False start
The deaf are not being edited yet
Polina Loseva, N+1
An article was published in the journal Nature that the Russian biologist Denis Rebrikov began working with the eggs of a deaf woman to develop a procedure for genetic editing of her unborn child. N+1 talked to the scientist and his patient and found out that the Nature message is not true – at the moment, the woman has not yet provided any eggs.
N+1 continues to follow the story of biologist Denis Rebrikov and his project on genetic modification of human embryos. The last time we wrote about him (in the material "In edit mode") he was on the verge of an experiment on the genetic correction of deafness. Rebrikov was negotiating with a patient who was considering joining his experiment. However, at that time she did not give informed consent to the procedure and postponed the decision to a later date, because she had to have an operation to install a cochlear implant – the usual hearing aid stopped helping her fully.
The other day, the journal Nature published fragments of correspondence with Rebrikov about the state of his experiments. The title of the article reads: "A Russian specialist in "CRISRPR-children" began editing genes in the egg of a deaf woman." "The researcher will soon publish the results of his experiments," Nature reports. The text also contains the biologist's words that the woman "who gave her eggs [to the experiment]" took a break during the cochlear implantation operation.
In conversation with N+1 Denis Rebrikov complained that the journalists of Nature, apparently, did not quite correctly interpret his words. "They clarified by e–mail whether there was movement [in the experiment]," the biologist said, "I replied that we were gradually checking the effectiveness and safety of the method." According to Rebrikov, his research group is not currently conducting any experiments on the eggs of deaf women. The scientist suggested that a misunderstanding could arise in the process of correspondence.
The patient Rebrikova herself stated in a conversation with N+1 that she did not provide any eggs, but only donated blood for DNA sequencing and, according to the girl, she does not have sequencing results yet. True, she has already successfully undergone cochlear implantation surgery, but she has not yet returned to the embryo editing experiment. "She is not interacting with us yet," Rebrikov confirmed the words of the patient.
The title of the Nature article caused outrage of the researcher for a reason: There are still no legal grounds in Russia to ban or allow his experiments. Nevertheless, Rebrikov has repeatedly stated that he does not want to circumvent the law. He told Nature journalists that he "will not move on without the approval of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation" and "will not transfer the edited embryo [into a woman's uterus] without the approval of the regulator."
Two weeks ago, the regulator spoke openly for the first time: the Ministry of Health published a press release in which it stated: "Today, the development of genome editing technologies is such that it is too early to talk about their clinical application."
However, Rebrikov's experiments continue – even if not yet on embryos. "I work on somatic (non–sexual - N+1) cells from deaf people, not this couple, but other people," he said. – [These are the cells of] completely deaf children who are undergoing implant surgery, and as part of this operation, we take a tiny biopsy in compliance with the informed consent procedure. On these cells, we check how [the editing system] works so as not to waste germ cells, because eggs are very valuable material." The scientist also confirmed that his team does conduct some tests on eggs, but they are obtained from healthy donors, and the purpose of these experiments is to assess the level of inappropriate gene editing.
Update
After this text was published, the journal Nature made edits to the original article. Now the title states that Denis Rebrikov has started editing experiments with healthy human eggs, but plans to modify the gene associated with deafness later.
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