Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    A GROUP of young doctors at a Shenzhen hospital made a major breakthrough in cancer research and their thesis detailing the research results has been published in a top science journal.

    Nature Methods, a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering new scientific techniques published by the Nature Publishing Group, devoted seven pages to the thesis in the Articles section of its September issue, which was released early yesterday Beijing Time.

    Titled “Directing cellular information flow via CRISPR signal conductors,” the thesis focuses on a new technology that can efficiently control CRISPR-Cas9, a gene-editing tool developed by a group of overseas scientists in 2014.

    Co-author of the thesis, Huang Weiren, a researcher with Shenzhen No. 2 People’s Hospital, compared CRISPR-Cas9 to a pair of targeted scissors to help reporters understand the new technology at a press conference yesterday.

    “A guide RNA shepherds the Cas9 enzyme to a specific stretch of DNA. Cas9 then cleaves the DNA to disable or repair a gene,” Huang said. “With CRISPR-Cas9, you can manipulate virtually any gene in any plant or animal, even create ‘designer babies.’ But there is a possibility that it may cut the DNA in a way that we don’t want it to. Researchers worry that once it’s applied to human beings, it may cause disasters if it’s not controlled.”

    To fix the major bug of the groundbreaking CRISPR-Cas9 in order to apply it to cancer treatment, Liu Yuchen, the first author of the thesis and a doctor at the urologic department of the Shenzhen hospital and his co-workers have been conducting research since not long after it was developed.

    In 2014, the Shenzhen hospital’s researchers published a thesis on applying CRISPR-Cas9 to bladder cancer research in Nature Communications, another major journal of the Nature Publishing Group.

    Their new technology can also “be applied to redirect oncogenic signal transduction by controlling simultaneous bidirectional gene transcriptions, thus enabling the reprogramming of the fate of cancer cells,” according to Liu, which in simpler words means transforming cancer cells into normal cells by establishing a signal sending bridge between them.

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    “We’ve been receiving calls from domestic and overseas reporters for interviews as well as phone calls from other researchers offering their congratulations,” said Huang. “Top Chinese researchers in the field told us they think it’s a major breakthrough, and we hope to apply it to clinical cancer diagnosis and treatment in the near future.”

    Nature Methods, which has an impact factor of 35.03, carries less than 150 thesis annually, with less than 2 percent coming from the Chinese mainland.

    “Unlike in the past, overseas researchers are feeling the pressure from their Chinese counterparts,” said Huang. “I can clearly sense that through my interactions with them.” Both Liu and Huang were born in the 1980s.

    The research is subsidized under the No. 973 Plan approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

    In the four years that CRISPR-Cas9 has been around, researchers have used it to fix genetic diseases in animals, combat viruses, sterilize mosquitoes and prepare pig organs for human transplant. CRISPR-Cas9’s huge potential includes the controversial notions of creating “designer babies” and eradicting entire species.