The Shaw Prize’s Post

🔬 [The Shaw Prize Lecture in Life Science and Medicine 2024 – “Stepping Stones to BCL11A” and “Reactivation of Fetal Hemoglobin for Therapy”]🧬 🧪The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine 2024 was awarded to two life scientists for their discovery of the genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying the fetal-to-adult hemoglobin switch, making possible a revolutionary and highly effective genome-editing therapy for sickle cell anemia and β thalassemia, devastating blood diseases that affect millions of people worldwide.🧬 In “Stepping Stones to BCL11A”, Dr Swee Lay Thein, will talk about the discovery of BCL11A gene, the key suppressor of fetal hemoglobin, and how it enabled the development of treatments for ameliorating the clinical severity of SCD and β thalassemia by inhibiting the expression of this gene to increase fetal hemoglobin. In the second part, “Reactivation of Fetal Hemoglobin for Therapy”, Professor Stuart Orkin will talk about his identification of a regulatory element (an enhancer) within the BCL11A gene itself that is required for BCL11A expression in developing red cells, and the discovery that, with gene editing tools, cutting of enhancer DNA at a single site greatly impairs BCL11A expression, thereby relieving repression of g-globin and resulting in increased HbF production. Such discovery proposed that gene editing of this site could be used to treat patients with SCD and β thalassemia, and the vision was carried forward by CrispR Therapeutics and Vertex Pharmaceuticals in clinical trials for these disorders, leading to the approval of the first gene editing therapy, Casgevy. ⚕ 📅 Date: 13 November (WED) Time: 3:00-5:00pm HKT Venue: Shaw Auditorium, HKUST 📝 Register now: https://lnkd.in/gsnvFSEy The National Institutes of Health National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Harvard Medical School The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology #theshawprize #shawprize #shawlaureates2024 #lifescienceandmedicine #shawlecture2024 #BCL11A

  • [The Shaw Prize Lecture in Life Science and Medicine 2024 – “Stepping Stones to BCL11A” and “Reactivation of Fetal Hemoglobin for Therapy”]

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