CRISPR Used Inside a Human Body for the First Time
A patient at Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland was recently treated for an inherited form of blindness using CRISPR. The results from the surgery may take up to 18 months to show, but if they are deemed safe, doctors are going to continue to do the surgery on more patients.
The people in this study were born-with Leber amaurosis, caused by a mutation that keeps the body from making a protein needed to convert light into signals to the brain. They are often born with little vision and can lose that within a few years leaving them completely blind.
The surgery is done through a very thin tube where doctors drip three drops of fluid containing the gene editing machinery just beneath the retina. The entire length of the procedure takes about one hour to complete. Doctors estimate that they only need to fix one tenth to one third of the cells in the patient’s eye to restore vision. During their animal testing phase, they were able to restore about half of the subject’s cells this way. The operation itself poses almost no risk to the patients health aside from potential infection.
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