Advancing Ethical Stem Cell Research with CRISPR

Purpose of Review The purpose of this review is to highlight opportunities to incorporate Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) into stem cell research in ways that may alleviate long-standing ethical conflicts in biomedical research. Recent Findings CRISPR has been incorporated into stem cell research that aims to understand developmental biology, model disease, test drugs, and develop therapies. In all of these domains, using CRISPR may alleviate, exacerbate, or create ethical conflicts. This review highlights ways in which CRISPR may facilitate more ethical research. Summary Genetically editing stem cells using CRISPR may lead to more ethical research by reducing reliance on animals used in disease modeling and drug screening research and reducing uncertainty ahead of first-in-human uses of stem cell therapies.