Science Events in Vancouver
Stay up-to-date with all of the life science events taking place in Vancouver with the Science in Vancouver events calendar! From academia to industry and biotech to pharma, our events calendar is your complete source for life science conferences, symposiums, networking, and workshops in Vancouver.
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Dr. Knut Woltjen Public Lecture – Genes and Cells: The Living Drugs of a New Medical Era
March 29, 2018 - 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
EVERYONE IS WELCOME for this public lecture at UBC, sponsored by Killam Connection, on gene and cell therapies for treatment of disease.
RSVP at eventbrite or by email to regmedlecture@gmail.com
Dr. Woltjen obtained his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Calgary and joined Kyoto University’s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) in 2010. His research employs genome engineering in inducible pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) to study genetic diseases. These iPS cells can be generated from any cell in the body, typically from skin or blood cells, that can then be coaxed to mature into any cell type of the human body. The process of reprogramming mature cells into iPS cells earned Sir John B. Gurdon and CiRA’s Shinya Yamanaka the Nobel Prize in 2012.
Dr. Woltjen uses iPS cells to study cells in the lab which we could not gain access to in patients, such as brain cells. By generating the mature cell type from a patient with a genetic disease, his lab can study the consequences of the disease, screens for drugs which may help the patient, and even try to make positive changes to the DNA, using genomic engineering techniques such as CRISPR/Cas9, to ultimately repair the cause of the genetic disease.
