Chroniques génomiques - Thérapie génique germinale, le retour ?

Abstract

The recent development of a powerful and flexible genome editing technique (the CRISP-cas9 method) accelerates tremendously the production of animal models and will significantly enhance the perspectives of (somatic) gene therapy. However, it also raises a real possibility of germline modifications in humans, with therapeutic aims or for “improvement”: this raises thorny ethical questions that are no longer theoretical (as in the 1990s) but will have to be faced in the very near future.