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Advancing Ethical Stem Cell Research with CRISPR

  • Ethics in Stem/Progenitor Cell Therapeutics (S Latham, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose of Review

The purpose of this review is to highlight opportunities to incorporate Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) into stem cell research in ways that may alleviate long-standing ethical conflicts in biomedical research.

Recent Findings

CRISPR has been incorporated into stem cell research that aims to understand developmental biology, model disease, test drugs, and develop therapies. In all of these domains, using CRISPR may alleviate, exacerbate, or create ethical conflicts. This review highlights ways in which CRISPR may facilitate more ethical research.

Summary

Genetically editing stem cells using CRISPR may lead to more ethical research by reducing reliance on animals used in disease modeling and drug screening research and reducing uncertainty ahead of first-in-human uses of stem cell therapies.

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Papers of particular interest, published recently, have been highlighted as: • Of importance •• Of major importance

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Hastings Center, 21 Malcolm Gordon Road, Garrison, NY, 10524, USA

    Carolyn P. Neuhaus & Rachel L. Zacharias

Authors
  1. Carolyn P. Neuhaus
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  2. Rachel L. Zacharias
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carolyn P. Neuhaus.

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Ethics in Stem/Progenitor Cell Therapeutics

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Neuhaus, C.P., Zacharias, R.L. Advancing Ethical Stem Cell Research with CRISPR. Curr Stem Cell Rep 4, 248–252 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40778-018-0137-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40778-018-0137-5

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