WIKIMEDIA, H. NISHIMASU ET AL.Should Cell have disclosed Eric Lander’s potential institutional conflict-of-interest (COI) as head of the Broad Institute—a CRISPR patent-holder—when publishing his perspective piece on the history of the gene-editing techinque? Critics this week voiced a resounding ‘yes.’ Some argued Lander’s role led to a biased account of the contributions to one of biology’s most celebrated technical achievements—one for which intellectual property claims are still being disputed and that has been discussed as a contender for top prizes in the field.
In following up on the controversial piece, The Scientist discovered discrepancies between the fact-checking processes described by Lander and Cell and those described by Jennifer Doudna, George Church, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, who have all claimed the commentary contains inaccuracies.
“We are currently evaluating our COI policy to determine if we should extend it to include institutional COIs going forward,” Cell Press spokesperson Joseph Caputo wrote in an email to The Scientist. “I can’t comment on whether there will or won’t be changes to Dr. Lander’s piece.”
(See “Credit for CRISPR: A Conversation with George Church,” The Scientist, December 29, 2015; “Who Owns CRISPR?” The Scientist, April 3, 2015.)
WIKIMEDIA, PROTEIN DATA BANK/J. DONG ET AL.Apolipoprotein E (ApoE), known to play a role in Alzheimer’s disease, may be a transcriptional regulator that interacts with around 1,700 genes, according to researchers from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging who published their findings in The Journal of Neuroscience this week (January 20).
