The history, use, and challenges of therapeutic somatic cell and germline gene editing.

The advent of directed gene-editing technologies now over 10 years ago ushered in a new era of precision medicine wherein specific disease-causing mutations can be corrected. In parallel with developing new gene-editing platforms, optimizing their efficiency and delivery has been remarkable. With their development, there has been interest in using gene-editing systems for correcting disease mutations in differentiated somatic cells ex vivo or in vivo or for germline gene editing in gametes or 1-cell embryos to potentially limit genetic diseases in the offspring and in future generations. This review details the development and history of the current gene-editing systems and the advantages and challenges in their use for somatic cell and germline gene editing.