CRISPR - Gene Editing Technology

CRISPR (short for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”) is a technology that research scientists use to selectively modify the DNA of living organisms.

Dr. Whalley will discuss the history of CRISPR, how it used as a tool in research, possible therapeutic uses and ethical issues.

Dr. Whalley is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Cancer Cell Biology, Immunology, and Infection, Chicago Medical School, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science.  

He was educated in the UK (M.Sci. Mathematics, University of Bristol) and France (Ph.D. Bioinformatics, University of Évry).

He moved to Spain to work as a postdoc at the National Center for Genomic Analysis (CNAG). During his time there, he ran the Quality Control working group for the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project to assess the data coming in and reduce batch effects. This involved collaboration with researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the German Cancer Research Center and the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK.

He returned to the UK to work as a Senior Bioinformatician at the University of Oxford. His time there coincided with the global pandemic and he was deeply involved in the COvid-19 Multi-omics Blood ATlas (COMBAT) consortium as the lead for the Integration (Tensor) working group.

Dr. Whalley became a member of the faculty of the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in January 2023.

Host: Steve Fox