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Right Turn: CRISPR, at a theatre near you

by | May 4, 2018

Does it seem like CRISPR is everywhere these days? That’s because it is! The popular gene editing tool – Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats – is significant for its ability to edit DNA at precise locations, making it possible to correct mutations in the human genome to treat diseases caused by genetic defects.

It may feel like CRISPR is never out of the news. Feng Zhang’s startup Beam Therapeutics has just raised almost US$100 million in funding and Jennifer Doudna’s Mammoth Biosciences just launched. On top of that, this week’s hearing at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., has thrust the patent issue under the spotlight once again. The two-year-old dispute over who owns CRISPR – the University of California or the Broad Institute – rages on.

A great deal of fame (a potential Nobel Prize) and fortune (predicted to be millions) is at stake for the researchers involved: Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Zhang.

If this sounds like good movie material for a gripping courtroom drama, we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, Hollywood has produced the action movie Rampage, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, to capitalize on the more science-fictiony aspects of the gene editing tool. According to The Verge, “a rogue CRISPR experiment is responsible for turning a gorilla, a wolf, and a crocodile into huge, savage monsters.”

In case you didn’t know, CRISPR “can’t be used to turn wolves into gigantic, flying monsters that can shoot porcupine spines off their tails.” What it can potentially do is cure diseases like cancer and sickle cell anemia.

Signals has been covering CRISPR since as far back as 2014, but I won’t be posting a CRISPR movie review here (unless it’s that courtroom drama starring actors I can’t resist). But if you’re wondering whether to go see Rampage and The Rock, two STAT reporters are doubling as amateur movie critics after watching an advanced screening. Read on to learn whether Rampage gets two thumbs up.

It’s not an edge-of-your-seat action movie, but if you’d like to understand CRISPR better, watch this video with Jennifer Doudna explaining the tool and its uses. Any thoughts on who would play her?

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Stacey Johnson

Stacey Johnson is the editor of Signals and a contributor. For 25 years, Stacey has been providing strategic communications counsel to government, corporate, technology and health organizations. She began her career at the CTV Television Network and then moved to Hill & Knowlton Canada where she advised clients in a variety of industries and sectors. Stacey is the Vice President, Communications and Marketing for CCRM, a leader in developing and commercializing regenerative medicine-based technologies and cell and gene therapies. She has a Master's degree in Public Relations. You can follow her on Twitter @msstaceyerin.

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