A newly developed gene editing technique is giving scientists hopes for not only treating illness, but one day eliminating sickness altogether at the macromolecular level, according to Engadget. Using the CRISPR technique, or Clusters of Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, scientists have been able to show that Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, the most common form of muscular dystrophy, can be erased.
The research, published by the Nature Publishing Group, says that the technique can be used to go in and correct certain genes that aren't working properly and re-assign properly working genes in their place.
"Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) is one of the most prevalent myopathies, affecting males and females of all ages," read the research. "Here we demonstrate that a CRISPR/dCas9 transcriptional inhibitor can be specifically targeted to the highly repetitive FSHD macrosatellite array and alter the chromatin..."
"I think progress for any disease is really progress for all diseases, because a lot of these therapies and technologies are going to turn out to be broadly applicable," said lead author Charis Himeda.
Himeda said that although they have found a way of replacing genes that is seemingly less dangerous, there is still a lot of questions regarding gene replacement and its affects on other genes, according to the Huffington Post.
