Scientists a step closer to creating designer babies

WHILE South Africa is making strides in gene editing technology to eradicate HIV, it has no legislation to prevent scientists from fiddling with embryos to create “designer babies” in the lab.

The announcement by researchers in China last month that they had edited genomes of human embryos has sparked a wave of panic in the international scientific community.

Professor Michael Pepper, director of the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Pretoria, said South Africa had no legislation that dealt specifically with gene editing; the National Health Act focused only on reproductive and therapeutic cloning, but not on gene editing in an embryo.

“The advances in technology are rapid — while the law lags behind.

“Many countries . . . have debated these issues and put preventative measures in place.”

South Africa had to rely on local scientists “self-regulating”, but “rogue scientists can aim for gaps in the legislation”.

This week, the National Academy of Sciences in the US announced it would set up an urgent international summit to appoint a global committee to draw up guidelines.

Although the embryos used in China would not have survived to full term, scientists said the move was one step closer to people creating babies to their own specifications.

Previously, gene therapies involved introducing new genetic material into any part of a cell.

But the latest technology, called CRISPR, means scientists can directly change genomes by using specialised enzymes or “molecular scissors” to erase parts of the DNA in certain sites in cells and replace them.

The positive side of gene editing is how it can restore the original function of genes that cause, for example, cancer, muscular dystrophy, Parkinson’s and other diseases.

It can also be harnessed to block infections such as HIV, and this is where South African scientists are hard at work.

Professor Raj Ramesar, a principal investigator at the Medical Research Council’s division of human genetics, said gene editing was a “very powerful discovery” that could achieve much in correcting mutations in cells and “literally getting back to the wild-type or unmutated version of a gene”.

Marco Weinberg, an associate professor in the department of molecular medicine and haematology at the University of the Witwatersrand, said: “HIV . . . embeds itself in the human genome of the host cell it infects and can remain dormant for years.”

That was why antiretroviral therapy was a lifelong regime.

But the long-term consequences of ARV therapy were not yet known, and many patients in South Africa did not stick to their regime.

“So this is where CRISPR technologies might be an exciting advance. What if we could cut out the virus from the genome of infected cells? This would permanently remove the virus and prevent reactivation of the infection in the absence of antiretrovirals.”

His team has already shown that this is possible in cell culture models of HIV infection.

“The question now in our research is whether we can develop a safe and effective way to do this in patients.”

The science and technology and health departments declined to comment.

The advances in technology are rapid — while the law lags behind