Gene Editing to Eliminate Huntington’s Disease and Other Inherited Brain Disorders with Wenzhen Duan 

Recent advances in gene editing technologies - particularly the development of CRISPR systems - will likely revolutionize the treatment of diseases caused by gene mutations. Professor Wenzhen Duan of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine talks about what goes wrong in the brain Huntington’s disease, a lethal neurodegenerative disorder caused by a mutation the gene encoding the huntingtin protein. She describes how her laboratory has used CRISPR technology to eliminate the mutant huntingtin protein and mitigate the disease in a mouse model of Huntington’s disease. Myself and Dr. Duan also discuss inherited cases of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and how genetic engineering could be used to eliminate these and other genetic diseases from future generations.
Links:
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