First proposed human test of CRISPR passes initial safety review

[progressoid]

A cancer study that would represent the first use of the red-hot gene-editing tool CRISPR in people passed a key safety review today. The proposed clinical trial, in which researchers would use CRISPR to engineer immune cells to fight cancer, won approval from the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, a panel that has traditionally vetted the safety and ethics of gene therapy trials funded by the U.S. government and others.

Although other forms of gene editing have already been used to treat disease in people, the CRISPR trial would break new ground by modifying three different sites in the genome at once, which has not been easy to do until now. The study has also grabbed attention because—as first reported by the MIT Technology Review—tech entrepreneur Sean Parker’s new $250 million Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy will fund the trial.

“It’s an important new approach. We’re going to learn a lot from this. And hopefully it will form the basis of new types of therapy,” says clinical oncologist Michael Atkins of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., one of three RAC members who reviewed the protocol.

more ... http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/human-crispr-trial-proposed?utm_source=sciencemagazine&utm_medium=facebook-text&utm_campaign=humancrispr-5197