Two Female Scientists Win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their CRISPR Gene Editing Discovery

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry to American biochemist Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, and French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, of the Max Planck Institute, for their gene editing discovery known as CRISPR.

CNN: "The CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tools have revolutionized the molecular life sciences, brought new opportunities for plant breeding, are contributing to innovative cancer therapies and may make the dream of curing inherited diseases come true, according to a press release from the Nobel committee."

In the coming years, CRISPR/Cas9 has the potential to revolutionize medicine. Scientists across the globe are already using it to develop cures for a wide variety of diseases that result from a DNA mutation.

StatNews: "In just the six years since, scientists building on the laureates’ work got CRISPR to edit DNA in human cells growing in a dish, the companies CRISPR Therapeutics and Vertex have launched clinical trials using CRISPR to cure sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia, while Editas Medicine is working on a clinical trial using CRISPR to cure a form of congenital blindness. Many other human studies are in the planning stages, with the goal of curing diseases as different as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, type 1 diabetes, hemophilia, and more."

And that is just the beginning.

CNN: "Tom Welton, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, told the SMC that the CRISPR discoveries were already proving "transformative." "The ability to edit genes provides an incredible toolkit for scientific research that will benefit humankind for generations to come, from fighting and preventing diseases to feeding our growing global population."

#news #CRISPR #science

By: Don Lam & Curated Content