Biotech Barbie, the rogue Chinese biophysicist and the road to designer babies

AS TECH TITANS BACK GENE-EDITING EMBRYOS, CLAUDIA COCKERELL ASKS: IS IT ABOUT STOPPING DISEASE OR SOMETHING DARKER?

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The Manhattan Project was the name given to the top-secret programme to develop the first ever nuclear weapons during the Second World War. It's also the nickname Cathy Tie uses for her biotech startup, Manhattan Genomics, which is working towards creating gene-edited babies. A jarring choice, perhaps, but Tie believes the technology is just as, if not more important. "Also, I just love Manhattan," she says. Tie clearly understands the power of a catchy label — she is often referred to in the press as "Biotech Barbie", a name she came up with herself.

The Manhattan Project 2.0 makes a bold claim: “We're building a future where no child inherits preventable disease.” It promises to prevent “thousands of diseases”, including sickle cell anaemia, cystic fibrosis and Huntington's disease. All three are common monogenic diseases, meaning they are caused by a mutation in a single gene and can be passed down from parent to child.

Biotech startups such as Manhattan Genomics have a proposition: to edit that single gene in a human embryo, thus eliminating the disease for that person and any future offspring.

Tech bros in Silicon Valley are paying attention. OpenAI founder Sam Altman and his husband Oliver Mulherin are among the early investors in Preventive, another startup which wants to establish whether the latest gene-editing technology can safely be used to “correct devastating genetic conditions for future children”. Preventive was founded by Lucas Harrington, who gained his PhD in the lab of biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who won the Nobel Prize in 2020 for her pioneering discovery of the gene-editing tool Crispr.