The lab of McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Samira Kiani, PhD, Associate Professor, Liver Research Center, Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, focuses on developing controllable genetic circuits by combining the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology with design principles of synthetic biology. She and her team seek to precisely control the location, the timing or logic of function of Cas9 and multiple gRNAs so that they can develop safer and more controllable gene therapy platforms or employ the tools for sophisticated reprograming of cellular function and fate.
Dr. Kiani recently spoke with Regenerative Medicine Today host John Murphy, McGowan Institute Executive Director, about
- making gene therapy safer and controllable in order to transfer these new treatments to patients faster
- controlling the body’s immune response to invading viruses (from gene therapies or from the annual flu) and the development of tissue organoids for use in drug testing and disease modeling
- filmmaking and storytelling of women and minorities in science at Tomorrow.Life
Listen to their conversation here.
Find a list of Dr. Kiani’s publications here.