[syntaxing]

I really hope this mRNA train keeps going and companies succeed executing on it. Does anyone know the status for CRISPR medical technology? I remembering hearing about all these great applications using CaaS-9 and 13 but I haven’t really heard any new medical breakthroughs recently (though the hemophilia “cure” was awesome!).

[usehackernews]

CRISPR is a great example of a technology that has not yet made a meaningful economic contribution. Although the technique for editing DNA was discovered in 2012—and a Nobel Prize was awarded to its two discoverers this year—no treatment using CRISPR has been approved outside of clinical trials. So far, its impact has been limited to making researchers more productive—not a bad thing, to be sure, but not close to CRISPR’s full potential. As trials progress, however, I do think some CRISPR treatments will come online in the next few years, especially those targeting genetic disorders that we have very limited means of otherwise treating.

From Notes on Technology in the 2020s - Eli Dourado

[yread]

CRISPR most definitely made a huge economic contribution. It's used massively https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=crispr and it allows to do things that would have been very difficult (and expensive, thus providing value) to do otherwise, allowing researchers to do new therapies and diagnostic tools that WERE applied in clinic.

That's a bit like saying containers haven't provided meaningful economic contribution because consumers don't use them very often.

[usehackernews]

I state that CRISPR benefits researchers. However, that is still a niche benefit relative to the long term societal benefits we anticipate from CRISPR.

[cjones26]

I read somewhere recently that CRISPR was actually causing far more accidental mutations than anticipated. Apologies I do not have the source handy, though Google should turn up some information.

[timy2shoes]

Cas13 doesn't target DNA, rather targets RNA. It cuts the RNA, which then degraded. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742...