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HNGO KONG – The Hong Kong Academy of Sciences, the British Royal Society and the US National Academies sponsor the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences and the US National Academies, but are not the main scientific body of the host country.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CSA), which co-sponsored the first such summit in 2015 in Washington with its British and American counterparts, has withdrawn this time.
A year ago, after months of planning for the Second International Summit on the Modification of the Human Genome, China was slowly withdrawing, David Baltimore of the California Institute of Technology, chairman of the organizing committee, told STAT Of the reunion. The development has not been reported before and has not been announced by the organizers, who were reluctant to discuss the reasons.
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"The SCA did not want to organize a meeting of 500 people at [mainland] China and we needed that to accommodate the expected number of participants, "said Baltimore. "So they gave up." At this point, the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences offered a venue and a sponsorship.
Other scientists involved in the planning months believe the problem is broader than Beijing's supposed failure to find an auditorium. "Originally, we had been co-sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the summit was to be held in Beijing," said a scientist familiar with planning. "But there was clearly reluctance on the part of the [Chinese] government to host it with the scale and transparency that we wanted. "
The Chinese Academy has not responded to requests for comment.
Its absence, as well as that of Chinese Ministry of Science officials, means that a key player in genome editing will not be officially represented. Science in China – and the speed with which its researchers use to correct hereditary diseases by modifying human embryos – should nonetheless be a star attraction.
On the eve of the summit, a Chinese scientist learned from the staggering claim that, for the first time, babies – twins – were born in recent weeks with modified genes like embryos. The modifications of DNA, which girls could pass on to their offspring, were aimed at making them resistant to HIV infection. Other scientists said the work was premature and dangerous, and have described it as human experimentation.
Besides the absence of the Chinese Academy, this summit stands out from that of 2015. Rather than "gene editing", it is a summit on "Publishing This change reflects the power of technologies such as CRISPR, which modify not only individual genes in laboratory animals and human cells, but also multiple genes simultaneously, thus treating the entire genome as a bad manuscript waiting to be processed. writing a publisher handling red pencil. The summit sessions will present CRISPR's scientific breakthroughs, describe the regulations and public attitudes around CRISPR worldwide, and outline the ethical issues they raise.
At the 2015 summit, a Science Ministry official frowned by stating that, although China applies strict rules regarding the use of the modified genome for the development of human embryos, it could not guarantee that dishonest laboratories and clinics do not conduct experiments as they should not.
There have been rumors for years that Chinese researchers are accelerating experiments using genome editing to alter the DNA of human embryos, something Western scientists hesitate or forbid to attempt. The laws of some countries, including the United States, prohibit the use of public funds to modify the DNA of human embryos, even those that are not viable, the size of a few cells and not intended to initiate a pregnancy. Such a "germ line edition" would be inherited by the descendants.
Scientists in China, however, are moving forward. In 2015, biologists from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou led the first human embryo DNA modification experiment, describing their work in an obscure online journal after articles more known had rejected the paper for ethical reasons. This caused an immediate outcry. Many scientists and others have spoken out against the modification of the human genome in a way that can last generations.
Since then, influential groups such as the National Academies of the United States and the British Council of Bioethics Nuffield have endorsed research on germ line modification, which may prevent inherited diseases such as Huntington, sickle cell disease, Tay- Sachs, etc., even before the birth of a child. . However, even proponents of possible human use call for further research to know if germ line modification can be done safely before attempting an IVF embryo for pregnancy.
Leading CRISPR scientists say they do not know what is the proof of safety that Chinese laboratories believe is necessary before using CRISPR in IVF clinics. This summer, researchers led by Xingxu Huang of Shanghai Tech University said they used a new form of CRISPR called basic edition to correct the mutation that causes Marfan syndrome in IVF embryos. No pregnancy has been attempted. Huang, whose research is supported by the Chinese government, is scheduled to speak at the summit.
One of the main reasons why the summit organizers wanted to meet in China "is that we believe that it is the region of the world most likely to advance without thorough monitoring of what we have in the United States and the UK, "said the scientist who discussed the withdrawal of the Chinese Academy.
"A number of Asian scientists will work on modifying human embryos," said the University of California at Berkeley, biochemist Jennifer Doudna, a CRISPR pioneer and member of the organizing committee. "I am personally very interested to hear what they do and what they think. How much safety do they think they need before going to the clinic? Is this something that the general public understands and wants? Do people see it as positive or negative?
Few people understand that publishing embryos is even a possibility, said Doudna. "My perception is that there is a fairly large proportion of people who know nothing at all," she said. "I fear that people outside the scientific community are caught off guard."
Most people also do not understand what would be a milestone in modifying an embryo. As Baltimore has said, no medical intervention has ever had "effects that will pass from generation to generation."
Ready or not, it's probably unstoppable. "A consensus has emerged that genome editing will be sufficiently safe for IVF embryos to eradicate a disease," said Dr. George Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School. "I still think it's premature to use technology in the area of assisted procreation" to modify hereditary and disease-causing genes. "But this will be the subject of active discussions at the top. What additional scientific breakthroughs do you need before you can try? I guess we're going to hear that science has evolved enough in the last three years so that we can think of the path of clinical translation. "
Even Dudna, who was preoccupied with the germline edition and had led her to a private meeting in early 2015, now believes that "we are moving towards a time when people will start using the editing of the genome on human embryos ", which makes the guidelines all the more urgent.
US regulations state that any use of CRISPR on a patient is a cell therapy. All cell therapies, regardless of the payer, must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Congress has banned the FDA from considering the proposed uses of CRISPR in human embryos.
Although China is sometimes described as using CRISPR in a way that scientists in other regions would not have envisioned, "there are incentives for people to behave in an internationally accepted way," Baltimore said. The implantation of an IVF embryo and its gestation for nine months would run counter to the international scientific consensus that it was premature to do so, given the uncertainties of safety. "If something is wrong with [research] directives, they would meet the stigma of the rest of the world, "he said. "The Chinese are very sensitive to that. They do not want to be considered a rogue nation. "
Doudna will chair the session on public engagement efforts, where experts from three countries will explain how they are trying to educate the public about genome editing. In another session, representatives from seven countries from Tasmania to Singapore, China and the United States will explain their government's policies for modifying the human genome, both germ line modification. (embryos) and the less controversial type conducted in a child or adult to treat an existing disorder. Such a "somatic edition" would not be inherited from future generations.
Many scientific presentations will focus on what is needed to make CRISPR a medical tool, not just research. Since the 2015 summit, "a lot has changed" regarding the safety, accuracy and efficiency of CRISPR, Daley said. "For somatic indications, at least 12 clinical trials using CRISPR-Cas9 are underway."
Of these, one for blood tetraemia, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics, which removes blood cells from patients, uses CRISPR to correct the disease-causing mutation and restores the modified cells. Most others are cancerous and use CRISPR to modify immune cells so that they attack tumors. The summit sessions will present progress made in the use of CRISPR to treat other blood disorders, as well as muscular dystrophy.
Law professor and Bioethicist R. Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a member of the organizing committee of the summit, thinks this is the right thing to do. "We continue to be fascinated by the less likely applications of CRISPR," she said: "The germline edition, which will be the most complicated use to assess in terms of risks and benefits, and 'improvement' – using CRISPR not to treat a disease, but to improve the appearance, strength or other traits of someone. People, she added, combine these applications – germline edition for improvement, including "baby designers" – "and here we go for the races".
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