CRISPR gene therapies: Is 2023 a milestone year in the making
The first approval decision for a CRISPR gene therapy in 2023 represents a major milestone, setting expectations for things to come.
CRlSPR gene editing has long attracted attention in the research community, the media, and the wider public. This peaked in 2020 when the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to two leading CRISPR researchers, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier. However, the field has also faced controversies. In December 2019, He Jiankui, a Chinese scientist, was sentenced to a three-year imprisonment after news broke of him using CRISPR technology to edit human embryos that led to the birth of three babies. Jiankui was reported to have been released in 2022.
Additionally, a legal battle between Feng Zhang and scientists from The Broad Institute and Harvard, and Jennifer Doudna from the University of California, over who invented the technique and patents linked to it has ensued in recent years. In February 2022, the US Patent and Trademark Office declared that the Broad Institute could keep its patents for CRISPR-Cas9 editing in eukaryotes and, thus, humans. Nevertheless, questions surrounding the ultimate ownership of the technology remain, as patent offices in other countries have reached different conclusions.
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