Your missing links are here (28 August 2020)

Top picks

Getting closer to a CRISPR cure for obesity. Scientists use CRISPR to change the fate of adipocytes, so bad fat is turned into good fat. Effectively treating fat with fat, this might help patients who suffer from obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic disorders. And here.

Gene editing may soon be able to cure inherited deafness. Here’s why some deaf parents oppose it - many are happy the way they are.

The Peter Thiel-backed, Jennifer Doudna-advised, SpaceX engineer-founded CRISPR platform company, Synthego, just announced $100 million in Series D funding for building the efficient automated CRISPR service lab of the future.

British-based company Oxitec to release 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes to be released in Florida to reduce local disease-carrying populations. Silver bullet or jumping the gun? - The Conversation.

Nature News on another mosquito strategy that could eliminate dengue - infecting the insect with Wolbachiabacteria to stop disease transmission.

COVID19

Sherlock Biosciencesin collaboration with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health hospitals to test their FDA-approved CRISPR-SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic kit on clinical samples from patients. Sherlock CEO Rahul Danda tells us the story on developing the kit.

Rapid home-testing kits end the COVID19 pandemic in 3 weeks says assistant professor of epidemiology Michael Mina, Harvard Medical School in Harvard Magazine. »We need to change the whole script of what it means to test people,« he says. Rather than testing in hospitals and laboratories, Mina wants to see self-testing and self-isolation to break the chain of transmission.

Chinese researcher delivers new low-cost isothermal CRISPR-based diagnostic for COVID-19 with near single-copy sensitivity.

Research

Rapid repair of human disease-specific single-nucleotide variants by One-SHOT genome editing. »Our findings suggest that One-SHOT can be used to repair other types of mutations, with potential beyond human medicine.«

Targeted CRISPR-Cas9 gene correction of human hematopoietic stem cells for the treatment of Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome.

Researchers in the US and France use CRISPR to remove oral Herpes virus in a mouse model. Expect clinical trials for oral herpes in 3 years. Original article.

Researchers in Japan use CRISPR-Cas9 to generate cellular models of hereditary kidney disease from human iPS cells. Original article.

A new type of CRISPR genome editing with the donor plasmid equipped with synthetic crRNA-target sequence achieve highly efficient transgene insertion and in-frame knock-in in mice.

Neurodegenerative gene’s function is not all about those bases. The new finding in Nature points to a potential therapeutic strategy for neurodegenerative diseases amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).

Rapid CRISPR-based diagnostic detects Lassa and Ebola in real-time. Original article in Nature Communcations.

Review

Something we don't hear about too often in the CRISPR sphere - gene editing for Osteoarthritis and other joint disorders.

Delivery

Functionalized lipid-like nanoparticles for in vivo mRNA delivery and base editing.

Safety

How to reveal rare CRISPR-induced mutations in human stem cells.

A new tool called CRISPR GUARD to improve the specificity and safety of genome editing technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 and base editing.

Gene therapy

A Boy With Muscular Dystrophy Was Headed For A Wheelchair. Then Gene Therapy Arrived.

Record Funding for Gene and Cell Therapy Accompanies Turbulent Times.

Wary haemophilia patients say they’re willing to wait longer for a safe gene therapy.

Derailed gene therapy study reports 3rd death as safety and durability issues cloud a booming field. And more on the now-halted study of Audentes gene therapy using high dose AAV8 as the delivery method.

Conferences and meetings

CRISPRcon is bringing diverse voices together to discuss the future of CRISPR and related gene-editing technologies across applications in agriculture, health, conservation, and more. The virtual event is running through September and October.

The Cell Series UK virtual event on 6-7 October will be tackling the biggest issues in Gene, Cell and Stem Cell Manufacturing and the major bottlenecks in producing advanced therapies for the market.

Pioneers

We recently wrote about the smallest CRISPR system, here's an interview with professor Guillermo Montoya about Deciphering the largest and most complex CRISPR system.

Industry

Eyeing in-vivo editing, Mammoth licenses Jennifer Doudna’s new CRISPR enzyme.

EDIT-301, Experimental Cell Therapy for SCD, Earns Rare Pediatric Disease Designation.

Healthy bitter mustard greens made tasty through CRISPR genome-editing in the future?

Heh, huh, wow

These teens want to solve plastic pollution through gene-editing.

CRISPR'ed rice turned into handmade art paper to communicate about CRISPR, art and science from IGI at Berkeley.