Speaker: Gene Editing Will Become 'Major Revolution'
Published: Friday, December 14, 2018
Imagine for a moment that as a farmer, you could wave a magic wand and make your pigs resistant to PRRSv and other diseases. Or make your cattle more heat tolerant or mastitis-resistant. Or create wheat varieties that are fungus resistant, and corn that is more drought tolerant.
On the human side, you could reverse the mutations that cause blindness. Stop cancer cells from multiplying. Or engineer patients' own immune cells to treat leukemia and other cancers.
According to Indianapolis patent attorney Eric Williams, the technology to do these things and much, much more—through a process called gene editing—already exists. The powers that be are just trying to figure out how to regulate it.
"We're at the start of a major revolution for gene editing, and projections are that by the year 2025 this will be a $6 billion industry," said Williams, the keynote speaker at last week's Midwest Pork Conference in Danville, Ind. "Twenty years ago, GMO soybeans were a novelty. But now, 82 percent of the beans grown in the world are GMO, and they've become the industry standard. I believe the same thing will occur with gene-edited products."
Williams said that the most practical gene-editing platform today is called CRISPR/Cas9. He compared what CRISPR does to the genomes (DNA) of plants and animals to what Microsoft Word does to documents by cutting and pasting.
"If you've typed a document that has a word misspelled throughout, you can use the word processing program to select that word, supply the correct spelling, then hit a key that will delete all the occurrences of the misspelled word, and insert the correct spelling throughout the document," he said. "That's very similar to what CRISPR does to DNA. It basically corrects the genome where it needs corrected."
Williams cited sickle-cell anemia as an example of CRISPR's capabilities. An inherited disease, sickle-cell anemia causes crippling pain, organ failure and premature death, all because of a single, misspelled letter of DNA. By using CRISPR to swap out that one faulty piece of DNA, the disease can be eliminated. Some scientists believe that diseases like muscular dystrophy could also be eliminated, as has already been demonstrated in mice.
Williams described the CRISPR technology as "exciting and powerful," and that is inexpensive and easy to use. He said that one of its merits is the ability to drastically speed up the breeding process for improving plants. As an example, he showed a picture of a natural, wild tomato, the ancestor of today's version. The former was a very tiny and primitive version of what we have today, that was improved by hundreds of years of breeding enhancements. But with the use of CRISPR technology, scientists can now take a wild tomato to a contemporary variety in just one generation of the plant's life cycle.
In the case of livestock production, Williams said that potential benefits could make life easier for both animals and humans. Examples would include PRRSv-resistant pigs, and pigs that are resistant to African swine fever. Other examples could include things like hornless cattle, castration-free swine, and livestock that are more heat tolerant.
Regarding implications for human health, potential benefits could include using animal models to develop more precise biomarkers. This could loom large for both preventive and treatment medicine. It could also help develop new regenerative products, like the production of human cells, tissues and organs. And it could also address issues with blood products, diabetes, liver disease and tissue grafts.
But before CRISPR can really begin to get traction for commercialization, Williams said that there are two main challenges. The first of these is public perception, in which scientists are hoping to avoid some of the pitfalls that have plagued genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). While GMOs have had non-native DNA spliced into the receptor's DNA, Williams said that gene-edited products differed in that the latter utilizes native DNA instead.
"That's where a lot of people get stuck when it comes to GMOs," he said. "They're afraid of something that seems 'unnatural' to them, and what they perceive as side effects that might occur, which has led to GMO foods being demonized as 'Frankenfood.' One big advantage of many gene-edited products is that there is no non-native DNA introduced into the product, which makes it indistinguishable from other, similar, non-gene-edited products. This should hopefully help us change the Frankenfood conversation."
Williams also said that another advantage of gene-edited animals would be that it's good for the welfare of animals and the people who handle them. For example, PRRSv pigs would be healthier, and hornless cattle easier on each other and the people who handle them.
The other major hurdle facing gene-edited technology is regulatory. Williams said that gene-editing technology involving humans or animals would be regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, while the technology involving crops would be regulated by USDA.
When it comes to the use of gene-editing technology related to humans, Williams said it would be a very lengthy process before the regulatory process will be determined. Despite the many potential benefits, there are also a multitude of ethical considerations to be worked through. Williams voiced his cautious optimism that for animals, the regulatory bar would be considerably lower.
In that vein, he was encouraged by an announcement by USDA's March 2018 announcement, which declared that it would not regulate the use of genetically-altered plants, as long as they could have been developed through traditional breeding methods, given more time.
"I think that USDA's decision not to regulate genetically-altered plants in such a manner will help to speed up its commercialization," he said. "It also gives me hope for an eventual lower level of regulation with animals."
Williams summarized by saying that he believed that gene-edited ag products had some real advantages compared to GMOs in terms of public perception. But he added that if that possibility is to be realized, farmers need to be able to have informed conversations with their neighbors about the merits of gene editing, a theme that was echoed by Indiana Pork executive director Josh Trenary.
"This technology is going to be indispensable to every pork farmer, and we don't want to take it off the table just because the public doesn't understand it," said Trenary. "If we, as an industry, do our homework now, we have the opportunity to have those conversations before the technology becomes prevalent."
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