Genetic Engineering Publications - GEG Tech top picks

Gene therapy that alters hemoglobin genes may be an answer to curing sickle cell disease (SCD) and beta thalassemia. These two common life-threatening anemias afflict millions of individuals across the globe. Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard used a next-generation genome editing technology, adenosine base editing, to restart fetal hemoglobin expression in SCD patient cells. The approach raised the expression of fetal hemoglobin to higher, more stable, and more uniform levels than other genome editing technologies that use CRISPR/Cas9 nuclease in human hematopoietic stem cells. The findings were published in Nature Genetics. 

Gene editing using CRISPR-Cas9 offers the potential of targeted treatment for a variety of genetic diseases. These include inherited abnormalities of β hemoglobin, which can be indirectly targeted by increasing the amount of healthy fetal hemoglobin even without fully correcting the disease-causing mutation. Humbert et al.  published paper in Science Translational Medicine, titled “Therapeutically relevant engraftment of a CRISPR-Cas9–edited HSC-enriched population with HbF reactivation in nonhuman primates.”