The unique opportunities and risks of the Bio Revolution

On November 9, the world’s stock markets reacted exuberantly to the announcement that a COVID-19 vaccine developed by German biotech company BioNtech was 90 percent effective based on intermediate results. A month earlier,  researchers revealed that off-target effects of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool used to repair a blindness-causing gene in the early stages of development of a human embryo often eliminated an entire chromosome or a large part of it. Two announcements a month apart illustrate the promise and peril of biological innovation.

A recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute, The Bio Revolution: Innovations transforming economies, societies, and our lives, described the breakthroughs happening in biological science and its confluence with data, advanced analytics. This Bio Revolution has the potential to help us solve major human challenges from climate risk to feeding the planet and fighting pandemics. However, if the revolution’s potentially significant benefits are to be realized, careful thought needs to be given to the risks and how to mitigate them. Get this right and this revolution could have very significant benefits; get it wrong and the consequences could be severe.  

The scope of the wave of bio innovation is very large indeed. Sixty percent of all the inputs to the world economy are either biological now, or could be produced using biological processes in the future. Many “bioroutes” to production potentially will use less energy, use less water, and emit fewer emissions. Nylon is already being made using genetically engineered yeast instead of petrochemicals. Just 400 applications that form a visible pipeline of applications could reduce average greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 9 percent by 2050. 

CRISPR-Cas9 stands out as an application that has rapidly come into widespread use, enabled by increasingly cheap and rapid sequencing of the human genome and advances in data analytics that enable us to interpret biological data quickly and with precision. Our deepening knowledge of the human body—its genes, its microbiome, and neural signals sent by our brains—is making it increasingly possible to engineer biology.

However, by its nature, modifying biology is risky. CRISPR is available to buy on the internet. Any individual with a college degree could be capable of creating a new biological entity—to avoid speaking of harmful bacteria or viruses—and releasing it. Biological organisms are self-replicating, self-sustaining, and interrelated. They do not respect borders as demonstrated by the rapid global spread of COVID-19. Gene drives—genetic engineering applied to vectors of infectious disease such as mosquitoes in the case of malaria—could save many lives. But we may not be able to control them. The next generation of edited mosquitoes in one field experiment in Brazil were supposed to die, but the mosquitoes are still breeding five years later.  

Data privacy has caused intense debate about digital technologies. In that case, the data may be about shopping habits. In the case of biology, the data are from our bodies and brains: next-level intrusion. Moreover, this bio revolution could entrench inequality at least while applications such as new drugs remain expensive and can only be afforded by the well-off. MGI finds that around 70 percent of the reduction in disease in the next ten to 20 years could be in high-income countries despite the fact that they account for around 30 percent of the global disease burden.  

Unless handled with thought and seriousness, the risks of some applications may even outweigh the potential benefits. Scientists cannot pursue innovation in a vacuum—society matters and innovators need to play a consistent and effective oversight role. They have a long track record of doing so. Back in 1975, prominent scientists, lawyers, and medical professionals gathered at the Asilomar Conference in California to draw up voluntary guidelines to ensure the safety of recombinant DNA technology, for instance.

It was a seismic moment when Jennifer Doudna who, together with French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, invented CRISPR, reacted to the use of the tool to gene-edit twin human embryos by calling for a moratorium on human germline editing.

Governments who regulate new bio innovations and businesses that buy them need to be part of the sustained conversation on risk. Indeed, as much as 70 percent of the potential impact of the Bio Revolution hinges on the approach governments take to mechanisms governing the use of innovation.

Regulation today is uneven. Take the regulation of human embryo editing. The United Kingdom permits human-genome editing for research, but does not allow clinics to offer this service. The United States does not allow federal funds to be used in the modification of human embryos, but does not have an outright ban. In China, India, Ireland, and Japan, there are guidelines that restrict the editing of a human embryo’s genome but no regulation. Without more coordination of the mechanisms governing the use of bio innovation, there is a danger of a risk-laden race to the biological frontier.

In the case of genetically engineered crops whose genome have been altered with gene-altering tools like CRISPR, while the US Department of Agriculture views gene editing as the equivalent of traditional breeding of plants, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in 2018 that gene-edited crops should be subject to the same stringent regulations as conventional genetically modified organisms.

Ideally citizens need to be involved as their comfort or discomfort with how the science is applied tends to lead regulators. In the United Kingdom, the independent Nuffield Council on Bioethics was set up in 1991 to provide advice to policy makers and stimulate public debate on bioethics.

We all need to be part of this conversation—governments, scientists, businesses, and individuals working together to unleash the power of biology for good while handling the risks. Many of these innovative forms of biology are complex, and we need to understand them to gauge their impact on our lives and on societies, and what is an acceptable risk and what isn’t. 

Download the report: The Bio Revolution: Innovations transforming economies, societies, and our lives.