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Wednesday 9 May 2018

Before he died, this biohacker was planning a CRISPR trial in Mexico

Emily Mullin
MIT technologyreview.com

Aaron Traywick and his company, Ascendance Biomedical, are connected to a website advertising a gene-therapy trial for lung cancer.

The controversial biohacker Aaron Traywick, who was found dead in a sensory deprivation tank in Washington, DC, on April 29, appears to have been planning human tests of a CRISPR therapy for lung cancer, MIT Technology Review has learned.

Traywick, who was 28, made headlines in February when he injected himself with a DIY herpes treatment in front of an audience at a self-experimentation conference. He was CEO of Ascendance Biomedical, a mysterious company aimed at making gene-based medical treatments available to everyone.

The company had previously live-streamed another self-injection in October 2017. Tristan Roberts, an HIV patient, was filmed on Facebook injecting himself with a compound provided by Ascendance. The company called the treatment a gene therapy and said it was designed to lower the number of HIV particles in Roberts’s blood. It didn’t work: his viral load increased in the weeks following the injection.

Traywick, who had no formal medical training, was also planning to test an experimental lung cancer treatment that supposedly involved the gene-editing tool CRISPR. The therapy was to be offered at a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, just a few miles over the US border.

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