GCB News

Two Duke Rhodes Scholars Mentored by School of Medicine Faculty Members

The Rhodes Scholarship is one of the most prestigious awards granted to college students, with recipients selected on the basis of high academic achievement, personal integrity, leadership potential and a commitment to service. The Rhodes Trust provides full financial support for the pursuit of a degree at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

New Bass Connections Project Researches Alzheimer’s Disease

Duke's Bass Connections selected Ornit Chiba-Falek, Boris Kantor, and Misha Angrist's project under the Brain & Society theme. Their project, Gene Therapy in Alzheimer’s Disease: Novel Therapies and Ethical Aspects of Somatic Gene Editing, will advance development of new gene therapy technologies that will target age-related brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. Students will conduct research on Alzheimer’s disease etiology and mechanisms using cutting-edge genome editing technologies and state-of-the-art stem cell techniques.

In Cellular Studies, Gene Editing Rescues Parkinson's Disease Phenotypes

In a gene editing experiment involving human induced pluripotent stem cells from a patient with a familial form of Parkinson's disease, turning up DNA methylation led to a downregulation of SNCA messenger-RNA and reduced alpha-synuclein protein levels by about a third — sufficient to reverse the mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular vulnerability, and neuronal death that are part of the disease's pathological phenotype.

Research Roundup: December 2018

Here are summaries of a selection of the papers published by GCB faculty in December 2018:

DISEASE AND MENTAL HEALTH

Charlie Gersbach was part of a team that used adeno-associated virus-mediated (AAV-mediated) CRISPR gene editing therapy on mouse models to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The team discovered they need to increase the levels of guide RNA to improve the effectiveness of this gene editing approach. Read more