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When news broke on Sunday (November 25) that researcher He Jiankui claimed to have used CRISPR to edit the DNA of twin girls born this month, an Associated Press article also revealed that Michael Deem, a bioengineering professor at Rice University in Houston, Texas, had been involved. Yesterday, Rice announced that it has opened an investigation into Deem’s participation in the project, STAT reports.
He, who researches gene editing at the Southern University of Science and Technology in China, claims that as part of a clinical trial he used CRISPR to inactivate the gene for CCR5, a receptor that HIV uses to infect cells, in the embryos that gave rise to the twins. The results have not been published or independently verified.
“Regardless of where it was conducted, this work as described in press reports violates scientific conduct guidelines and is inconsistent with ethical norms of ...
