CRISPR is already dramatically expanding the realm of what is possible in the field of genetic engineering.Indeed, on June 21, 2016, the U.S. government announced that it had approved the first human trials using CRISPR, in this case to strengthen the cancer-fighting properties of the immune systems of patients suffering from melanoma and other deadly cancers.“CRISPR’s power and versatility have opened up new and wide-ranging possibilities across biology and medicine,” says Jennifer Doudna, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley and a co-inventor of CRISPR.According to Doudna and others, CRISPR could provide new treatments or even cures to some of today’s most feared diseases – not only cancer, but Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and others.CRISPR’s power and versatility has opened up new and wide-ranging possibilities across biology and medicine.Jennifer Doudna, UC Berkeley

An even more intriguing possibility involves making genetic changes at the embryonic stage, also known as germline editing.