Maybe… (the) HFEA might take a lead on this, but I’m quite sure before these clinical trials can go on they have to go through, I believe, Parliament to change a law. So there is still a long road ahead, particularly if you want to do it in a regulatory way.”
US regulatory barriers to such research are so high they could be insurmountable. Britain has blazed a trail by becoming the first country officially to sanction mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT), seen by some as opening the door to “designer babies”.
The treatment replaces faulty inherited DNA in the mitochondria, tiny rodlike bodies in cells that supply energy, to prevent devastating diseases.
However, the new research reported in the journal Nature goes much further by modifying the nuclear DNA at the heart of the cell that influences personal characteristics such as height, facial appearance, eye colour and intelligence. Leaked information has already led to widespread speculation about the study. The published paper explains how Crispr-cas9 was used to repair human embryos blighted by a single copy of a mutant gene, MYBPC3, that causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a type of heart failure.
But Dr David King, director of the Human Genetics Alert, which opposes all tampering with the human genome, said: “If irresponsible scientists are not stopped, the world may soon be presented with a fait accompli of the first GM baby.”