Oncology

Jason Sheltzer, a cancer biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, was on the hunt for genes involved in tumour growth. He and his colleagues planned to disable the MELK gene using the popular gene-editing tool CRISPR–Cas9, then look for changes that reduced the rate at which cancer cells multiply. There were multiple research findings that suggest involvement of MELK gene in cancer-cell proliferation, however, disabling the gene using CRISPR–Cas9 yielded no effect. With this result, Sheltzer and his team joined an expanding club of laboratories that have been forced to re-evaluate and repeat experiments, as the spread of CRISPR–Cas9 uncovers potential er...