Origin Genomics opens its lab to journalists, showing gene-editing tests on donated human embryos carrying mutations for hereditary cancer, cystic fibrosis, and Huntington's disease
Origin Genomics opens its lab to journalists, showing gene-editing tests on donated human embryos carrying mutations for hereditary cancer, cystic fibrosis, and Huntington's disease
On September 29, NPR published an inside look at the New York laboratory of Origin Genomics. The same day, founder Katie Tai published an article in Trends in Genetics calling for the lifting of the 2015 ban that prevents the FDA from reviewing applications for the transfer of edited embryos for pregnancy.
Nicole and Asaf Ezra donated three embryos to Origin carrying a mutation that causes familial adenomatous polyposis. The condition led to the removal of most of Nicole's colon at 13, and she lives with the fear of developing colorectal cancer, the disease that struck her grandfather, mother, and other relatives. After several IVF cycles, the couple had only one healthy embryo, and the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. "We just don't want to pass cancer on to our kids. Who would, right?" Asaf says.
In June, Origin announced only that it had received ethics-board approval, without disclosing the diagnosis, the type of editor, or safety data. Tai opens a liquid-nitrogen cryostorage unit: inside four vials sit up to ten embryos carrying mutations that cause Huntington's disease, cystic fibrosis, hereditary forms of cancer, and Tay-Sachs disease. Origin's scientists derive stem cells from these embryos and test AI-designed gene editors on them, searching for one that can safely correct the mutation before a child is born. "This changes the entire paradigm of medicine as we know it," Tai says.
Tai writes that out of more than 7,000 hereditary diseases, the FDA has approved treatments for 5%, and that current IVF medicine merely selects healthy embryos rather than correcting the mutation. "The obligation of medicine is not only to do no harm but to prevent avoidable suffering where an effective intervention exists," she writes.
The first generation of CRISPR embryo editing (2015 to 2020) often cut both DNA strands, causing mosaicism: the edit reached only some cells of the embryo, not all. Precise single-letter DNA correction avoids this cut entirely. Dieter Egli's team at Columbia University found no insertions or deletions in the PCSK9 gene of human embryos, yet the final Nature paper still identified rare chromosomal breaks and mosaic edits as obstacles to clinical use.
Biologist Robin Lovell-Badge of the Francis Crick Institute: "This gives people false hope. I am concerned that they are moving too fast and could make a mistake that sets the whole field back." Katie Hasson of the Center for Genetics and Society: "Some Silicon Valley investors are openly talking about their vision of the future, a vision of mass-producing genetically engineered humans, and that is terrifying." Geneticist Fyodor Urnov of the University of California, Berkeley: "I don't think they are being honest with us about why they are really doing this. What they are actually doing is embryo enhancement, which ultimately means the enhancement of future children." Bioethics legal scholar R. Alta Charo: "I am very concerned about gene-editing tourism," the risk that a ban will push the practice to countries with weak regulation.
In 2025, Tai was in a relationship with He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who in 2018 became the first person to create children with edited genomes and served three years in prison for it. NPR cites this connection as a reason for the heightened scrutiny of Origin. Tai says He has no involvement with the company.
Conventional treatment acts on one person. Heritable gene editing acts on that person's entire line of descendants, and that is precisely what Congress will have to permit or prohibit when Tai brings her future safety data before it.