Featuring

Chris Gunter, Ph.D.
Director of Research Affairs at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology

As the Director of Research Affairs, she is focused on developing groundbreaking technology that will make sequencing personalized genomes an affordable service that will change the way diseases are diagnosed and treated. For six years, she was the Senior Editor of Nature magazine and currently serves as adjunct assistant professor of Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania. She will address the advancements in personalized medicine, including gene therapies.

Alvaro Estevez, Ph.D.
Professor of Weill Cornell Medical College

Dr. Estevez is an associate professor of Weill Cornell School of Medicine in the Department of Neurology and Neurosciences. A Ph.D. graduate of the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, he is a specialist in genetics and the role of reactive nitrogenous species in the induction of cell death. He has published more than a dozen papers on neurodegenerative diseases and their pathologies. He believes that gene therapy does not work for everyone because the etiology of diseases are not based on genetics alone, but on mechanisms at the cellular level.

Ellen Wright Clayton, M.D., J.D.
Professor of Vanderbilt University

Dr. Clayton is a professor of law and medicine at Vanderbilt University. A Rosalind E. Franklin Professor of Genetics and Health Policy, she has advised federal and international bodies on many topics ranging from children's health to the ethical conduct of research involving human subjects. She has conducted a number of projects with the Institute of Health and has published two books and over 60 scholarly articles and chapters on medicine and public health. A prominent speaker on gene therapy, she will offer a perspective from an ethical viewpoint.

Nicholaos Jones, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of the University of Alabama in Huntsville

Dr. Jones is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at UAH. He specializes in idealization, explanation, and confirmation in the sciences. He received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University, and currently teaches three philosophy courses.

Background

Traits of an individual are expressed by genes, which encode for proteins that perform biochemical functions and make up cellular structures. Sequencing a person's genome can provide a great deal of information about how that individual's genes are being expressed. Many diseases are caused by mutations of known genes. Such diseases can be treated by gene therapy, which is a treatment by which an abnormal gene responsible for disease development is replaced by either a nonfunctional gene or a "normal" gene. Another method of gene therapy involves the regulation of gene expression. In addition, traditional treatments can be tailored to suit the patient's genetic makeup. However, sequencing a person's entire genome is very expensive.

Currently, gene therapy has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for clinical treatment. In 1999, research for gene therapy suffered a major setback when 18 year-old Jesse Gelsinger died four days after being treated for ornithine transcarboxylase deficiency (OTCD) in a gene therapy clinical trial. Although genetic information can provide critical information for correctly diagnosing and treating diseases, researchers are still developing the technology and privacy issues concerning the use of this information must be considered.

The Personalized Medicine Symposium is designed to inform the public about the benefits and dangers of using a patient's gene expression profile to tailor medical care. This event is free to the public.

Contact uahbiologyclub@gmail.com for more information.