Gene Therapy in Selcuk University

By positive results and enhancements over the past 10 years, Gene Therapy has become a new generation of medicine. CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) Gene Editing Technology which is explored in the fields of life science and medicine, becomes a ray of hope for future generations.

It was proposed that CRISPR technology, which was discovered as the immune system in microorganisms, could be used as a gene editing technology with the searching led by Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna in 2012, and 2020 The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to these researchers.

By this alternative methodology, the specific and targeted changes can be made into any part of the DNA, but there are certain limitations in its application in living organisms. Various modifications and fusions have been created to date, it is aimed to pave the way for the access of this technology in the clinic by the conducted studies.

The ‘Search-and-replace genome editing without double-strand breaks or donor DNA’ article that was published by David Liu and his team in October 2019 is one of these valuable studies. In this article Prime Editing Technology, which includes various protein fusions in addition to the CRISPR protein, has been reported as the more controlled and effective technology compared to CRISPR technology.

One of the teams working on Prime Editing Technology and Conducting studies for its clinical usage is located in Selçuk University. Dr. Nadir Koçak, who is involved in mRNA studies and works in The Medical Genetics Department of Selçuk University Hospital, also leads the gene therapy studies. He and his team are conducting the significant research to provide hope for chronic myeloid disease, a blood cancer caused by modifications in DNA, with Prime Editing Technology.