So my name is Rodolphe Barrangou.
I’m an associate professor at NC State in
the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
within the Department of Food, Bioprocessing
and Nutrition Sciences.
I run the CRISPR lab.
CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced
Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and, together
with associated sequences called cas genes,
CRISPR-associated genes, constitute the CRISPR-Cas
immune system.
This is an immune system in bacteria that
is arguably equivalent to the adaptive immune
system in mammals and vertebrates, except
it’s DNA-encoded, RNA-mediated, sequence-specific
targeting.
And what CRISPR is, is a fancy system that
allows you to selectively cut double-stranded
DNA, selectively, specifically, efficiently
and affordably.
And it has changed the world of genetic studies
and genome editing, specifically, with huge
implications across three different types
of industries: One is the biotechnology industry,
obviously.
Another one is food and ag and the development
of strains and organisms of interest for the
ag industry, going all the way up the supply
chain.
And last but not least, translational medicine
and the genesis of disease model systems for
human applications and also gene therapy to
correct flawed genes in human cells.
It’s really giving rise to technology that
is really going to make a difference in the
real world.
And industrially we’ve seen that happen
already, and if you use yogurt, if you consume
yogurt or cheese on a daily basis or regular
basis, it’s happened already.
You have used a CRISPR-enhanced product; you
have consumed a CRISPR-enhanced product.
And that’s a role of a land-grant institution
like NC State – to really make a difference
for the industry and consumers on a very large,
broad scale.
But beyond this for biotechnology and translational
medicine, we’ve seen promise recently in
the CRISPR literature with people being able
to excise inserted HIV-1 viruses out of human
cells or be able to rewrite and edit genome
sequences that are implicated in liver cancer
or DMD, Duchene’s muscular dystrophy, whereby
you are able to go into a genome and really
change the content of the genome to make it
right and correct it.
In closing, clearly CRISPR is a very compelling
topic.
Now is the right time, and NC State and our
lab is the right place: We have the right
team.
And it’s providing tremendous business opportunities
and actual deliverables that are pertinent
to different industries, and as we’ve seen
from VCs (venture capitalists) and large companies,
it is a very sound investment.
It has happened already.
The question is how far will people take the
technology and how creative will people be
in their use of CRISPR.
And only the future will tell how far they
can go and how fast they will get there.
