IGI Seminar Series: The Dawn of Interventional Genetics: Advancing Genomics From Observation to Cures

Summary

Join us for our next Seminar Series talk with Winston Yan, co-founder of Arbor Biotechnologies. Rare and ultra-rare genetic diseases are individually rare but collectively common: hundreds of millions worldwide are affected, often with significant morbidity and mortality. While improvements in technology and science within genetics have enabled better identification of disease-causing variants, challenges abound in systematically translating such knowledge to meaningful treatments. But that is changing. This talk outlines the recent clinical, regulatory, and technological advances that pave the way to make genetics an “interventional” specialty, and proposes an interdisciplinary model for how ultra-rare genetic diseases may be methodically and sustainably treated within our lifetimes — with a particular emphasis on the role of the IGI and CRISPR technologies. Read more about Arbor Biotechnologies here.

Join us for the live event on Zoom. All participants and hosts are required to sign into a Zoom account prior to joining meetings.

Speaker

Winston Yan —Winston Yan is a genome engineer and organization builder motivated by bringing genetic medicines to treat patients with serious diseases. He graduated with an A.B. in Physics from Harvard College and afterward joined the Harvard/MIT M.D.-Ph.D. program. He completed his Ph.D. with Feng Zhang at MIT/Broad Institute, working to enable therapeutic applications of CRISPR through developing in vivo AAV-SaCas9, unbiased assays for genomic specificity, and metagenomic discovery. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2017, he took a three-and-a-half-year leave of absence from his M.D. to start Arbor Biotechnologies with David Scott, David Walt, and Feng Zhang, aiming to bring editing approaches to a broader array of genetic diseases by scaling up the discovery of new gene-editing tools from microbial diversity. Winston helped drive the development of Arbor's technology platform and company strategy while building out key aspects of culture and organizational efficiency, enabling Arbor to secure over $85M in VC funding and R&D collaborations, grow to a team of 50, and transition from discovery towards greater therapeutic impact. He returned to Harvard Medical School in Oct 2020 to complete his M.D., where his clinical experiences and gene editing background drew him to work with N-of-1 therapy pioneers Dr. Timothy Yu and Julia Vitarello in organizing the N=1 Collaborative, a global group of clinician-scientists, researchers, patients, and companies dedicated to building a rigorous and repeatable pathway for delivering individualized medicines.