"Importantly, other CRISPR-based platforms such as base editing, transcriptional perturbation, or RNA targeting are not affected by these findings" because they do not rely on double-stranded DNA breaks. Not CRISPR-Cas9's first time in the hot seat Over the past 15 months, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing has been the topic of a series of reports raising potential safety concerns regarding the specificity, immunogenicity and tumorigenicity of the technology. In May 2017, Vinit Mahajan, M.D., Ph.D.'s group at Stanford University published a paper entitled "Unexpected mutations after CRISPR-Cas9 editing in vivo " in Nature Methods, which called the safety CRISPR-Cas9 technology into question due to widespread off-target effects. That paper triggered a strong response from industry and academic researchers.