Some of our fellow human beings have had DNA in their bodies changed the way a writer corrects a typo in a manuscript. This “gene editing” is the basis of an FDA-approved medicine for sickle cell disease - a severe medical condition that until now had no cure. Clinical trials across the world have used gene editing for cancer, heart disease, congenital blindness, and neurologic disease. Powering this miracle of medicine is a Nobel prize winning technology called CRISPR. How does it work? What other diseases can it treat? What are the societal and ethical concerns? Fyodor Urnov co-developed human gene editing and will speak to the age of gene editing in medicine.
Presenter:
Fyodor D. Urnov ’96 Ph.D., Professor of Molecular Therapeutics in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of Technology and Translation at the Innovative Genomics Institute