BioCentury
ARTICLE | Politics & Policy

Collins talks gene editing at final consensus study meeting

July 13, 2016 12:47 AM UTC

At Tuesday's final international consensus study meeting to discuss gene editing, participants discussed social issues including gene editing's potential impacts on race, religion and public policy. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine hosted the meeting, the last of four that followed December's International Summit on Human Gene Editing (see BioCentury Innovations, Dec. 17, 2015).

During the meeting, NIH Director Francis Collins discussed the NIH's Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) recommendation from June for the first use of CRISPR/ Cas9 gene editing in humans and the potential for in utero gene editing in the U.S. He said guidelines set in 1986 and 1999 prohibit NIH from supporting proposals for intentional germline alterations and in utero gene transfer specifically. He said it would be "premature to undertake any in utero gene transfer clinical trial" according to the 1999 guidelines, and told attendees that "we haven't gone much further than that in the last 17 years" (see BioCentury Extra, June 21). ...