Thérapie génique germinale, le retour ?

Chroniques génomiques

The return of germline gene therapy

¹ UMR 7268 ADÉS, Aix-Marseille, Université/EFS/CNRS, Espace éthique méditerranéen, hospital d’adultes la Timone, 264, rue Saint-Pierre, 13385 Marseille Cedex 05, France
² CoReBio PACA, case 901, parc scientifique de Luminy, 13288 Marseille Cedex 09, France

^* bertrand.jordan@univ-amu.fr ; brjordan@orange.fr

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.