The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on October 7, 2020, to a team of two women in science, Dr Emmanuelle Charpentier, a French national from the Max Planck Institute in Berlin; and Dr Jennifer Doudna, an American working at the University of California, Berkeley. The team is rewarded for their work in developing CRISPR-Cas9, a gene-editing tool that permits the “cutting” of DNA to remove undesirable genes. Described as “genetic scissors,” this technology has significant potential for curing hereditary diseases like sickle cell, blindness, and some cancers.
In Jamaica, the most common hereditary disease is sickle cell, affecting one in every 150 Jamaicans, with one in every 10 carrying the genetic trait. Many Jamaicans will, therefore, be happy to hear that preliminary results of clinical trials in Nashville, Tennessee, show that CRISPR-edited cells have the potential to eliminate the symptoms of sickle cell disease. Now CRISPR is not the first gene-editing tool developed by scientists or even tested against sickle cell, but it is by far the most precise, easy to use, and low-cost approach. Over one hundred years since sickle cell was characterised, CRISPR-Cas9 is set to break major barriers to the clinical application of gene editing and bring relief from the morbidity and the mortality brought on by this disease.
The CRISPR toolbox is diverse. By engineering white blood cells that produce antibodies, it also has utility in combating viruses like influenza, HIV, and SARS-CoV-2. In addition, the scientists and their collaborators have successfully demonstrated a CRISPR-based COVID-19 test that detects SARS-CoV-2 in five minutes with the aid of a mobile phone. Plus, there is lots more! From engineering mosquitoes against malaria to robust crops that resist changing climate and brewer’s yeast that produce flavour molecules in beer, this revolutionary technology has moved from lab to life in record time since Charpentier and Doudna’s landmark scientific publication in 2012.
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Published on 02 Nov, 2020
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