President’s Pick – April 2023
Researchers involved in developing oligonucleotide therapeutics have always been known for picking difficult problems related to difficult diseases. SOD1-ALS is a deadly neurodegenerative disease caused by a mutation in the SOD1 protein. Because the disease is due to the SOD1 mutation, it is possible to ...
Innovation, Versatile Gene Editing Technologies, and Patent Battles
Last June, at a genome editing summit in Lisbon, following a much-anticipated presentation by Tessera Therapeutics about their new gene editing technology, an audience member asked a question that is now the basis of a patent dispute: how was it different from the prime ...
Interview with Steven F. Dowdy, PhD
Steven F. Dowdy, Ph.D.ProfessorDepartment of Cellular & Molecular Medicine,University of California San Diego (UCSD), School of Medicine How did you become interested in the field of oligonucleotides? I started my lab in 1994 as an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and an ...
Can There Be International Agreement on How to Navigate the Future of Genome Editing?
Our world is changing at an astonishingly rapid pace and, as described a few weeks ago, CRISPR is poised to become a major source of change in many fields, from medicine to animals to crops. With any new technology, but especially one that has ...
President’s Pick – March 27 2023
PMID: 36881759 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkad067 Writing a good review article is not easy. A good Review not only summarizes the literature, it also provides an expert perspective so that the reader has enough insight to sort the important from the unimportant. That means that the expert authors, who ...
President’s Pick – March 2023
The journal RNA, the official publication of the RNA society, has always been one of my favorite journals. RNA’s April issue is devoted to Perspective articles related to nucleic acids therapeutics. Michelle Hastings and Adrian Krainer deserve our thanks as they took on the task ...
10 Years of CRISPR – Developing a Previously Unimaginable Idea to Benefit the World
CRISPR is now a common term, one that you see even in mainstream media. Yet it is incredible to think that its potential for editing genes was published just ten years ago. In a mere decade, the groundbreaking discovery has been successfully developed to ...
The Journey of C. Frank Bennett: Caring and Curiosity Drive the Development of Antisense Therapies
The chief scientific officer of Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Dr. C. Frank Bennett, is not someone who comes to work just to do science, but to help his patients. Although he started with little knowledge of antisense drugs when he joined the company more than thirty ...
RSV: Developing Vaccines to Protect the Vulnerable
It’s the middle of winter and, at some point during this season, many people will experience a constellation of symptoms that may include coughing, a sore throat, runny nose, headache, body aches, fevers, and fatigue. Most adults would assume they have a cold or ...
Interview with Shipra Malik, PhD
Shipra Malik, PhDRaman Bahal LabDepartment of Pharmaceutical SciencesUniversity of Connecticut How did you become interested in the field of oligonucleotides? Being from pharmaceutics background, my master’s research was focused on designing nano-formulations to improve the local delivery of small molecules. As I was looking for ...
