exclusive
CRISPR's earliest pioneers react to gene editing treatment
Illustration: STAT; Photos: AP, Getty
Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, now Nobelists, published their first paper announcing a new enzyme for editing DNA in Science in June 2012. It wasn't until January 2013 that the first paper showing the enzyme would work in cells, from Feng Zhang, was published, also in Science. A similar paper from George Church came out at the same time. No major media outlet covered the papers, but now, the progress that resulted is undeniable. Last week, the U.K. approved Casgevy, the first CRISPR-based treatment, for sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia, both painful and disabling blood disorders. U.S. clearance is expected in December.
With the dawn of the CRISPR medicines era, STAT's Matthew Herper caught up with the four CRISPR pioneers most associated with those pivotal papers. "This, in a way, for me, is kind of the ultimate gift," Doudna said over Zoom. "It's really a symbol of what's coming." Read more on what the treatment's pioneers predict is coming next.
health tech
A new digital pill could someday detect sleep apnea and opioid overdose
Here's an idea right out of Ms. Frizzle's playbook: Gathering health data remotely is a pain. What if there was a remote patient monitor small enough to swallow?
Celero Systems has created and tested such a digital pill in humans for the first time, successfully capturing heart and respiratory data in 10 patients with sleep apnea. The findings are a step toward one of Celero's goals, which is to simplify sleep condition diagnosis. "There was an opportunity to make a product that was analogous to an implantable defibrillator, in the sense that a defibrillator monitors for sudden cardiac death and delivers therapy," Celero Systems CEO Ben Pless said to STAT's Lizzy Lawrence. The company's guiding mission is to combat the opioid crisis by detecting respiratory distress in overdosing patients and releasing drugs to counteract the overdose — reducing the need for a third party to administer naloxone. Read more.
health care workers
Surgical gowns get a handy new update
Mayo Clinic surgeon Joseph Dearani loves thinking about the choreography of a surgery — the precise dance between surgeons, staff, technology, and the patient. During the pandemic, when operating room teams were cut down for safety, that dance got trickier. Clinicians might clip needed instruments to drapes or to their own gown — something scrub techs, who keep track of each instrument, do not appreciate, Dearani said. So he and his recently retired colleague Salim Walji had a simple idea that could help: pockets.
Dearani and Walji worked with Cardinal Health to create a surgical gown with two chest pockets and a small center holster to keep frequently used instruments while maintaining the ever-critical sterile field between a clinician's shoulders and waist.
"Many of my colleagues and friends came up to me and said, 'God, this is just such a common sense idea,'" said Dearani, who is Mayo Clinic's director of pediatric and adult congenital heart surgery. "It's amazing that we hadn't explored it years ago."
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