A Chinese group has become the first to inject a person with cells that contain genes edited using the revolutionary CRISPR–Cas9 technique.
It could trigger a biomedical race between China and the US.
On 28 October, a team in China delivered the modified cells into a patient with aggressive lung cancer as part of a clinical trial at the West China Hospital.
Earlier clinical trials using cells edited with a different technique have excited clinicians. The introduction of CRISPR, which is simpler and more efficient than other techniques, will probably accelerate the race to get gene-edited cells into the clinic across the world.
