Chinese scientists to pioneer first human CRISPR trial

C hinese scientists are on the verge of being first in the world to inject people with cells modified using the CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing technique. A team led by Lu You, an oncologist at Sichuan University's West China Hospital in Chengdu, received ethical approval to test the cells in people with lung cancer on 6 July, and plans to start the trial next month. That timeline puts the proposal ahead of a planned US trial to test CRISPR–Cas9-modified cells, also for the treatment of cancer. " It's an exciting step forward, " says Carl June, a clinical researcher in immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Last month, the US trial was approved by an advisory panel of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) but had yet to receive a green light from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a university review board. There have also been a number of human clinical trials using an alternative gene-editing technique, including one led by June, that have helped patients to combat HIV — but none so far has used CRISPR. The Chinese trial will enrol patients who have metastatic non-small cell lung cancer and for whom chemotherapy, radiation therapy and other treatments have failed. " This technique is of great promise in bringing benefits to patients, " says Lu. Lu's team will extract immune cells called T cells from the participants' blood, and use CRISPR–Cas9 technology — which pairs a molecular guide able to identify specific genetic sequences on a chromosome with an enzyme that can snip the chromosome at that spot — to knock out a specific gene in the BIOMEDICINE First trial of CRISPR in people Chinese team approved to test gene-edited cells in people with lung cancer. and Simon Hay, director of geospatial science at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, Washington, to collaborate with researchers in Brazil. " The aim is to understand why we are only observing elevated rates in the northeast, " says Brady, who flew into Brasilia this month to begin work. The northeast was where the first reported surge in micro-cephaly cases in Brazil began a year ago. Health officials had expected that they would later see the same high rates in other parts of the country. " We were expecting an explosion of birth defects, " says Marinho. But as of 20 July, almost 90% of the …