About Lulu and Nana: Twin Girls Born Healthy After Gene Surgery As Single-Cell Embryos

Two Chinese girls, who we'll call Lulu and Nana to protect their privacy, were born healthy a few weeks ago. Their mother Grace started her pregnancy by regular IVF with one difference: right after sending her husband's sperm into her eggs, an embryologist also sent in CRISPR/Cas9 protein and instructions to perform a gene surgery intended to protect the girls from future HIV infection. The surgery reproduces a natural genetic variation shared by more than 100 million people of primarily European origin that confers strong resistance to initial HIV-1 infection and disease progression. While CRISPR/Cas9 has been studied in human cells and in early clinical trials, gene surgery in embryos intended for pregnancy has not previously been reported. Safety remains a key concern, particularly for unintended changes to the genome. To assess the girls' genomes for safety after the surgery, multiple whole genome and targeted deep sequencing techniques were used before implantation, during the pregnancy, and now after birth. These data indicate the girls' genomes' were changed as intended by the gene surgery, but no off-target editing or large deletions occurred. Further assessments to confirm these findings will be conducted over the next year. We will publish our full data soon.

[nikitashchukin]

Just watch this video again in 10 years.

[bryancomlor]

How do we know that Nana and Lulu are the first? That they may be the succesfull ones is ok but we don't know how many times they tried and failed.

[MrGullyness]

Congratulations, you have taken a huge leap. Not being afraid of the controversial talk and making a stand, you have paved a way for humanity!

[frog-wiys]

Dr. He claimed “before returning Lulu and Nana to Grace’s womb, we checked how the gene surgery went by whole genome sequencing. The results indicated the surgery worked safely, as intended. Grace’s pregnancy was normal, which we monitored closely by ultrasounds and blood tests. After birth, we again deep sequenced Lulu and Nana’s whole genomes. This verified the gene surgery worked safely: no gene was changed except the one to prevent HIV infection.”
As far as I know (sorry, I am not a specialist in this field so I might have misunderstood) the whole genome sequencing to find one nucleotide change requires substantial numbers of cells to normalize the mis-reading of the sequence. How can he get such substantial number of embryonic cells before returning the embryo into mother’s body?
And what was the "reference" genome to check if there are potential changes of the sequence?

[IScorpion]

Кто от ALI? Ставь лайк, посмотрим сколько нас!

[sofiahamza]

I still don't know what's wrong with what he did and why he was sentenced to 3 years in jail

[zhigangliu]

Gene editing is one way to cure disease, but not at this stage. CRISPR-CAS9 is still premature with high risk, this is illegal in China and is a huge ethical issue in science world

[Handles]

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they never stopped to think if they should.”

[MatthewRalston]

Publish the bam files. You can't make the claim 'safe' without 3rd party validation.

[jimwatchyyc]

I’m surprised, given what happened to Dr. He that (a) the video is still up; and (b) despite that, there haven’t been more views. Im not saying he was okay to proceed with the gene editing but this maybe the single biggest event in the 21st century so far!

[Zizzyyzz]

"A Chinese court has sentenced He Jiankui, the biophysicist who announced that he had created the world’s first gene-edited babies, to three years in prison for *“illegal medical practice”, * and handed down shorter sentences to two colleagues who assisted him. The punishments put to rest speculation over whether the Chinese government would bring criminal charges for an act that shocked the world, and are likely to deter others from similar behaviour, say Chinese scientists."

[DDieDDes]

This actually could be fake, just to raise awareness for the controversy around human genome editing. There are some red flags: 1, There is no paper or preprint 2, Hospital doesn't know about the existence of the babies and 3, I fail to understand why you would knockout a receptor to which HIV binds if the dad is the one with the HIV. Isn't the HIV removed from the sperm when you do the IVF treatment? 4, Whole genome sequencing before and after editing is a very good idea, however it is very very hard to make 100% sure CRISPR did not aspecifically target something. Variant calling and other bam analyses would detect changes in the DNA if the depth is good enough, however if for some reason the CRISPR-cas9 creates or inserts DNA that does not align to the human genome, then it will go undetected with those analyses. You could write some scripts to check changes in the unmapped or align against other genomes like virusses and transposons that are not known transposable elements, but I doubt that they did that.

[earld]

The Biggest mistake that He and his team made was that he went very public about his experiments.
Given the ease of using CRISPR-cas9 technology, it's clear that there are many experiments already under way that we don't know about.

[aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

I don't understand what he did wrong, aside from practicing illegally. He made GMO children? Should be fine for people who approve of GMOs. He modified embryos? Pro-choice people dismiss potential for the future of that embryo in favor of the parent's choice. Therefore he did not "harm" the children, just as how you cannot "harm" the fetus by killing it. I don't get why people are being so hypocritical about this and saying it's wrong.

[haroldfong]

I was feeling bad as a Chinese student in BME and I am feeling desperate after seeing these comments in both Chinese and English.

[MilciadesAndrion]

These experiments are highly controversial and we don't know the final results. As I know he is in prison at the present time in China due that he violated China's regulations. I think he tried to help science but did not realize that this technology may be used for different uses.

[bzqp]

The funny thing is, that the guy KNEW about the papers on supermemory mice with the deleted CCR5 gene. The edit was made not only to make the children immune to HIV. It was partially done to make some sort of supermemory superhumans. xd

[jameswilliams]

No, enhancing IQ should not be banned. Why would we want people to be stupid?

[Kobi-umbj]

Trust me if you master this skills they'll come calling for help.

[conniehuffaCRE]

Perhaps the rush to be first is more short-sighted arrogance than anything else. Plenty of people know how to do this, including the people that invented it at Harvard, Berkley, and a handful of other labs including one in Shanghai. The issue wasn't that it couldn't be done, but should it be done. It is a very different thing playing with a child who has no say in how they will be born, and working with an adult that can give consent. Plus there is no consideration of the additional generations this experiment affects. There is so much we don't know about our DNA, and the collateral damage this technique may cause to other genes that are dormant, but we may need in human kind's future evolution.