Gene-Edited Puppies Will Melt Your Heart—but Won’t Trigger Your Allergies
Scientist Matt Walker always wanted a dog, but allergies prevented him from having one.
As an undergrad at Harvard and then a research associate at Columbia University, he was using Crispr, the Nobel Prize–winning gene editing technology, in lab experiments. He wondered, could he use gene editing to make allergy-free dogs—and help his pet ownership dream come true?
The answer came in beagle form. Bailey and Alfie are two young beagles that can do tricks like any other dog, but they lack the protein that causes sniffles. They’re the culmination of years of work at Kindred Companion Sciences, a biotech company Walker founded in 2020 that emerged from stealth this week with the two pups in tow.
In a scientific paper published on Wednesday in The Crispr Journal, Walker and his colleagues detail how they used gene editing to remove an allergy-causing protein in the dogs. The culprit...
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