Cathy Tie pushes gene editing of human embryos after split from He Jiankui

On a Friday evening in late April, Cathy Tie performed Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto No. 2 at Carnegie Hall in New York to mark her 30th birthday. She hired the hall for the occasion and invited guests, many of whom had only recently met her.

Tie has launched three biotech companies since the start of 2025 and moved among Los Angeles, Toronto and New York. She planned to settle in Beijing with her husband, the biophysicist He Jiankui, but was barred from entering China. The couple married in April 2025 and separated three months later.

He served three years in prison after he created the first gene-edited babies in 2018. Tie arrived in New York last August with plans for a company that would edit genes in human embryos to prevent diseases such as cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s and hereditary cancers. She says the work will be conducted openly and with regulatory approval.

Tie argues that germline gene editing is inevitable and that private funding is required because public money is unavailable. She says wider public acceptance is needed before regulators will allow clinical use. Her first company, initially called the Manhattan Project, shut down by December after she parted ways with co-founder Eriona Hysolli. She now leads Origin Genomics, which aims to eliminate severe single-gene disorders before birth.

Current U.S. law bars implantation of edited embryos, and Tie’s team limits work to embryos no older than 14 days. She says new gene-editing tools reduce off-target effects and that sequencing before and after edits will confirm safety. She rejects embryo selection alone, noting that some families have no unaffected embryos and that multiple IVF cycles are physically demanding.

Tie grew up in Mississauga, Ontario, after her family left a town near Beijing when she was four. She won a Thiel Fellowship at 18, left the University of Toronto and founded the genetic-testing firm Ranomics. She later started Locke Bio and the Los Angeles Project, which explored gene editing in animals.

She met He in Shanghai in 2023, interviewed him for her YouTube channel and married him in April 2025. Their wedding rings were shaped as DNA double helices. Tie says she was banned from China for reasons she does not know and that the separation followed the entry ban.

She maintains that the main flaw in He’s work was its secrecy and that future efforts must be transparent. She says Origin Genomics will focus only on well-characterized, severe diseases. She adds that regulators, not companies, must set limits on any future use for enhancement.

Tie appeared in a public debate with bioethicist I. Glenn Cohen the night before her Carnegie Hall performance. Cohen said gene editing raises questions about consent by future generations and the risk of eugenics. Tie said the greater danger lies in moving too slowly and waiting for global consensus that may never come.