Chinese scientists reach milestone on road to world’s first autism jab

I mean the same approach would work the other way too

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Do you have the same opinion for someone with a level 3 on the ASD? They will require constant care just to function, and will decrease the material conditions of anyone who takes care of them.

I mean, like lots of scientific news stories, this is a bit... thin. "We solved it in mice!" is a headline we get for virtually every ailment imaginable and rarely results in a human-ready treatment in the immediate future.

Past that, I don't think there's anything you can do to "eliminate neurodivergence" shy of intensive eugenics. There are definitely more sever instances of autistic symptoms and behaviors that undermine quality of life - sever speech impediments, pronounced OCD, epilepsy - that I don't think you can just condone in the name of diversity. If these symptoms can be treated, you're in a position to preserve neurodivergence by mitigating their worst manifestations rather than eliminating it.

But gene editing is a dicey business for a whole host of reasons. This has all the hallmarks of a Trolley Problem dilemma, as there's going to be a real human cost to testing and mainstreaming a treatment that as the potential to make radical changes to the human genome. But it also has the potential to benefit an enormous number of people suffering from a debilitating condition.

So much of the ethics will be bound up in the execution. When and how the treatment is administered, how the various conditions are diagnosed, whether we treat autistic tendency as a real quality-of-life affair or a purely cosmetic condition, whether it is something made generally available or paywalled behind for-profit bureaucracy...

But the idea that we're just going to eliminate a general form of neurodivergence with a simple jab... That's more fantasy than reality.

ASD jab: Chinese scientists reach milestone in revolutionary gene therapy for autism

Chinese scientists have reached a significant milestone in creating the first injection that can undo the signs of autism through genetic base editing within the brain.

The treatment, developed by researchers in Shanghai, showed positive results when tested on mice.

The team created a genome editing system, which successfully modified the DNA of mice that had been given a mutation found in some patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Mice given the injection containing the editing system registered a decrease in ASD-associated behaviour.

In a paper on their research, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience on November 27, the scientists said the potential treatment method could not just be used for patients with ASD, but also other genetic neurodevelopmental disorders.

ASD affects around 1 per cent of the global population. One in every 36 children in the United States is diagnosed with the disorder, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The disorder can affect a person’s ability to interact and communicate, as well as cause repetitive behaviours and intense interests.

To study the impact of genomic editing for the treatment of ASD, the researchers created mice with mutations in the MEF2C gene, which they said was “strongly associated” with the disorder.

Mutations in this gene were thought to cause developmental deficits, speech problems, repetitive behaviours and epilepsy, the paper said.

The male mice given the mutation were found to have lower levels of the MEF2C protein in the brain, and had symptoms that mimicked ASD-like hyperactivity, problems with social interaction and repetitive behaviour.

Earlier this month, Britain approved the world’s first CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing therapy for patients with blood conditions such as sickle cell disease.

CRISPR-based systems perform gene editing by cutting the DNA double strand in half, which is repaired by cells once editing is complete. This process can lead to unintended mutations.

To limit unintended mutations, the researchers used a single-base editing system – which they called AeCBE – that is able to work on individual DNA base pairs without creating any cuts.

Li Dali, a professor of Life Sciences at East China Normal University, who is not an author on the paper, said this was the first effective treatment of mice with ASD-related mutations using base editing in the brain, according to Shenzhen-based autism media platform Dami & Xiaomi.

To deliver the system into the brain, it needs to pass through the blood-brain barrier, which is a group of cells that tightly regulate the entry of molecules into the brain.

Researchers overcame this barrier by packaging their editing system on to an adeno-associated virus vector – capable of crossing over into the brain.

The combined editing system and virus vector was administered to mutant mice through a single injection into a tail vein. A few weeks later, the mice were examined.

“The treatment successfully restored MEF2C protein levels in several brain regions and reversed the behavioural abnormalities in MEF2C-mutant mice,” the paper said.

Through examining brain cells of the mice, the team found that the editors were able to perform repairs across the brain at an accuracy rate of 20 per cent, which was enough to raise levels of the MEF2C protein.

The samples taken were a mixture of neurons along with other cells, so the team said that the editing rate of the neurons alone could be higher, as base editing happens preferentially in these cells.

Researcher Chen Jin and his student Zhu Junjie at ShanghaiTech University, who are not authors on the paper, said that “although cases of ASD are extremely complex” this study provides guidance in using base editing to treat neurodevelopmental disorders, according to Dami & Xiaomi.

Expansion of the technology and lower costs would make treatment using base editing more prevalent, the team added.

“Individualised gene editing therapy could become feasible and affordable for patients in the near future,” the paper said.

ASD is a complex disorder, and hundreds of mutations have been found to be related to it, said Zou Xiaobing, chief physician in child development behaviour at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou’s Sun Yat-sen University, according to Dami & Xiaomi.

For some patients, the disorder may not be caused by a single nucleotide variation like it was for the mice in the study, but rather more complex mutations that would be difficult to edit.

“Even if an effective gene therapy method is found in a specific single nucleotide variation, it is at least a very valuable thing for people with autism caused by this gene,” said Zou, who is not an author on the Nature Neuroscience paper.

“Continuing scientific, targeted and personalised intervention and training based on the child’s specific situation is still the main way to deal with autism.”

“This work suggests that in vivo base editing might be a feasible approach for intervening in genetic brain disorders in humans,” the paper said.

While the target scope of the team’s genetic editing – as well as that of other scientists – was still limited, the paper said base editing systems with broader targets “would notably facilitate the development of genetic tools to intervene in genetic disorders”.

There are indifferent elements of ASD and several detrimental ones, so I think it depends on what they re targeting since ASD is really a cluster of different disorders.

Great news on that front, actually

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41587-023-00016-6

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For sure, there's quite a ways to go from trials with mice to human trial. And very much agree that the progress China is making in all STEM areas is very impressive.

Also, to be clear, there's no accepted notion of 'autism for mice' (or any other non-human animal), even if describing animals as autistic can sometimes be arguably useful. So 'works in mice' is a phrase that does a lot of work here.

I agree. This thread has some high levels of reaction. It's disappointing to see.

I agree with that, neurodivergence shouldn't be seen as a negative. It's good to have options available for people, but we should also try to structure society in a way that's as accommodating as possible without people feeling forced to change how their minds work to fit in.

this is true for so many fields, in both science and art, the mass of people doing the bulk of the work get no recognition 😐

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also

Li Dali, a professor of Life Sciences at East China Normal University, who is not an author on the paper [...]

Researcher Chen Jin and his student Zhu Junjie at ShanghaiTech University, who are not authors on the paper [...]

Speaking as a relatively high-functioning autistic person, and as a person who definitely perceives those people with autism I know as objectively blessed when compared to their allistic "peers", I'm trying to read this as the reporter's white-savior-y take on what may simply be a scientific advance?

All but the first paragraphs are pay walled but, here goes my charitable guess toward the scientists here;

Doctors have discovered how to undo a thing (in mice) that the author of this article describes as causing symptoms of autism. This is useful science I suppose, with it we might one day have the power to cure allism. Alternatively, as other comments have pointed out, there are autistic people who are unable to live "normal" lives (save, for a moment, the argument over what the fuck a "normal" life is and who the fuck thinks they have the right to "save" it). Consider instead an autistic person who wishes they had any choice regarding their autism, it would be cool if the science of neurodivergence had been developed enough to provide them with that choice. Realistically... I bear no illusions that choice might be involved. If doctors in the US had an excuse to call it "helping" when they fuck nonconsensually with someone's brain, I have no doubt I would be strapped to a fucking bed faster than you can say "free healthcare?". Between lobotomies and forced sterilization, the US has an undoubted record for society "cleansing".

We don't even know if it will work in humans yet. They've only done tests on mice so far, but the gist of it is that they identified a particular protein and a gene responsible for its production. The gene therapy causes more of the protein to be produced which resulted in behavioral changes in the mice. How that plays out with humans is an open question.

Gene therapies for other genetic conditions often do, but then those aren't neurodevelopmental.

I'm kinda fascinated by the question of how something like this would affect me. Like the way a psychedelic experience can teach us lessons we still retain (and want to hold onto), like the way formative experiences leave deep traces in us even when when we grow and change, what features of autism would always 'stay with me' on some level? If things changed perceptually for me, what old habits of mind would I retain? What would I miss most? What would I not miss?

In a lot of ways I think temporary windows into different neurotypes would be much more interesting than purported 'cures'. People don't usually want to undo their own personalities, including mental dimensions like neurotypes. But who wouldn't want to play with that a bit, if they knew it were safe?