Résumé
For the past six years, the CRISPR/Cas system has appeared in all the laboratories of the world with the ambition to revolutionize the genome-editing technics. CRISPR/Cas, for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats / CRISPR Associated genes, is a mechanism allowing bacteria to integrate some fragments of bacteriophages' genomes into their own. This allows them to recognize and to degrade the foreign genome through the action of the proteins encoded by the Cas genes when a new exposure to this pathogen occurs. Efforts from many scientists across the world enabled the characterization of this mechanism and transformed this bacteria adaptive immune system into a powerful programmable genome-editing tool. Easier, faster, cheaper than the previous technics, CRISPR/Cas popularity has increased exponentially since 2012. It was used in much proof of concept for gene therapies in various fields such as cancers, genetic diseases, infections, organs transplant and agronomy. The technic is continually improved. Well handled, this tool could be the ultimate panacea against many human pathologies. However, there is still a long way to go before we reach a CRISPR/Cas-based medicine, which is something that the pharmaceutical industry has fully understood based on the observation of this field of biotechnologies' development. However, ethical concerns raised by the human genome modification will need to be answered by the civil society before spreading the CRISPR/Cas technique to medicine.