Crispr-Cas9: The Molecular Scissors

Despite sounding like the latest brand of potato crispy snacks, the Crispr-Cas9 technique is actually nothing to do with food. In fact it is a gene editing technique that acts like a scissors at a molecular level, which can cut out sections of a person’s DNA and replace it with new ones.

Oncologists at West China Hospital of Sichuan University  are going to practice this gene editing on human volunteers for the first time this month. Crispr-Cas9 is actually short for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”. It was dubbed the breakthrough of the year 2015 by the US based journal, “Science”.

The gene editing trials will hope to cure lung cancer by removing a gene encoding a protein called PD-1. 10 volunteers have been picked who are already suffering from advanced lung cancer and have undergone chemo and radiation therapy already.

There likely to be many uncertainties associated with the science project as no one has undertaken an exercise of this nature before. The Chinese scientists will be monitoring all patients during the clinical trials diligently to ensure safety of the patients. If tests prove successful, there is further scope to expand the studies and allow more patients to undergo the potentially life altering treatment.