Beijing, Dec 2 (PTI) He Jiankui, a controversial Chinese researcher responsible for the world's first gene-edited babies has been invited to speak at Oxford University early next year, a media report said on Friday.

He took China and the world by storm in 2018 announcing that he helped produce twins, whose genes had been modified with the aim of increasing HIV resistance.

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He, who served a three-year prison term imposed by the Chinese government for violating the rules as well as norms of medical science and ethics, said he will be giving a series of public interviews at Oxford university in March.

He was released from prison in April this year.

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In a post on Weibo, he thanked Professor Eben Kirksey, a fellow of St Cross College, for inviting him to give the talks about the use of CRISPR gene-editing technology in reproductive medicine which will be broadcast online, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post newspaper reported.

Kirksey, who has written a book on the gene-editing experiment, said the talks had been approved by the university's research ethics committee and would explore the circumstances that led to the birth of the gene-edited twin girls nicknamed Lulu and Nana, in 2018.

A third child, known as Amy, was born the following year, the Post report said.

Kirksey said they would discuss the values that drove He's research and he wanted to explore questions such as: “What is at stake as biological scientists remake the facts of life itself?” and “Can society shape future gene editing research agendas to promote an ethical and fair society?'”, the Post reported.

In a separate post on Weibo, He said he had set up a team to work on gene therapy for genetic diseases, and the first rare disease they wanted to tackle was Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD)-a deadly muscle disease that mainly affects teenage boys and young men, many of whom die in their late teens or early 20s.

He posted on Twitter that three weeks ago he had established a new laboratory in the southern suburbs of Beijing dedicated to developing affordable drugs for rare genetic diseases, the report said.

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