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It's weird to celebrate a Nobel Prize that at once feels so long overdue and at the same time, honors a discovery made not even a decade ago! But things move fast in CrisprWorld. Here are just a few developments that I've managed to cover during my time at WIRED:
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A favorite, from 2017, was this somewhat gimmicky but cool experiment that showed off Crispr's power to turn living cells into digital data warehouses. 2/ https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-upload-a-galloping-horse-gif-into-bacteria-with-crispr/
In 2018, I wrote about the launch of Doudna's startup Mammoth Biosciences, which planned to use Crispr's DNA-targeting prowess to make cheap diagnostics. Like a pregnancy test for infectious disease. 3/ https://www.wired.com/story/a-new-startup-wants-to-use-crispr-to-diagnose-disease/
The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated those efforts. In July, Mammoth was among 7 companies awarded $250M from the NIH to speed the arrival of fast, cheap, and more accurate Covid-19 tests. Mammoth is also working with GSK to bring its Crispr-based tests to market. 4/
The tests we have now basically come in two flavors: slow and super-sensitive (RT-PCR) and fast and prone to errors (antigen tests). "Why do you have to make that choice in 2020?" Mammoth CEO Trevor Martin told me in August. With Crispr, he says you don't have to. 5/
In what feels like a million years ago, but was just this past February, we got a glimpse at results from the first human trial using Crispr to make patients' immune cells more efficient cancer-killing machines. 6/ https://www.wired.com/story/crisprd-cells-show-promise-in-first-us-human-safety-trial/
Bottom line? Though small, the trial proved Crispr'd cells could safely be infused into people's bodies, opening up the door for a new frontier in genetic medicine. More than 20 trials using Crispr are currently underway around the world. 7/
One that started enrolling earlier this year is testing how well a Crispr-enhanced phage can treat UTIs caused by antibiotic resistant E coli. In 2019, I wrote about the company behind the trial, @LocusBio: 8/ https://www.wired.com/story/antibiotics-are-failing-us-crispr-is-our-glimmer-of-hope/
Here's another way scientists are eyeing Crispr to eradicate human disease: Installing a self-destructing gene drive into malaria-carrying mosquitoes. 9/ https://www.wired.com/story/heres-the-plan-to-end-malaria-with-crispr-edited-mosquitoes/
Similar Crispr-based approaches are also being applied to conservation—to save endangered species from predation by invasive rodents. @Emma_Marris wrote this excellent feature exploring the scientific and ethical questions raised by such efforts. 10/ https://www.wired.com/story/crispr-eradicate-invasive-species/
Another industry that Crispr has indelibly left a mark on is agriculture. In 2018, when the US FDA decided to not regulate most gene-edited foods, it paved the way for a boom in new designer crop shops. 11/ https://www.wired.com/story/crisprd-food-coming-soon-to-a-supermarket-near-you/
