Commentary - CRISPR-based techniques: Cas9, Cas13 and their applications in the era of COVID-19

The CRISPR (Clustered Regu- larly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)/ Cas9 (CRISPR-associated protein 9) system en- ables scientists to edit diverse genome types with relative ease, with the aim – in the near fu- ture – to prevent future human beings from de- veloping genetic diseases. The new opportuni- ties arising from the system are broad-ranging and revolutionary, but such prospects have also been the cause for alarm throughout the inter- national scientific community. The authors have laid out a review of the trials carried out so far in terms of genome editing, for the ultimate pur- pose of weighing implications and criticisms. We feel that possible valuable alternatives, such as induced pluripotent stem cells should not be overlooked.