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Scientists edit non-viable human embryos, igniting a global debate
From From Bacterial Defence to Medicine: The CRISPR Gene-Editing Revolution
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Research
Scientists edit non-viable human embryos, igniting a global debate
A Chinese team used CRISPR-Cas9 on non-viable tripronuclear embryos, achieving low efficiency and off-target edits. The first study of its kind triggered urgent calls for oversight of heritable gene editing.
A team led by Junjiu Huang at Sun Yat-sen University injected CRISPR-Cas9 into 86 non-viable tripronuclear human embryos, aiming to correct the mutation behind beta-thalassaemia. Only 4 of 71 surviving embryos carried the intended edit, and the procedure produced mosaicism and off-target mutations. Nature and Science had declined to publish the work over ethical concerns before Protein & Cell did; the study nonetheless proved human embryos could be edited and forced the field to confront, years before He Jiankui's 2018 experiment, how unready the technology was for anything heritable.
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