3 Ways Gene Editing Could Revolutionize Health Care

Researchers are always pursuing new discoveries to make life more enjoyable. Scientists in the medical field have drawn attention to gene editing as one of the top ways to help people live longer and stay healthy. Everyone should learn more about the process and how it could revolutionize health care to better understand what the future holds.

Here’s what to know about this revolutionary technology and what it could mean for health care.

Technologies made it possible to experiment with genome editing in the late 1900s, but it didn’t seem promising until 2009. When the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology debuted that year, it showed how researchers could cut DNA strands using a CRISPR-associated protein (Cas9).

Cas9 enzymes exist within the human body to take viruses apart and ingest parts of their DNA to protect people from future virus replicas better. Scientists copy that process without involving viruses to segment DNA strands they want to study.

People may wonder why scientists care to unravel DNA. The main benefit is the ability to further disease research. Researchers using CRISPR technology to isolate specific genes in patients with genetic diseases can target them with potential treatments or cures without introducing potential harm to patients. This is an ongoing source of study for cystic fibrosis researchers, in addition to scientists seeking treatments for other genetic diseases.

Patent license laws ensure that anyone receiving medical services or gene editing treatments will get high-quality cell lines. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently ruled that anyone using Broad Institute CRISPR technology must be an authorized distributor to continue their services. Patients can trust that licensed companies will provide safe cell line engineering based on the new legal requirement.

These are the primary ways gene editing could improve the health care industry. It’s currently changing how doctors and patients plan courses of treatment because it’s been so successful.

Isolating gene strands makes it possible to turn their primary functions on or off. Researchers might want to do this to prevent genetic diseases from developing in at-risk patients or stop one from progressing in a diagnosed patient.

Medical experts trained to use CRISPR technology can also study specific DNA strands that aren’t as well understood. Understanding dark genome matter better could lead to regulatory functions that strengthen the human body against disease.

Anyone who has experienced cancer due to a personal diagnosis or that of a loved one may have heard of Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. Scientists use it to train T-cells to attack cancer more effectively and reduce how much chemotherapy patients need to beat their diagnosis. However, sometimes the supercharged T-cells attack healthy cells and create organ damage unassociated with existing cancerous growths.

CRISPR allows gene editing researchers to potentially improve CAR T-cell therapies by training them to attack only cancer cells before reintroducing them to patients via injection or surgery. It may eliminate the need for traditional treatments if it becomes safer.

It would be unethical to test new drugs on people without understanding their complete list of potential side effects. Animal testing fills that role, but CRISPR could prevent testing on live creatures. The technology would extract human DNA and test medications on those samples to create models that predict how the drugs would affect patients in clinical trials.

Participants would better understand their risks in participating and the development of future drugs would become more tailored to human needs.

Time is the primary disadvantage of relying on gene editing for revolutionary medical treatments. American and Canadian teams leading CRISPR research with the Somatic Cell Genome Editing (SCGE) Program only recently received $89 million in federal funding to expand and expedite their studies.

Genome mapping and editing teams mostly rely on venture capital funding, which totaled over $1 billion in 2021 and accounted for 250% more investment than 2020. Until funding becomes routinely available, progress with gene editing as a medical service will continue slower than what would otherwise be possible.

The minds behind gene editing discoveries could make it revolutionize health care, but more time and funding are necessary. Treatments for genetic diseases and other diagnoses may one day become widespread, but only if it becomes a more mainstream type of medical research with the help of additional financial support.