Strategies for Interdisciplinary Human Gene Editing Research: Insights from a Swiss Project

Abstract

CRISPR gene editing is a cutting-edge technology that has advanced tremendously in recent years. The first clinical CRISPR applications have been approved, and more gene editing therapies are to be expected in human medicine. Consequently, continuous basic research is needed to assess possibilities and prime future clinical applications. Because this technology not only offers new possibilities for treating diseases but also raises important ethical and societal questions, collaboration between human, life, biomedical, and medical sciences is needed. In this article, we discuss the practical challenges of such interdisciplinary projects and present strategies for addressing them based on our experience of conducting an interdisciplinary project on CRISPR. This work aims to help and encourage interdisciplinary collaborations and discussions on modern scientific endeavors that, like gene editing, tend to blur the lines between traditional disciplines.

The strategies suggested include realistic expectations, shared goals, space setting, and expert & lay dialogue.

Introduction

Gene editing technologies have progressed tremendously in recent years.¹ Since the emergence of the CRISPR-Cas9 method in 2011,^2–4 its development from basic research to clinic and market occurred at a fast pace, and the first clinical applications were approved within little more than a decade.⁵ The approval of many more gene editing applications in human medicine is to be expected, generating a continuous need for ethical regulation and global oversight.

A variety of hard and soft law instruments regulate research into and applications of human gene editing at national and international levels.^6–9 However, legislation remains fragmented without a binding unified international legal framework. Even where regulation exists, hard law on gene editing comes with some weaknesses: for instance, the time-intensive process of forging regulation is rarely sufficiently flexible to respond to rapid technological advancements.^6,10 Moreover, hard law has to be concise, universal, and coherent. Some have pointed out that hard law is therefore limited and rigid in scope.¹¹ It is thus not a suitable instrument for encompassing all the relevant ethical nuances, nor can it govern in detail all ongoings in labs.

Scientists are required to actively reflect and interpret existing regulations in the context of their work.¹² Scientists working on gene editing have expressed that, instead of solely self-regulating, interdisciplinary professional engagement should be used to strengthen the regulation of gene-editing.¹³ Leading institutions have provided scientific and ethics guidelines.^7,14–17 Yet, practical and experiential guidance on connecting technical, clinical, and ethical perspectives is currently lacking for those pursuing gene editing research.

This article provides guidance on how to conduct gene editing research in an interdisciplinary setting. The suggested strategies were gathered based on interdisciplinary collaboration on gene editing within the University Research Priority Program “Human Reproduction Reloaded” at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. This collaborative project comprises experts and early-career researchers in the fields of medicine, biology, biochemistry, law, sociology, anthropology, theology, machine learning, and ethics. This contribution is a soft practical guideline for conducting interdisciplinary basic research on both somatic and germline gene editing. It is intended to benefit researchers who plan to conduct scientific collaborations. The strategies can be applied to public, private, and merged research environments. Publicly funded universities serve the public interest; therefore, this paper proposes a standard for collaborative gene editing research with the goal of responsible progress and public benefit. We assume that a multitude of perspectives is needed to make informed decisions about how to responsibly advance knowledge on gene editing.

Leading scholars in the field have emphasized that various aspects of the technology, such as its delivery and technical limitations, need to be optimized before its feasibility and safety for different applications can be accurately assessed.^18–20 Alongside these scholars, and in line with global stakeholders, we assert that gene editing research must not only be lawful but should also consider its impact on the wider public.^14,21–26 Concerns persist about unethical rogue science and a lack of regulation in many countries, especially in the private sector.^27–29 Although the vast majority of players in the gene editing discourse pursue research ethically and are acutely aware of the danger of premature applications,¹⁵ a single instance of misconduct is enough to generate concerns and tension in the research field, as was the case with the first CRISPR-edited babies in 2018.^30–32

This article does not discuss why and which specific uses of gene editing in humans are ethically impermissible. However, we assume that conducting basic research according to the guidelines proposed by this article fosters checks and balances within science and can therefore prevent unethical practices. There is global agreement that some uses, such as the clinical application of CRISPR in the human germline, are currently ethically impermissible.³³ However, while some scholars doubt whether a high demand really exists for clinical germline applications,³⁴ others have recently expressed optimism towards its potential.³⁵ In our opinion, much work is needed before grand conclusions regarding germline applications can be drawn.³⁶ What is clear is that both somatic and germline uses raise various ethical concerns that are made more pressing by the rapid commercialization of potential treatments. A large body of literature has examined the ethical permissibility of CRISPR genome editing for specific uses.^37–42 Our focus is on interdisciplinary engagement with technical, ethical, legal, and societal considerations of fast-paced technologies such as CRISPR genome editing before and during translation to clinics.

Performing interdisciplinary research on gene editing: our experience

What is interdisciplinary gene editing research, and why is it desirable? By “interdisciplinary research,” we refer to structured working collaborations bridging human, life, biomedical, and medical sciences. Such interdisciplinary research presents substantial challenges.^43–45 For this reason, scientific, medical, legal, and ethical research tends to be conducted separately even within the same institution. Researchers often only work across disciplines when there is direct scientific merit, hence mostly between adjacent disciplines such as law and ethics or biology and chemistry. However, joint work between more distant disciplines is desirable and has many potential benefits. Scientific advancements in biology are continually blurring once-thought clear boundaries between biological and sociocultural issues, causes, and effects.⁴⁶ The literature on interdisciplinarity in the context of biological topics shows that integration of social science into life science, and vice versa, has been happening increasingly in recent years^47,48 and can have productive and rewarding effects such as increased alignment with societal interests.⁴⁹ Maximizing the likelihood that knowledge advancements will be societally relevant is especially important given the high cost and long duration of biomedical research projects. Synergy and spillover effects between life sciences, social sciences, law, and ethics result in more overall attention regarding the complex biosocial mechanisms that shape human life and experience.^{43,48,50–52}

Some tools for conducting successful interdisciplinary collaborations have already been established, and they are also useful in the gene editing context.^52,53 Based on our experience of working specifically with and on CRISPR across a wide array of disciplines, we contribute practical tips that we imagine might be useful to research groups of similar setups. We hope to thereby add to the ongoing discussion on how to optimize interdisciplinary research on new and potentially transformative technologies.

Our interdisciplinary experience and collaboration was initiated via “Human Reproduction Reloaded,” a research priority program at the University of Zurich. This program investigates reproductive technologies, their current development, use, and impact on society, as well as legal and ethical implications. Its overall goal is to gain deeper understanding of how reproductive technologies and their regulation within the current Swiss legal system shape reproductive decisions, experiences, and life trajectories to ultimately issue policy directions towards possible improvements. The program has a sub-project dedicated to CRISPR with the goal of carefully evaluating its potential use in the human germline.

This sub-project comprises several groups. Six pre-scheduled meetings per year unite all of its members regularly. The biology branch studies genome editing and embryonic development using bovine embryos with high-resolution live microscopy and genomics approaches, while the pharmacology lab focuses on improving genome editing tools.⁵⁴ The machine learning group develops artificial intelligence (AI) tools to assist the biochemical and biological projects in optimizing their research processes; the PRIDICT-tool^55,56 will be introduced as an example in the next section. The ethics branch explores normative aspects of gene editing through moral philosophical methods and evaluates the discursive impact of considering gene editing technologies in assisted reproduction on affected persons and humanity at large.^57–59 The legal branch aims to provide novel perspectives on the regulation of gene editing technologies, especially for human reproduction.⁶ The sociological data centre conducts a representative longitudinal Swiss-wide survey⁶⁰ on attitudes of the Swiss population regarding current and potential future assisted reproductive technologies including germline gene editing. The involvement of specialists in reproductive medicine from the fertility clinic of University Hospital Zurich ties the research activities together with clinical experience and knowledge.

Later, this article will be referring to ethnographic data that was collected in our project (see section: expert & lay dialogue). This data is part of the empirical PhD research project “Potentialities of CRISPR: An ethnography of gene-editing in Switzerland.”⁶¹ This project used expert interviews and participant observation in IVF clinics and CRISPR laboratories to explore gene-editing procedures (CRISPR/Cas9) in reproductive medicine and research in Switzerland. The objective is to shed light on the different discourses, practices, and actors involved at the moment of negotiating a (future) use of genome editing in human reproduction. The main research question is: How are reproductive technologies and gene-editing technologies developed, applied, and discussed daily?

Our joint project is an example of how merging disciplines and methods in basic research helps overcome the disconnection of scientific, ethical, and legal research from clinical and social reality. Meeting regularly with researchers from different fields helps to identify ways of collaborating, as was the case in our project with PRIDICT. Similar interdisciplinary spillover effects between biology, veterinary science, and medicine occur in our project. For instance, we are learning from models of nonlaboratory animals used in agriculture. We use superfluous oocytes from pigs and cattle discarded by slaughterhouses to perform genome editing, which might provide valuable insights into the short- and long-term risks of germline editing for livestock breeding, and could also further knowledge into potential human germline editing.

Our experience shows that combining methods of different disciplines strategically while continually including multidisciplinary perspectives results in a comprehensive research process. Interdisciplinarity allows all aspects relevant to a potential application to be addressed during the research stage, which, we believe, contributes to optimally priming gene editing trials and favors downstream implementation to clinical practice.

PRIDICT: A case study of actualizing interdisciplinarity within the frame of gene editing research

The merits of interdisciplinary collaboration are most apparent when a concrete research output is produced. A good illustration of this is the combination of AI models with fundamental genome editing research, which we successfully achieved within our program. Two of the commonly raised concerns about the technology, also noted by our project’s citizen advisory panel, are editing efficiency and the generation of unintended genomic alterations, known as off-targets. To address these issues, biologists and AI experts collaborated alongside social science, law, and ethics researchers within our project and designed a tool to predict prime editing outcomes that is already widely used by the scientific community to optimize the design of the prime editor guide RNA.^55,56

The PRIDICT-tool serves as a case study for how interdisciplinarity can be practiced to achieve a more holistic development process that fosters ongoing discussions. Figure 1 presents how our recommendations mapped onto the developmental process of PRIDICT.

Fig. 1.

Illustration of interdisciplinary Development of PRIDICT. Shared goals are the cohesive centerpiece, with internal and external dialogue framing the discussion besides logistical aspects like expectation management and space setting. The working structure of collaborating at two levels between a core team and an extended team allows the project to progress alongside continual input of all involved disciplines.

The development of the PRIDICT-tool within our project is an example for when interdisciplinary collaboration makes research processes more comprehensive through multiple involved perspectives. The starting point of this project was the assembly of the different experts, who planned the CRISPR-themed sub-project as part of the research priority program. Biologists and data scientists represented the technical point of view, while researchers in ethics and social sciences research represented the community and law perspective. Traditionally, optimizing the correction efficiency of genome editing tools involves numerous wet lab experiments in a trial-and-error process. The laborious, time-consuming, and resource-intensive character of this process prompted these researchers to develop computational models that can accurately predict prime editing outcomes.⁶² The idea was to train the AI on data representing in vitro edits of known human genetic variants, and subsequently, making predictions regarding how effectively different prime editing designs perform in correcting them. After the topic was clarified, a schedule of regular meetings was established. The members then worked on the agreed research plan. The molecular biology lab generated genome editing data that later were used by the data science lab as a data source for training machine learning models. In order to make the dataset as realistic as possible and train the AI on human genetic variations, the generated dataset contained genome edits on mutations from the ClinVar⁶³ archive. The science team extended the discussion of this idea to the larger group in the research priority program that included researchers in law, ethics, and social sciences. The discussions focused on possible ramifications of making PRIDICT’s source code available using an open access license, which may lead to tool misuse, but also on the potential for accelerating research into somatic therapeutic clinical applications, generating hopes and interests of stakeholders and the public. A learning process on all sides marked the project from its conception to the finished product: for the machine learning experts, working with genomic data was a new language to operate in, while the biology experts had to learn about data science principles and to continuously adjust expectations regarding the possibilities, scope and speed of developing an AI. While the interdisciplinary development process took longer than initially expected, the resulting and widely used PRIDICT tool drastically accelerates the process of designing efficient genome editors.

Strategies for optimal interdisciplinary collaboration

In order to profit from the benefits of interdisciplinarity and avoid potential pitfalls as best as possible, we have identified strategies for optimal collaboration on gene editing based on our experience. The key points are realistic expectations, shared goals, space setting, and expert and lay dialogue. The following sections expand further on these key points.

Realistic Expectations

In principle, interdisciplinary work between experts is broadly endorsed.¹⁵ The problem is that the academic landscape is not currently built to encourage such collaborations because funding schemes for interdisciplinary research are scarce. Managing expectations is an integral part of collaborating effectively within these conditions.

Being realistic about the prospects and limits of such collaborations helps to identify which concrete outcomes can be expected and in what timeframe. While joint research outputs such as the PRIDICT-tool are desirable in the long run, they are not realistic short-term or on a regular basis. We therefore suggest that the intangible outcomes of interdisciplinarity should be at the forefront when motivating time and labor-intensive collaborations across disciplines, instead of the expectation of regular outputs. To motivate researchers to engage in interdisciplinary collaborations, this work has to be compatible with advancing individual projects. This is the case especially since academic careers demand frequent publishing. Otherwise, especially collaborations between sciences and humanities run the risk of being perceived as a waste of time.⁴⁴ Our experience with the PRIDICT tool showed that working even across adjacent disciplines means heightened time investment. Interdisciplinary papers can also have fewer publishing outlets than specialized research due to their complexity and nonspecialized analysis of the subject of interest.⁶⁴ Joint publications can also risk remaining at a more superficial level of analysis, because it is rarely possible for an output to attain specialized value while maintaining translatability into different disciplinary languages and skillsets. Moreover, the quality of joint outputs can be compromised by dissimilar research and publication cultures.⁴⁵ Therefore, we recommend that effort be directed less towards joint outputs and more towards active constructive dialogue alongside parallel individual research processes. One of the main upshots of upholding such dialogue is the opportunity to link networks and resources of different disciplines that work on the same topic. Concretely, this can mean attending conferences of adjacent disciplines on the shared topic or joint applications for interdisciplinary funding schemes. To manage expectations, it is useful to keep in mind that interdisciplinarity on biological subjects comes with some specific challenges, but if successful, the outcome of fostering more holistic and collaborative research is ultimately productive and rewarding.^43,46,52

Shared Goals

Our collaboration benefited from defining and focusing on shared goals rather than searching for substantial overlaps in research content. Regularly informing all participants of an interdisciplinary collaboration about others’ projects takes time. Shared ideological commitments foster group coherence to motivate this investment.

The starting point for formulating shared goals is adopting a “bird’s eye” view of the gene editing discourse, and defining one’s own position in it. Helpful topics to discuss with the members of the collaboration are how they see the field currently and where it is or should be going. It can be more useful to find communalities in motivations than in methods or research questions. This means focusing more on the “why” instead of the “what/how” of one’s research.

One example for a shared goal is a commitment to open science. We found that discussing our research continuously with other researchers of different fields produces transparency, as others not directly involved in the specific research become aware of what we do. An issue that was raised in our project’s discussions on open science is the tension between transparency and the possibility for bad actors to profit from published knowledge in light of globally fragmented legislation. This worry arose specifically in relation to the development of the PRIDICT-Tool. Despite the validity of this anxiety, the global experience of gene editing research shows that responsible progress in human gene editing is not merely a question of good and bad actors, but of scientific communities succeeding in enacting scientific ethos together (or not).⁶⁵ The rogue incident of the first CRISPR-edited babies in 2018 shows the importance of transparency and open global dialogue in research. It has been argued that this failure of ethical practice might have been more collective than some post-scandal recollections of nearby CRISPR researchers have portrayed it to be.⁶⁶ Having to communicate explicitly about one’s aims and aspirations with researchers from other disciplinary backgrounds contributes to a network that provides soft collective oversight.^13,32,67 For instance, a shared research ethos could influence scientists’ willingness to participate in gene editing projects if they appear to breach the scientific community norms established in the CRISPR discourse post-2018.³²

Other examples for shared goals include patient beneficence and adopting a holistic global perspective. Views on what diseases are considered most relevant differ between medical and scientific experts^67,68 and are also heterogenous among patients.⁶⁹ Indeed, there are no simple ways of knowing what research is most needed by society as a whole. Making choices always involves weighing technical and medical aspects, stakeholder interests, ethical considerations such as distributive justice and then setting priorities. An anecdotal example from our project demonstrates this ongoing negotiation process. A group of researchers in our collaboration presented their basic research project on diabetes and high “bad” cholesterol associated with genetic alterations. A discussion evolved as medical professionals and ethicists raised the fact that these conditions are also closely associated with environmental circumstances.⁷⁰ In addition, the lack of access of low-income countries to somatic gene therapies was mentioned. This circumstance currently seems inevitable due to the global functioning of the pharmaceutical market,^71,72 which points to the importance of improving socio-geographical determinants of health. The open question remained that somatic gene therapies can alleviate suffering in patients within short periods of time but that socioeconomic circumstances are more difficult to improve and also influence access to somatic therapies depending on the country.

This reflection shows that cultivating collaborations based on shared ideological goals on a small scale contributes to a more holistic view, which is the basis for fostering a common ethos in gene editing research.⁷³

Space Setting

Interdisciplinary research on gene editing depends on a structure that allows discussions to happen. During this project, organization across institutes proved to be challenging. Simple day-to-day logistical issues can hinder collaboration. The daily responsibilities, schedules, and workplaces of practicing clinicians, scientists, and humanities scholars vary widely. For example, some institutes have more teaching responsibilities, whereas others are bound to experiments and yet others see patients. Bringing experts together required substantial logistical effort. Additional human resources should therefore be considered when budgeting interdisciplinary projects. As in our project, this could be one person specifically employed to bridge the collaborating disciplines and manage the project’s organization. To establish a working procedure that addresses both research content and related logistical issues, including temporal and geographical ones, we found it helpful to assign individual responsibilities to specific planned projects, divide organizational tasks, and jointly set a yearly timeline for regular reports on the current state of projects.

Additionally to considering logistical challenges, space setting includes knowing each other’s assets and defining roles. Understanding each other’s skillsets is crucial for constructive discussions, even though the contribution of researchers from diverse fields may not be immediately evident in practical terms. For instance, in our project, we defined the role of social scientists and ethicists in identifying and presenting the complex societal and ethical considerations related to gene editing, so that biomedical researchers could integrate this knowledge in their research design from the early stages.⁴⁸ In our group, this included social scientists providing information about patient experiences of various diseases and sociodemographic influences on treatment efficacy, to be considered when choosing future research targets. We defined the contribution of biomedical researchers in informing social scientists and ethicists about the technical aspects and actual scope of gene editing feasibility. This is useful to ensure that legal and ethical analyses operate with accurate knowledge of the actual state-of-the-art in gene editing research.⁴⁶

We therefore recommend investing sufficient time in discussing each discipline’s contribution to the collaboration. A well-resourced structure and early discussion of modi operandi worked to increase productivity and prevent misunderstandings in our experience.

Expert & Lay Dialogue

The key ingredient to productive collaboration is a working dialogue that maximizes mutual understanding while simultaneously accepting its limits in an interdisciplinary setting.⁵³ If done right, interdisciplinary dialogue broadens the perspectives of the collaborators involved and thus nuances their attitudes by providing new framings and bringing aspects to the table that were not considered or prioritized before.⁴³

Parts of the anthropological fieldwork that was conducted within our project gives insights into the sociocultural mechanisms at play when discussing gene editing in multi-expert groups.⁶¹ The analysis produced interesting findings: Experts have widely differing perspectives on and understandings of gene editing and the mechanisms of action of cells and human DNA. This leads to diverse opinions about the potential and development of gene editing. These contrasting opinions can arise due to different work practicalities and goals. For instance, working closely with potential recipients in the medical field produces a different perspective than viewing gene editing therapies through a legal lens. The result in an interdisciplinary group setting can be conflicting assessments of the risks and potential applications of the technology. However, the qualitative data also show that even experts in the same research field and same work environments have conflicting opinions and feelings about the future use of gene editing technology.

These qualitative findings highlight that the cultural and social dimensions of technology development are complex.^74–76 Based on how these observations shaped our collaboration, we recommend fostering an awareness in interdisciplinary group settings that gene editing is not an inherently neutral technology^77,78 but one that is fraught with diverse and sometimes conflicting expectations, anxieties, and sensitivities.⁷⁹ Some disciplines arguably also have higher academic and nonacademic prestige than others, and this can be managed well when everyone is aware of it. Making pragmatic dialogue work requires some soft skills of the participants: epistemic humility, open-mindedness and a willingness to step outside of disciplinary comfort zones. Thus, collaborative spaces should allow the expression of conflicting feelings, opinions, and judgments, without the expectation of consensus.

One way of practicing epistemic humility is an acknowledgment that every expert is essentially a layperson in someone else’s field. One of the upshots of this reality is that frequent communication with other fields trains individuals in translating their research to broader audiences. Specialized researchers are forced to replace disciplinary jargon with more common language. The resulting practice in presenting research accessibly can subsequently help when communicating with members of the public and potential funding agencies. Practicing simplifying one’s research to achieve productive interdisciplinary dialogue can thus also help when practicing citizen involvement.

At the same time, practicing open-mindedness and translating one’s research into lay terms cannot fully circumvent that lay dialogue has its limits. This showed in our project for instance through our experience with citizen involvement. Our citizen science advisory panel comprises 30 continual members that have supported the project over the past four years. Over time, the panel has shown to be included mostly in our social science projects, more so than in our life science research. For example, the panel members co-designed our questionnaire for the project’s longitudinal Swiss-wide survey.⁶⁰ The citizens’ role was to co-create and optimize the survey’s first-wave draft questions on gene editing. Another event conducted discussion groups on attitudes to gene editing. Legal and social scientists and ethicists conduct yearly progress workshops with the panel. Hence, the citizens are mainly involved with researchers who use qualitative and quantitative social science research methods. Thus, the citizen involvement work contributes to social science research design, but it does not directly connect to our life science projects for various reasons. Firstly, the very technical basic research that we conduct is not easily accessible, nor very interesting, to a lay audience. Secondly, the logistical challenges mentioned above can pose obstacles, such as the difficulty of including 30 citizens in regular lab work. Due to experiment commitments, life science members are also more frequently hindered from attending the regular format of citizen participation workshops. Thirdly, as we prioritized academic interdisciplinarity with its substantial resource and time investments, conducting public engagement that extends to the life sciences was beyond realistic scope.

The goal of citizen involvement is to supplement academic perspectives with public input and to democratize science.⁸⁰ This is especially prevalent in gene editing technologies because both somatic and germline uses may be transformative for society as a whole, including future generations.⁸¹ Many countries have launched good examples of public engagement initiatives recently.^82,83 In essence, our experience has confirmed that even at a small scale, including citizens benefits interdisciplinary gene editing research collaborations. Like interdisciplinary dialogue, citizen involvement broadens the pool of perspectives and helps scientists gain clarity on the public’s attitudes and needs. However, involving citizens in genome editing research also comes with challenges.⁸⁴ Meaningful public engagement requires additional deliberation, resources, and time. Especially when resources are scarce, it can be reasonable to limit citizen involvement to social science projects.

Conclusion

Responsible research on human genome editing abides by international and national legal regulations and considers medical and biological aspects, public health concerns, societal demand, the perspectives of affected individuals, and ethical recommendations. Whether research on gene editing is conducted in public institutions, the private sector, or in public–private partnerships, collaborations across human, life, biomedical, and medical sciences enable all the above aspects to be combined. Although this article has focused on gene editing technology, the proposed strategies can be applied to research on other cutting-edge technologies. Our recommended strategies for conducting interdisciplinary research collaborations on gene editing are summarized in the key points below. Table 1 below summarizes the goals that the suggested strategies aim at and how to achieve them:

Table 1. Summary of Key Points.

Strategy	How it can be done
Realistic Expectations	Goal: Combine methods of adjacent disciplines Tools: Link resources and networks (e.g. joint funding applications, attendance of conferences outside one’s field) Set less emphasis on joint outputs Constructive continuing communication alongside parallel research processes
Shared Goals	Goal: Create motivation for common ethos and accountability Tools: Situate within the CRISPR discourse beyond own project through “bird’s eye” view of global state of research Discuss big questions openly: “Where are we at present and where should we be going from my perspective?” Identify communalities in the “why” of your research instead of the “what/how”
Space Setting	Goal: Build effective organizational structures Tools: Take simple logistical challenges seriously such as scheduling and meeting locations Define roles Know each other’s assets Set modus operandi
Expert & Lay Dialogue	Goal: Broaden perspectives towards more holistic view of gene editing research Tools: Accept multitude of opinions Acknowledge CRISPR as a non-neutral technology Focus on broadening knowledge instead of reaching a consensus Implement citizen involvement strategically and acknowledge its limits

The nuance drawn from this kind of interdisciplinary engagement, paired with the open dialogue that it necessitates, contributes to building a network of collective scientific self-regulation through fostering a common research ethos and an understanding of the complexity inherent to CRISPR gene editing. This can function as a soft regulatory tool in addition to hard-law measures.³² This approach can thus contribute to the larger goal of responsible stewardship of science as demanded by the WHO and globally supported by key actors in the gene editing debate.^{7,15,24,85–89}