My name's Alasdair Russell I'm at
Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.
I head up a team that specializes in
genome editing. That's a novel technology
that's just come out that allows us to
rewrite DNA within cells. This allows
us to both recreate diseases that we see
in patients so we can design
better cures but it also allows us to
develop new therapeutic strategies to
target those mutations and to rewrite
those mutations or mistakes
in the cells.
What we're seeing is that
genome editing is moving with an
unprecedented rate towards the clinic
with clinical trials already under way in
China and coming up in the States.
Very soon in the near future we'll see some
diseases being completely cured, simple
diseases being cured by CRISPR
technology or genome editing technology
with more and more complex diseases
being tackled over the next few few
years.
The main hurdle facing genome
editing at the moment is to ensure the
safety of any therapeutic approaches
that come out of the technology. So we're
working with regulators and with
clinicians to ensure patient safety is
paramount
