Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study
Summary
The immune systems of a large majority of people could already be primed to attack and possibly even disable a key component of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing therapeutics (which are quickly moving towards their first human tests), suggests new research published today.In the latest research, a team of scientists in Germany exposed blood samples from 48 healthy volunteers to Cas9 (a DNA-cutting enzyme) derived from a bacterium called Streptococcus pyogenes .Those are higher rates than what the other research team, led by Matthew Porteus of the Stanford School of Medicine, showed in January.Other researchers have also raised a red flag around another CRISPR effect: unintended edits in off-target spots along the genome.But pre-existing immunity to Cas9 is more of a worry than off-target edits, wrote Gaetan Burgio, a genome-editing expert at Australian National University, on Twitter in April , in reaction to a not-yet-peer-reviewed version of today’s study.
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