Kiran Musunuru and Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas: The 100 Most Influential People of 2026

Since its advent in 2012, CRISPR genome-editing technology has held the potential to change medicine. But getting from a research breakthrough to practical impacts on patients is no simple feat. In 2025, doctors Kiran Musunuru and Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas showed it can be done. When baby KJ was born with a rare metabolic disease, giving him a 50% chance of dying in infancy, the pair led a remarkable multi-institutional team that designed, tested, and administered a personalized gene-editing therapy in just six months. Baby KJ is now home with his family and recently took his first steps.

This achievement goes beyond one child. Musunuru and Ahrens-Nicklas brought together innovations from across biomedical science and proved that on-demand CRISPR therapies can be developed safely and quickly enough to help patients who don’t have years to wait. A decade from now, their names will be in medical textbooks, not only for baby KJ, but for opening the door to personalized genetic medicine for thousands of children after him.

Doudna is a Nobel Prize–winning biochemist and founder of the Innovative Genomics Institute