Our team aims to optimize the technology, Casposons which can play a vital role in the study of the treatment of genetic diseases, and our project is running consistent with society's needs and scientific research by doing the IHP between experts and the public. In order to better understand the public awareness about genetic diseases as well as their treatment, we conducted a questionnaire survey, and finally, we could know how the public thinks of these topics and what is their attitude. Besides we wanted professional insights and suggestions to ensure our project ran in the right direction and could apply our solution to the real world in the future.

Questionnaire (two version: Chinese version and English version)
Online channels: WeChat, Google
Offline places: shopping malls and streets

NO.1 It objectively reflects the basic information about the respondents. We mainly spread the questionnaire through WeChat and Google, as seen in figure 1, most of the respondents are our schoolmates and friends who are our age (0-18).

NO.2 It will help us to understand the general awareness of the public on genetic engineering. As seen in the upper one of figure 2, there are more than half of the respondents claimed they know a little bit about genetic engineering but 24% admitted they had no idea about this. In comparison, this result is similar to the result of the English version where we collected 48 completed questionnaires. We could know that most people might hear of genetic engineering but still many people don’t pay much attention to it.

NO.3 According to our pre-investigation result, there seemly exists a general concern about genetic engineering. In order to obtain the exact data, we asked our respondents if they had concerns about genetic engineering. The results in figure 3, confirmed our guess that most people are worried about gene programming. It might come from inadequate knowledge about genetic engineering technology, the general safety consideration, and the ethical concern. All these will be our future outreach tasks and promotion strategies to overcome.

NO.4 It quotes a typical genetic product- Genetically Modified Food (GMF). To dig deeper into our respondents’ thoughts we need to talk with them about the topics they might be familiar with, so we tried to quote GMF to lead the conversation into genetically engineered products. Surprisingly, there are not that many voices against GMF but still, we can’t ignore those hesitant voices which account for the majority.

NO.5 Per our investigation, genetic engineering technology has been applied in many industries and contributes a lot to our society. But we didn’t know that much before, we guessed that most of the public either. With our assumption, we raised the question below to the public and the result was expected to reflect the public's recognition of gene editing technology application. Based on the survey result, many people stand neutrally. To deliver faith in gene editing technology, we will take efforts on promoting gene editing technology and its application so that the public could have a better understanding to see this technology more objectively and thoroughly.

NO.6 To further test people’s acceptance of genetic engineering solutions, we designed a scenario for the respondents. As shown in figure 6, most people are still willing to try genetic engineering technology solutions. It metaphorically reflects that the public is open to genetic engineering and its promising application in medical treatment.

NO.8 Since our topic is about the treatment of genetic diseases through Casposons technology, we consider our technology as a human life-saving matter. This question will be convenient for us to make a reasonable positioning of R & D (Research and Development) and this result could be also considered as one of our marketing research. Per the result in the upper of figure 8, more than half are willing to take gene editing technology when it comes to life-saving matters. However, we can see there is a little difference between the result upper and lower that there are more percentages of respondents in the English version to vote "Maybe". This difference might result from deviation due to less samples (48 responses).

NO.9 We decided to design a business plan for our solution to solidify our implementation. Therefore, this question was designed to make it convenient for us to have a reasonable positioning of R & D funds and sales prices in the future. As we can see from the survey results, people have quite a high tolerance of the therapy cost through gene editing technology and the expected price generally ranges from 3000 to higher than 10,000 RMB.

NO.10 In our last question, we raised a discussion topic with our respondents. If you have the choice to extend your life by gene editing, would you take it? This question is not only for finding our potential clinical volunteers for their desires but also for inviting the public to join the topic discussion. We hope this question could encourage people to discuss more gene editing technology and bring up more different thoughts, including ethical concerns.

Most people support the application of genetic programming in the medical field, but they also have some concerns. Therefore, technically we should pay more attention to the safety of this technology which shall be the top priority, besides we need to take efforts on spreading scientific information related to genetic engineering technology to the public to eliminate the general bias due to inadequate knowledge. After that, we also realize there is still a long way to go and deal with that public ethical consideration about this technology application.Most people support the application of genetic programming in the medical field, but they also have some concerns. Therefore, technically we should pay more attention to the safety of this technology which shall be the top priority, besides we need to take efforts on spreading scientific information related to genetic engineering technology to the public to eliminate the general bias due to inadequate knowledge. After that, we also realize there is still a long way to go and deal with that public ethical consideration about this technology application.

Xiao Yibei, professor and doctoral supervisor of China Pharmaceutical University. He mainly uses the research ideas and methods of Biochemistry, microbiology, drug design, and Biophysics to study the molecular mechanism of bacterial acquired immune defense system (CRISPR CAS), the transcription and replication mechanism of RNA virus, and the development of antiviral drugs. In the past three years, he has published four papers as the first author and two as coauthors in science, nature and cell magazines. We managed to contact him and had an online interview with him to seek his insights about CRISPR technology and its application in human society.Xiao Yibei, professor and doctoral supervisor of China Pharmaceutical University. He mainly uses the research ideas and methods of Biochemistry, microbiology, drug design, and Biophysics to study the molecular mechanism of bacterial acquired immune defense system (CRISPR CAS), the transcription and replication mechanism of RNA virus, and the development of antiviral drugs. In the past three years, he has published four papers as the first author and two as coauthors in science, nature and cell magazines. We managed to contact him and had an online interview with him to seek his insights about CRISPR technology and its application in human society.

Per our survey, ethical consideration about gene editing is a commonly seen question. When talking about gene editing on human beings, professor Xiao pointed out that gene editing technology itself is a very cutting-edge new technology, which may have a great impact on human beings so that people can be free from disease, but this impact is divided into short-term impact and long-term impacts. We may be able to find out the short-term impact quickly, but the long-term impact is still unknown but unignorable. Because it may take a long time to evolve, and even if this trait needs to be inherited for several generations, we can find it. Undeniable gene editing can not only cure diseases but also is capable of changing many congenital conditions of human beings, such as height, obesity, intelligence, etc. In a word, gene editing is a double-edged sword, which could make us evolve in a better direction, but may also affect the normal evolution of human beings.
Based on this complicated situation, we would better focus on medical treatment studies and the related medical solutions are relatively mature at present, which will not cause too many uncontrollable factors as long as we follow relative regulations and standards.
In addition, Prof. Xiao also provided many valuable and practical advice on our experimental design and protocols. He agreed that we could focus on optimizing Casposons technology rather than other CRISPR systems since Casposons will not result in gene breakage that could reduce the chance of off-target problems which usually happens when utilizing other CAS systems. But he also pointed out that Casposons has fewer insertion positions. He mentioned, that nowadays gene editing technology has developed rapidly and maturely but we could not rule out the chance of being unsuccessful by off-target effect, it will require a long-term observation.

Liu Zhen, doctor of finance, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; he has CFA and FRM certificates.

We designed to draft a business plan to solidify our final implementation strategies, we consulted Dr. Liu for better advice. When talking about utilizing the Casposons technology in the solution of genetic diseases, Dr. Liu said that although it currently has some ethical and commercial difficulties, the market is still very large, and there is almost no substitute. There shall be a great opportunity for business. At the same time, Dr. Liu said that in terms of ethics laws, the regulations of different countries are not very consistent and clear, which means that actually, we might not be subject to too many restrictions.
When talking about specific targeting disease, Dr. Liu said the demand for a permanent treatment for heart disease is very high, but the supply is scarce, so we will make significant profits after we stabilize the relative market.
Dr. Liu also recommended we register a patent for our technology. Per his views, we could also sell our patented technology to those medical companies who could see the inside values of great profits in this area so that we can make profits quick. Otherwise, we could also choose to monopoly the technology so as to gain more profit in later development. After this encouraging and inspiring conversation, we further modified our business plan.

Nan Hao, assistant researcher, College of life sciences, Northwest University of agriculture and forestry science and technology. He found the first Epigastric virusLEF-10 of virus and its regulation mechanism for the late phase gene P10 of the virus was clarified. He participated in the work of AsCas12f1, a gene editing tool with known minimum molecular size, and delivered the AsCas12f1 editing system to mammalian cells through the AAV system and played a role.

Per the background introduction of Mr. Nan, he is an expert in CRISPR technology and related research study. We managed to contact him for seeking advice on our project implementation and further development. Mr. Nan shared us with much-advancing information about genetic therapy and pointed out some key challenges that we need to overcome. He mentioned that there are some questions we need to figure out first, ethics and society fair. He also mentioned the news in 2017 that twin sisters were born previously gene-edited to avoid HIV naturally, he said this kind of experiment was considered a huge challenge to human ethics. Regarding the society fair, he said usually gene therapy costs too high for the middle so this solution might not suit everyone or every family, which is consistent with our survey result.
Regarding our project implementation, Mr. Hao suggested we decide on some genetic diseases we target to solve so that in our R&D strategies we could divide our development group into different lines to improve and complete the final solutions, even drugs. Mr. Nan also reminded us of some key points during experimental procedures so that we could improve our development efficiency. Mr. Nan expressed his support for our project, and he illustrated the promising future of our optimized Casponsons technology. He said the off-target effect still troubles a lot when people utilize CRISPR technology and it will be a great advantage if we could solve this problem.