{"id":24593,"date":"2025-10-31T21:31:41","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/24593\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T21:31:41","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:31:41","slug":"a-new-startup-wants-to-edit-human-embryos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/24593\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Startup Wants to Edit Human Embryos"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui<\/a> shocked the world when he revealed that he had created the first gene-edited babies. Using Crispr<\/a>, he tweaked the genes of three human embryos in an attempt to make them immune to HIV<\/a> and used the embryos to start pregnancies.<\/p>\n

The backlash against He was immediate. Scientists said the technology was too new to be used for human reproduction and that the DNA change amounted to genetic enhancement. The Chinese government charged him with \u201cillegal medical practices,\u201d and he served a three-year prison sentence.<\/p>\n

Now, a New York\u2013based startup called Manhattan Genomics is reviving the debate around gene-edited babies. Its stated goal is to end genetic disease and alleviate human suffering by fixing harmful mutations at the embryo stage. The company has announced a group of \u201cscientific contributors\u201d that includes a prominent in vitro fertilization doctor, a data scientist who worked for de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences<\/a>, and two reproductive biologists from a major primate research center. A scientist who pioneered a technique to make embryos using DNA from three people is also involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to take on challenges when I see them,\u201d says cofounder Cathy Tie, a former Thiel fellow<\/a> who left college at 18 to start her first company, Ranomics, a genomics screening service. As Tie sees it, that challenge is to make the idea of human embryo editing more acceptable in society.<\/p>\n

The idea of editing human embryos is tantalizing, because any changes made to the reproductive cells are heritable. Snip out a disease-causing mutation in an embryo and it would be deleted from future generations as well. But gene-editing technology also has the potential to cause unintended \u201coff-target\u201d effects. Edit the wrong gene by mistake and it could give rise to cancer, for instance. Those mistakes would also be passed down to any future children.<\/p>\n

While newer forms of gene editing are more precise, there are still ethical issues to contend with. The prospect of being able to manipulate the DNA of a human embryo has raised fears of a new kind of eugenics, where parents with the means to do so could make \u201cdesigner babies\u201d with traits that they select.<\/p>\n

Tie says the goal of Manhattan Genomics\u2014originally called the Manhattan Project when the company first launched in August\u2014is disease correction, not enhancement. Unlike the original Manhattan Project<\/a>, a secretive US government program during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons, Tie says her venture will operate openly and transparently. \u201cWe\u2019re revolutionizing medicine, and this technology is definitely very powerful. That\u2019s what I think is the commonality here with manipulating the nucleus of the atom and manipulating the nucleus of the cell,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui shocked the world when he revealed that he had created the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[15854,4207,15856,15855,75,84,83,9,24,63,6781],"class_list":{"0":"post-24593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-biotech","9":"tag-children","10":"tag-gene-editing","11":"tag-genetics","12":"tag-manhattan","13":"tag-manhattan-headlines","14":"tag-manhattan-news","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-city","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}