Looks like meat is back on the menu, boys!

Seriously, though, this is really cool. But maybe some biologist can fill me in, what are the side-effects of this? Would it also reduce the useful stores of cholesterol? Or are we just fixing a mutation that causes heart problems?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In a small initial test in people, researchers have shown that a single infusion of a novel gene-editing treatment can reduce cholesterol, the fatty substance that clogs and hardens arteries over time.

This places a very heavy treatment burden on patients, providers, and the health care system,” said Andrew Bellinger, chief scientific officer of Verve Therapeutics, at a news conference over the weekend.

In a study published in the journal Circulation earlier this year, researchers from the company showed that the approach lowered bad cholesterol 49 to 69 percent in monkeys, depending on the dosage they received.

While the participants already had severe coronary artery disease, and some had previously experienced a heart attack, the company aims to eventually treat younger patients in order to prevent these outcomes.

Sanjay Rajagopalan, director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, calls the results a “very exciting” proof of concept.

But Rajagopalan, who wasn’t involved in the Verve study, says the main concern about any Crispr-based approach is the potential for off-target effects, in which unwanted cells or genes would unintentionally be edited.

The original article contains 730 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

Heart disease is a major killer, this is excellent news! If you are effected by heart disease or know somebody who has been (or if you’re just enthusiastic about medicine), consider donating some of your computer’s idle time to DENIS@Home. You can set it to only run when your computer is idle, and it helps researchers who are working to refine electrical models of the heart. Fair warning: They don’t always have workunits available, I encourage you to check out the many other [email protected] projects if you are interested. World Community Grid is another great health one, as is SiDock.