China vs. the West: Who Will Lead the Way in Embryo Editing Research?
The U.S. metaphorically boxing with China over biomedical research.
Junjiu Huang and his team performed a miracle. A few miracles, actually. The researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China used the precise new DNA editing tool called CRISPR-CAS9 to edit a human embryo, replacing a single base. In doing so, they edited out beta-thalassemia, a blood disorder that reduces the production of hemoglobin, which can result in pale skin, fatigue, higher risk of blood clots, and other symptoms.
The race is on, and it's one everyone is going to try to win.
Huang's group, which did not respond to an email requesting comment for this story, injected 86 embryos and observed them for 48 hours. After that period -- a time long enough for CRISPR to split the DNA, other molecules to replace the base, and the embryos to grow to eight cells -- they tested 54 of the 71 that survived. Of those, only a few had the replacement base, according to a report of the study published in Protein & Cell. The experiment stopped there as the embryos, which had been acquired from local fertility clinics, were non-viable and not implanted.
But procreation was not the point. Far from it, in fact. The point was to demonstrate that it could be done, that in some far off (or not so far off) future, doctors could use CRISPR to eliminate diseases like Tay-Sachs, Huntington's, and cystic fibrosis that are caused by genetic mutations. Going a step further, perhaps they could eventually even tailor embryos that will develop into adults with specific traits like height and IQ.
Experts agree that we are far from that point, years if not decades away from leveraging CRISPR to cure diseases and decades if not centuries from being able to build designer babies. In that frame, Huang's achievement is just a small step, a blip on the timeline of human achievement. But seen in another light, it's yet another sign that we need to start talking about DNA modification now, establishing protocols, procedures, and plans that guide the subject before we get so far down the road that momentum is impossible to stop.
"The Chinese generally don't have the religious objections to embryo research that have held back research in the West."
It's essential to do so now because the idea of DNA modification -- a realization that humanity can control its evolution -- is compelling and attractive. Imagine a world where doctors and scientists could get rid of disease before it begins or ensure a baby would arrive with an Einstein-level IQ. That's intriguing, and also terrifying. What are the rules? How do we know when to stop? What guides the process? And how can we prevent mistakes or unwanted mutations? To borrow from another famous quotation, with great power comes great responsibility.
These aren't questions for Huang and the Chinese scientific community alone. A team from Oregon recently edited viable human embryos, eliminating a mutation that can lead to heart failure while preventing any unintended consequences. Just as importantly, every embryo they edited produced the intended genetic changes, a vital step since a partial success rate, known as mosaicism, could have devastating consequences to a future child.
In London at the Francis Crick Institute, researcher Kathy Niakan used CRISPR-CAS9 to "turn off" a gene that produces the protein OCT4. Without the protein, the fertilized egg could not produce a blastocyst, which is a key structure in early mammalian development that gives rise to an embryo and placenta. The recent study wasn't designed to go further, but the use of CRISPR was important. "One way to find out what a gene does in the developing embryo is to see what happens when it isn't working," said Dr. Niakan, who was the first scientist in the world to be granted regulatory approval to edit the genes of a human embryo for research. "Now that we have demonstrated an efficient way of doing this, we hope that other scientists will use it to find out the roles of other genes. If we knew the key genes that embryos need to develop successfully, we could improve IVF treatments and understand some causes of pregnancy failure. It may take many years to achieve such an understanding. Our study is just the first step."
The point is, CRISPR is here and it's not going anywhere. Scientists will continue to use it to learn about how humans develop. Yet different rules regarding CRISPR and embryo research in countries around the world will impact who gets there first. "I've heard the U.S.-China gene editing research parallel paths as Sputnik 2.0," said Kevin Doxzen, Science Communications Specialist at the University of California, Berkeley's Innovative Genomics Institute. The race is on, and it's one everyone is going to try to win.
Based on number of researchers and ease of regulations, the Chinese are the favorites to advance the science the furthest, the fastest.
Based on number of researchers and ease of regulations, the Chinese are the favorites to advance the science the furthest, the fastest. "The Chinese generally don't have the religious (predominantly Christian) or moral objections to embryo research that have held back research in the West," said Dr. Julian Savulescu, the Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics and Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease at the University of Oxford. "This kind of research should be done, with the right sort of ethical oversight. The concern over China leading the way is that institutional oversight mechanisms are probably not as developed as in the West but so far, there is no evidence of breaches in standards of research ethics around the published research."
Or, put another way by bioethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan, founding director of NYU Langone Health's Division of Medical Ethics: "The Chinese, because they don't care and don't have moral reservations about embryo work, are doing what they want." This lack of aversion to working with embryos manifests itself in a couple of ways. The absence of moral qualms is one. Funding is another. Huang's study, and others like it, receive funding from the government. His, for example, was supported by two grants from the National Basic Research Program and three from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
The U.S., on the other hand, bans any federal funding for research using human embryos. A law passed in 1996 states that federal dollars can't be used for: "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses." This restriction can shift incentives as many private institutions or commercial enterprises may have financial motivations or other goals beyond furthering basic research for the sake of general knowledge.
Embryo gene modification recently performed in the U.K. would merit 15 years in prison in Australia.
The embryo research ban is even more strict elsewhere. The Oviedo Convention, enacted in 1997, effectively prohibits germline engineering in members of the European Union. "In Italy, you can't destroy an embryo for any reason," said Alessandro Bertero, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington's Department of Pathology who used to study in Italy. "It's illegal, and you'll go to jail." Later, Bertero was one of the researchers who worked with Dr. Niakan in London, an investigation that was allowed by the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. (In Australia, Niakan and her colleagues would face 15 years in jail due to the 2002 Prohibition of Human Cloning Act, which prohibits altering the genomes of embryonic cells.)
Despite the moral and legal reservations in the Western world, every person I spoke with for this story believed that better, more advanced studies and learning is happening in the U.S. and Europe. "The best studies in my opinion are from the labs in California and Oregon," Bertero said. "The quality of the work [in the Chinese study] – not being critical, but to be scientifically critical -- was just quick and dirty. It was, 'Let's just show that we have done it and get it out.' That doesn't mean that the quality of the work was good."
"If the Chinese or someone else starts beating our brains out, we're not going to want to stand by idly and not do these things."
How long that remains the case, however, is an open question. A significant number of groups in China are working on germline editing in human embryos. The concern is that the Chinese will emerge as a leader sooner rather than later because they can do research with embryos more easily than their Western counterparts.
For Caplan, the NYU professor, the embryo ban in the U.S. isn't based on science; it's rooted in something else. "It's 96 percent political," he said, laughing. "It has basically ground to a halt because no one wants to see repercussions take place if federal funding is involved. The NIH isn't involved. And they won't be."
What, in his mind, would get Americans to start realizing the benefits that embryo research would provide? "The perception that other countries were moving quickly to get the advantages of CRISPR and other gene modification techniques, finding more industrial and more medical purposes," he said. "If the Chinese or someone else starts beating our brains out, we're not going to want to stand by idly and not do these things."
Doing so would involve difficult conversations about the role of embryos in research. But these are philosophical questions that need to be approached at some point. From a U.S. perspective, doing so sooner while the American scientists still hold the technological and informational edge, is vital. Ignoring the issue doesn't make it go away.
Experts think a few changes should be made. The ban on federal funding should be lifted. Scientists and regulators should push for things like allowing federal funds to be used for the creation of new embryos for research purposes and the use of spare IVF embryos for research when the embryo would not be implanted into a woman. (Privately funded scientists can proceed in states that encourage embryonic stem cell research, like New York, New Jersey, and California, but not in restrictive ones like Louisiana and South Dakota, which prohibit creating or destroying embryos for research.) Policymakers could ban reproductive gene editing for now but look at it again after a certain period. A highly anticipated report issued earlier this year from an international guidance committee left the door open to eventual clinical trials with edited embryos. As of now, however, Congress will not allow the Food and Drug Administration to consider such trials. This is the future and it's the scientific community's responsibility to develop the ethical framework now.
"The US and Europe have the technological history and capacity to lead this research and should do so, ethically. We ought to be revising our laws and ethical guidelines to facilitate this kind of research," Professor Savulescu said. "But the challenge is to think constructively and ethically about this new technology, and to be leaders, not followers."
The upcoming vaccine is changing the way we look at treating one of the country’s deadliest cancers.
Last week, researchers at the University of Oxford announced that they have received funding to create a brand new way of preventing ovarian cancer: A vaccine. The vaccine, known as OvarianVax, will teach the immune system to recognize and destroy mutated cells—one of the earliest indicators of ovarian cancer.
Understanding Ovarian Cancer
Despite advancements in medical research and treatment protocols over the last few decades, ovarian cancer still poses a significant threat to women’s health. In the United States alone, more than 12,0000 women die of ovarian cancer each year, and only about half of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer survive five or more years past diagnosis. Unlike cervical cancer, there is no routine screening for ovarian cancer, so it often goes undetected until it has reached advanced stages. Additionally, the primary symptoms of ovarian cancer—frequent urination, bloating, loss of appetite, and abdominal pain—can often be mistaken for other non-cancerous conditions, delaying treatment.
An American woman has roughly a one percent chance of developing ovarian cancer throughout her lifetime. However, these odds increase significantly if she has inherited mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. Women who carry these mutations face a 46% lifetime risk for ovarian and breast cancers.
An Unlikely Solution
To address this escalating health concern, the organization Cancer Research UK has invested £600,000 over the next three years in research aimed at creating a vaccine, which would destroy cancerous cells before they have a chance to develop any further.
Researchers at the University of Oxford are at the forefront of this initiative. With funding from Cancer Research UK, scientists will use tissue samples from the ovaries and fallopian tubes of patients currently battling ovarian cancer. Using these samples, University of Oxford scientists will create a vaccine to recognize certain proteins on the surface of ovarian cancer cells known as tumor-associated antigens. The vaccine will then train that person’s immune system to recognize the cancer markers and destroy them.
The next step
Once developed, the vaccine will first be tested in patients with the disease, to see if their ovarian tumors will shrink or disappear. Then, the vaccine will be tested in women with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations as well as women in the general population without genetic mutations, to see whether the vaccine can prevent the cancer altogether.
While the vaccine still has “a long way to go,” according to Professor Ahmed Ahmed, Director of Oxford University’s ovarian cancer cell laboratory, he is “optimistic” about the results.
“We need better strategies to prevent ovarian cancer,” said Ahmed in a press release from the University of Oxford. “Currently, women with BRCA1/2 mutations are offered surgery which prevents cancer but robs them of the chance to have children afterward.
Teaching the immune system to recognize the very early signs of cancer is a tough challenge. But we now have highly sophisticated tools which give us real insights into how the immune system recognizes ovarian cancer. OvarianVax could offer the solution.”
How sharing, hearing, and remembering positive stories can help shape our brains for the better
Across cultures and through millennia, human beings have always told stories. Whether it’s a group of boy scouts around a campfire sharing ghost stories or the paleolithic Cro-Magnons etching pictures of bison on cave walls, researchers believe that storytelling has been universal to human beings since the development of language.
But storytelling was more than just a way for our ancestors to pass the time. Researchers believe that storytelling served an important evolutionary purpose, helping humans learn empathy, share important information (such as where predators were or what berries were safe to eat), as well as strengthen social bonds. Quite literally, storytelling has made it possible for the human race to survive.
Today, neuroscientists are discovering that storytelling is just as important now as it was millions of years ago. Particularly in sharing positive stories, humans can more easily form relational bonds, develop a more flexible perspective, and actually grow new brain circuitry that helps us survive. Here’s how.
How sharing stories positively impacts the brain
When human beings share stories, it increases the levels of certain neurochemicals in the brain, neuroscientists have found. In a 2021 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Swedish researchers found that simply hearing a story could make hospitalized children feel better, compared to other hospitalized children who played a riddle game for the same amount of time. In their research, children in the intensive care unit who heard stories for just 30 minutes had higher levels of oxytocin, a hormone that promotes positive feelings and is linked to relaxation, trust, social connectedness, and overall psychological stability. Furthermore, the same children showed lower levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress. Afterward, the group of children who heard stories tended to describe their hospital experiences more positively, and even reported lower levels of pain.
Annie Brewster, MD, knows the positive effect of storytelling from personal experience. An assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the author of The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma, and Loss, Brewster started sharing her personal experience with chronic illness after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2001. In doing so, Brewster says it has enabled her to accept her diagnosis and integrate it into her identity. Brewster believes so much in the power of hearing and sharing stories that in 2013 she founded Health Story Collaborative, a forum for others to share their mental and physical health challenges.“I wanted to hear stories of people who had found ways to move forward in positive ways, in spite of health challenges,” Brewster said. In doing so, Brewster believes people with chronic conditions can “move closer to self-acceptance and self-love.”
While hearing and sharing positive stories has been shown to increase oxytocin and other “feel good” chemicals, simply remembering a positive story has an effect on our brains as well. Mark Hoelterhoff, PhD, a lecturer in clinical psychology at the University of Edinburgh, recalling and “savoring” a positive story, thought, or feedback “begins to create new brain circuitry—a new neural network that’s geared toward looking for the positive,” he says. Over time, other research shows, savoring positive stories or thoughts can literally change the shape of your brain, hard-wiring someone to see things in a more positive light.How stories can change your behavior
In 2009, Paul Zak, PhD, a neuroscientist and professor at Claremont Graduate University, set out to measure how storytelling can actually change human behavior for the better. In his study, Zak wanted to measure the behavioral effects of oxytocin, and did this by showing test subjects two short video clips designed to elicit an emotional response.
In the first video they showed the study participants, a father spoke to the camera about his two-year-old son, Ben, who had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. The father told the audience that he struggled to connect with and enjoy Ben, as Ben had only a few months left to live. In the end, the father finds the strength to stay emotionally connected to his son until he dies.
The second video clip, however, was much less emotional. In that clip, the same father and son are shown spending the day at the zoo. Ben is only suggested to have cancer (he is bald from chemotherapy and referred to as a ‘miracle’, but the cancer isn’t mentioned directly). The second story lacked the dramatic narrative arc of the first video.
Zak’s team took blood before and after the participants watched one of the two videos and found that the first story increased the viewers’ cortisol and oxytocin, suggesting that they felt distress over the boy’s diagnosis and empathy toward the boy and his father. The second narrative, however, didn’t increase oxytocin or cortisol at all.
But Zak took the experiment a step further. After the movie clips, his team gave the study participants a chance to share money with a stranger in the lab. The participants who had an increase in cortisol and oxytocin were more likely to donate money generously. The participants who had increased cortisol and oxytocin were also more likely to donate money to a charity that works with children who are ill. Zak also found that the amount of oxytocin that was released was correlated with how much money people felt comfortable giving—in other words, the more oxytocin that was released, the more generous they felt, and the more money they donated.
How storytelling strengthens our bond with others
Sharing, hearing, and remembering stories can be a powerful tool for social change–not only in the way it changes our brain and our behavior, but also because it can positively affect our relationships with other people
Emotional stimulation from telling stories, writes Zak, is the foundation for empathy, and empathy strengthens our relationships with other people. “By knowing someone’s story—where they come from, what they do, and who you might know in common—relationships with strangers are formed.”
But why are these relationships important for humanity? Because human beings can use storytelling to build empathy and form relationships, it enables them to “engage in the kinds of large-scale cooperation that builds massive bridges and sends humans into space,” says Zak.
Storytelling, Zak found, and the oxytocin release that follows, also makes people more sensitive to social cues. This sensitivity not only motivates us to form relationships, but also to engage with other people and offer help, particularly if the other person seems to need help.
But as Zak found in his experiments, the type of storytelling matters when it comes to affecting relationships. Where Zak found that storytelling with a dramatic arc helps release oxytocin and cortisol, enabling people to feel more empathic and generous, other researchers have found that sharing happy stories allows for greater closeness between individuals and speakers. A group of Chinese researchers found that, compared to emotionally-neutral stories, happy stories were more “emotionally contagious.” Test subjects who heard happy stories had greater activation in certain areas of their brains, experienced more significant, positive changes in their mood, and felt a greater sense of closeness between themselves and the speaker.
“This finding suggests that when individuals are happy, they become less self-focused and then feel more intimate with others,” the authors of the study wrote. “Therefore, sharing happiness could strengthen interpersonal bonding.” The researchers went on to say that this could lead to developing better social networks, receiving more social support, and leading more successful social lives.
Since the start of the COVID pandemic, social isolation, loneliness, and resulting mental health issues have only gotten worse. In light of this, it’s safe to say that hearing, sharing, and remembering stories isn’t just something we can do for entertainment. Storytelling has always been central to the human experience, and now more than ever it’s become something crucial for our survival.
Want to know how you can reap the benefits of hearing happy stories? Keep an eye out for Upworthy’s first book, GOOD PEOPLE: Stories from the Best of Humanity, published by National Geographic/Disney, available on September 3, 2024. GOOD PEOPLE is a much-needed trove of life-affirming stories told straight from the heart. Handpicked from Upworthy’s community, these 101 stories speak to the breadth, depth, and beauty of the human experience, reminding us we have a lot more in common than we realize.