A defanged type of CRISPR, which doesn’t slice or nick DNA, however moderately alters the epigenome — the layers of chemical coding that sit on prime of DNA and management the exercise of genes — has aced its first substantive check.
When researchers used CRISPR “epigenome enhancing” to dial down a cholesterol-associated gene in monkeys, the animals’ blood ranges of heart-disease-causing LDL, or “unhealthy” ldl cholesterol, plummeted by greater than 50%, Jennifer Kwon, senior scientist at Tune Therapeutics, introduced on Friday on the American Society of Gene and Cell Remedy assembly in Los Angeles.
The outcomes, from Tune’s experiments in 5 cynomolgus monkeys, are the primary printed information exhibiting profitable CRISPR epigenome enhancing in a non-human primate; prior to now few years, there have been related successes in mice. It’s thrilling information for Tune, which was based in 2021 and is positioned in Durham, N.C., and Seattle, but in addition for the opposite younger startups on this subject attempting to develop a brand new class of precision medicines that may write or erase epigenetic marks concerned in human illness.
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