The Science, Health, and Technology Room
See more at the link https://singularityhub.com/2019/05/1...ust-heated-up/
Excerpt:
When scientists behind the Manhattan Project heard of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, their earlier exuberance gradually turned into morose regret. What began as a physics revolution had mutated into a weapon of mass destruction—with no feasible “off switch” to cripple its power.
For biology, CRISPR has that same nuclear-scale destructive power. And scientists are not willing to let history repeat itself.
Just half a decade after CRISPR’s discovery, DARPA initiated the Safe Genes program: a collaboration between seven of the world’s leading gene editing experts to find multiple antidotes for CRISPR and better its editing specificity in time and space.
The point isn’t to fuel public fear of the powerful tool; rather, it’s to look far ahead at potential dangers and find preventive treatments or countermeasures. If CRISPR is the biological Pandora’s Box, it’s already been opened: in the clinics, CRISPR has entered human trials; in the lab, the technology is forged into gene drives, with the potential to wipe out entire species. The goal of the Safe Genes program is to find a way—or many ways—to slam that box shut again.
Last week, the search for a CRISPR antidote got more heated. A team led by Dr. Amit Choudhary at the Broad Institute of MIT, a member of Safe Genes, developed a “screening” platform for rapidly sifting through over 10,0000 small chemicals that dial down Cas9 scissors’ activity.
The team tweaked the structure of several promising candidates to further boost their anti-CRISPR power, generating two antidote molecules that prevent Cas9 from binding to and cutting its DNA target. When tested on human cells in petri dishes, the molecules floated through the cell membranes and reliably killed CRISPR activity within minutes.
These drugs are very early candidates—heck, they may be even more toxic than CRISPR running amok inside the body. Scientists will have to test them in animals to further assess their effectiveness and safety.
But the small anti-CRISPR drugs, some of our very first, offer proof-of-concept that the CRISPR titan can be stopped. With a drug screening platform now in place, the scene is set to find even more powerful “undo” buttons: chemicals that may one day turn into shots or pills to block unwanted gene editing activity, in medicine and perhaps bio-weaponry (now that’s a scary thought!).
“These results lay the foundation for precise chemical control over CRISPR-Cas9 activities, enabling the safe use of such technologies,” said Choudhary.
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Originally Posted by Lummy
