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Cosmecuticals to come: Asian flush cured.



With recent news that yet another new method for performing in vivo gene editing has been discovered the landscape of possibilities looms beyond just the superficial.

"Asian flush" is the term used to describe a condition that effects a large population of people of Asian descent which is a genetic mutation that prevents proper processing of one of the caustic by products of alcohol ingestion. This leads to an inflammatory response in the system which leads to dilated blood vessels and the "flushed" appearance.

Aside from this superficial result it also means that generally Asians with this mutation need to be very careful with the amount of alcohol they are ingesting as they don't process it as efficiently as those without the mutation.

Enter gene editing:

The gene mutation is well known so this would be an ideal 'low hanging fruit' target for an edit. A targeted Asian Flush cure could be effected with a germ line edit or a temporary one could be effected with a non germ line mutation. Obviously the latter provides a continuous line of business but the former ends up over time eliminating the mutation from the population should many people with it seek to have it dealt with.

Imagine 50 dollars a pop for a treatment for a quarter of the over billion people in China....and this is just one of thousands of little annoying mutations that we now can theoretically can edit out of existence once these gene editing technologies; Cas9 / Cpf1 / AAV and what ever new methods will be discovered are put to work on humans. The time is now...the "base nucleotide" rush has begun.

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