Association for Responsible Research and Innovation in Genome Editing (ARRIGE) – Blog
The ARRIGE initiative is featured in this News&Comment article by Eric Smalley in Nature Biotechnology. Indeed a big challenge the one we have ahead of us but an unavoidable one, if we believe in the responsible use of genome editing techniques and in the engagement of all stakeholders that are involved in the process. Hands to work!.
Bruce Whitelaw (The Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK) and I, we have just published a commentary in the scientific journal Transgenic Research discussing the case of the Nature Methods paper by Schaefer et al. 2017 who initially reported the identification of numerous off-target sites altered after a genome-editing experiment in vivo, in mice. This paper has recently been retracted by the journal (March 30). As indicated by the authors in this commentary: “The most plausible explanation for the vast majority of the reported unexpected mutations were the expected underlying genetic polymorphisms that normally accumulate in two different colonies of the same mouse strain which occur as a result of spontaneous mutations and genetic drift. Therefore, the reported mutations were most likely not related to CRISPR-Cas9 activity.“
The ARRIGE initiative is receiving plenty of attention and generating a lot of interest from media and scientific journals. This is the case of The CRISPR Journal, which features a description of the birth of ARRIGE in its second issue. This article is open access. If you want to know more information about the ideas behind the foundation of ARRIGE, how they were shaped, how they developed and crystalized in the recent kick-off meeting in Paris, essentially aiming toward the responsible use of genome editing technologies, you can now simply read this publication.
Final comments, workshop conclusion and next steps by Lluis Montoliu (CNB-CSIC and CIBERER-ISCIII, Madrid, Spain) at the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting. ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting was held on 23 March 2018 at the Région Île-de-France Parliament, in Paris, France.
ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting video files available from the new ARRIGE YouTube channel. All 21 video files can be played and watched in the correct order through the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting YouTube Play List.
More information about ARRIGE can be obtained from the ARRIGE web site.
Presentation by Lauren Roberts and Louise James (Genetic Alliance UK) on involving patients in the discussion of issues raised by genome editing technology at the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting. ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting was held on 23 March 2018 at the Région Île-de-France Parliament, in Paris, France.
ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting video files available from the new ARRIGE YouTube channel. All 21 video files can be played and watched in the correct order through the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting YouTube Play List.
More information about ARRIGE can be obtained from the ARRIGE web site.
Presentation by Béatrice Holtz (LAVOIX, Paris, France) on the Intellectual properties and economic issues raised by genome editing technology at the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting. ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting was held on 23 March 2018 at the Région Île-de-France Parliament, in Paris, France.
ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting video files available from the new ARRIGE YouTube channel. All 21 video files can be played and watched in the correct order through the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting YouTube Play List.
More information about ARRIGE can be obtained from the ARRIGE web site.
Presentation by Filipa Ferraz de Oliveira (European Research Council, Ethics sector, Brussels, Belgium) on the Animal issues raised by genome editing technology at the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting. ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting was held on 23 March 2018 at the Région Île-de-France Parliament, in Paris, France.
ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting video files available from the new ARRIGE YouTube channel. All 21 video files can be played and watched in the correct order through the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting YouTube Play List.
More information about ARRIGE can be obtained from the ARRIGE web site.
Presentation by Andreas Kurtz (Charité Hospital, Berlin, Germany and European Group of Ethics, EGE) at the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting on the Environmental issues raised by genome editing technology. ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting was held on 23 March 2018 at the Région Île-de-France Parliament, in Paris, France.
ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting video files available from the new ARRIGE YouTube channel. All 21 video files can be played and watched in the correct order through the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting YouTube Play List.
More information about ARRIGE can be obtained from the ARRIGE web site.
Presentation by Peter Mills (Nuffield Council on Bioethics, London, UK) on Human issues raised by genome editing technology at the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting. ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting was held on 23 March 2018 at the Région Île-de-France Parliament, in Paris, France.
ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting video files available from the new ARRIGE YouTube channel. All 21 video files can be played and watched in the correct order through the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting YouTube Play List.
More information about ARRIGE can be obtained from the ARRIGE web site.
Talk by Hervé Chneiweiss (INSERM Ethics Committee) on the Ethics of the genome editing technologies: presentation of ARRIGE, at the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting. ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting was held on 23 March 2018 at the Région Île-de-France Parliament, in Paris, France.
ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting video files available from the new ARRIGE YouTube channel. All 21 video files can be played and watched in the correct order through the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting YouTube Play List.
More information about ARRIGE can be obtained from the ARRIGE web site.
Keynote Lecture delivered by Francisco J.M. Mojica (University of Alicante, Spain) on “Setting the stage, where do we stand today with CRISPR technology” and introduced by Lluis Montoliu (CNB-CSIC and CIBERER-ISCIII, Madrid, Spain). ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting was held on 23 March 2018 at the Région Île-de-France Parliament, in Paris, France.
ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting video files available from the new ARRIGE YouTube channel. All 21 video files can be played and watched in the correct order through the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting YouTube Play List.
More information about ARRIGE can be obtained from the ARRIGE web site.
Slides from all presentations delivered by invited guest speakers at the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting in Paris on 23 March 2018 are ready and available for consultation from the corresponding ARRIGE meeting web page. These slides have been generously shared by the speakers. Please contact the corresponding speaker if you would like to refer, cite or use any of these materials. Tomorrow we will release the corresponding video files for all sessions and talks at the ARRIGE Kick-Off meeting in Paris.
Today, the scientific journal Nature Methods, retracted a publication by Schaefer et al. that appeared on 30 May 2017 claiming to have found numerous unexpected mutations after a CRISPR-Cas9 experiment in vivo, in mice. The unexpectedly high number of off-target mutations reported in the study caught the field by surprise, where noone else appeared to have found similar data. However, this was a most relevant issue, should have been true, directly affecting the expectatives of the CRISPR-derived uses and applications. That publication negatively impacted in the nascent field of genome editing applications, particularly those related to biomedicine, to develop innovative gene therapy approaches. However, almost immediately, many groups around the world expressed doubts and critized the experimental design of the study and the interpretation of the observed results. Soon thereafter, several manuscripts and publications were released with more plausible alternative explanations (low number of cases analyzed, mice genetically unrelated, persisting Cas9 expression…). Anyone interested to review a timeline of events associated with this publication can visit the corresponding section of the CRISPR web at the CNB-CSIC, maintained by Lluis Montoliu.
Eventually, today, Nature Methods adopted an Editorial decision and retracted this publication, with the agreement of two of its authors and the disagreement of the rest, including the first and last author of the study. This was the most logical and expected decision. Simultaneously, Nature Methods has released five different responses from five independent laboratories, experts in the field of genome editing, with alternative explanations for the original study, now retracted.
The first phrase of the Editorial Retraction note explains this decision: “This paper is being retracted because the genomic variants observed by the authors in two CRISPR-treated mice cannot be conclusively attributed to CRISPR–Cas9.“. In other words, the most plausible explanation for the original findings were the underlying genetic differences between control and experimental mice, in principle derived from the same genetic background, but in reality selected from unrelated, and hence, genetically different, mouse colonies.
Anyone interested in the prokaryotic origins of the CRISPR systems and their transformation into the most efficient ever known genome editing tools should consider visiting this CRISPR web page at CNB-CSIC, maintained by Lluis Montoliu. This is a most useful and regularly updated web repository of publications, information, history, protocols, procedures, talks, videos, etc… all about CRISPR and their use as genome editing tool in a variety of applications.
In this short video interview (in Spanish), as a brief summary of a much longer text in El País newspaper, the journalist visits Francisco J. M. Mojica (University of Alicante, Spain) who shows the saltworks of Santa Pola, near Alicante, where he first described the CRISPR arrays from an archaea, 25 years ago. Francis Mojica coined the name of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) at the end of 2001 and, two years later discovered that CRISPR were part of an adaptive immune system developed by prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) as a defense mechanism against the virus (bacteriophages) and other molecules of genetic material that infected or visited them. Ten years later, the CRISPR bacterial immune system was transformed into an efficient genome editing tool.
The last (November 2017) annual meeting of the SFG (Société Française de Génétique / French Genetics Society) in Montpellier (France) was devoted to CRISPR : The CRISPR revolution: from bacterial immunity to functional genomics. The meeting organizers (among which one of the members of the ARRIGE Steering Committee, Cyril Sarrauste de Menthière) made an interview (in French) to Sylvain Moineau (Université Laval, Québec, Canada; one of the pioneers of the CRISPR systems in bacteria) and Christian Siatka (Director of the “Ecole de l’ADN”). This video, now available from the YouTube platform is here enclosed, within the ARRIGE blog, for educational purposes
Yesterday, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a statement in favour of Plant Breeding Innovation. In the US, the USDA will not regulate genome-edited plants (obtained, for example, through CRISPR tools), as long as they are not pest plants or developed using plant pests, and as long as the resulting genetic alleles could have been also introduced by any traditional breeding technique. In other words, if the CRISPR-derived allele matches an allele previously existing in nature the resulting genome edited plants will not be regulated by USDA. This decision is expected to favour Plant Breeders and researchers in the field of Plant Breeding innovation and is also expected to expedite the development of numerous genome edited plants resistant to drought and diseases or with increased nutritional value.
In Europe some hints towards a similar direction have been seen last January, with the publication of an Opinion by the EU lawyer of the Court of Justice of the European Union on a recent dispute ongoing in France. However, to date, the European Commission, through the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA) has not yet issued a final decision on the subject.
Science magazine is featuring the ARRIGE initiative in an interesting article by Martin Enserink. The journalist talked to Hervé Chneiweiss, Peter Mills and Lluís Montoliu on the past Friday ARRIGE kick-off meeting in Paris, and also contacted Sheila Jassanoff, who had presented a similar global proposal for genome editing governance in another article published in Nature last week.
The recent ARRIGE kick-off meeting in Paris had the pleasure to have Francisco Juan Martínez Mojica (Francis Mojica), microbiologist from the University of Alicante (Spain), delivering the first keynote lecture of the conference. In his very interesting talk, Francis Mojica reviewed the origins of the CRISPR systems in prokaryotes, as part of an ancient acquired immune defense system, and their recent conversion into powerful genome editing tools. He is convinced that we are just beginning to understand the unexpected complexity of bacterial immune systems. CRISPR could be just one of many, yet to be identified and described. There is a great future ahead in the field of Molecular Microbiology for discovering new CRISPR and CRISPR-like systems that could be transformed and adapted for the efficient and safe manipulation of genomes, including the human genome.