FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe
FutureBites is a podcast exploring promising and exciting pathways to a better future. Hosted by Dr Bruce McCabe, a futurist and keynote speaker who travels the world presenting his unique insights and research on the future to corporations, governments, and audiences in all industries. In each FutureBites episode, Bruce meets with an inspiring leader in science, technology, economics or the social sciences to talk about ideas, game-changers and opportunities to create a better future.
FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe
Gene Therapies for Eye Disease - with Aykut Demirkol
Welcome to the second episode of FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe. In this episode, Dr Aykut Demirkol of the Harkness Eye Institute joins Bruce to talk about CRISPR gene-editing and the future of ophthalmology!
CRISPR is short for CRISPR-Cas9. The CRISPR-Cas9 system and a family of related tools have brought faster, cheaper, more accurate, and more efficient methods to genome editing. They are unquestionably one of the top technologies changing the world.
Dr Aykut Demirkol works in Professor Stephen Tsang's lab on new gene therapies to correct retinal diseases. This is SUCH an important area in the future of medicine, as so many people around the world are debilitated by eye disease. The team at Tsang lab have already used gene editing to successfully restore vision in mice suffering from retinitis pigmentosa, and used CRISPR to repair a genetic mutation responsible for retinitis pigmentosa in induced pluripotent stem cells derived from humans.
We discussed heritable versus non-heritable factors, the two-pronged attack on retinitis pigmentosa, and what the future might hold. For the hundreds of millions suffering from eye diseases, Aykut and his colleagues really are changing the world!
For additional comments from Bruce, and to read the whole interview, check out the FutureBites episode transcript.
Learn more about Bruce's work as a futurist speaker.
See you in the future!
