Af­ter CRISPR ba­by scan­dal shut down work for years, Chi­na gene edit­ing com­pa­nies are restart­ing clin­i­cal tri­als

A half-decade af­ter a sci­en­tist’s reck­less ex­per­i­ment with hu­man em­bryos put a stop to much of Chi­na’s clin­i­cal work on CRISPR gene edit­ing, lo­cal re­searchers are once again per­form­ing hu­man stud­ies of the tech­nol­o­gy.

At least three Chi­nese biotech com­pa­nies have re­cent­ly be­gun tests of CRISPR treat­ments for blood, eye and liv­er dis­eases, with more on the way. Al­though most are pur­su­ing the same set of well-trod­den tar­gets as their US coun­ter­parts, they are mov­ing at rapid speed and with a frac­tion of the fund­ing of their West­ern peers.

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