An important step in domestic gene treatment in SMA…

Üsküdar University Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Department of Biology and Genetics (English) Assist. Prof. Cihan Taştan and Project team were accepted with their Project within the scope of TÜSEB (Health Institutes of Türkiye) B Group R&D Project Call.

Üsküdar University Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Department of Biology and Genetics (English) Assist. Prof. Cihan Taştan received a positive reply from his application with the project with the title of “In Vitro and Ex Vitro Study of New Generation CRISPR-Prime Editing that targets Exon 7/Intron 7 of SMN2 Gene Regulation in Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) and Approaches in SMN1 Encoding Motor Neuron Cell Specific Neural Lentivirus” within the scope of TÜSEB B Group R&D Project Call held in March.

“In Vitro and Ex Vitro Study of New Generation CRISPR-Prime Editing that targets Exon 7/Intron 7 of SMN2 Gene Regulation in Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) and Approaches in SMN1 Encoding Motor Neuron Cell Specific Neural Lentivirus”

Taştan said that we developed original and one and only gene therapy methods in the world since we have started to develop domestic gene therapy methods for Spinal Muscular Dystrophy (SMA) in 2021 and continued: “we are so glad to receive an approve with full support by Health Institutes of Türkiye (TÜSEB) with our application to raise candidates of prototype of SMA gene therapy that we will develop as a result of our project. We will have determined our candidates of prototype gene therapy that we aim to use on SMA model animals as a result of our project supported for 24 months. I owe a sincere gratitude to our University President Prof. Nevzat Tarhan and all of our directors who enable us to establish the Transgenic Cell Technologies and Epigenetics (TRGENMER) where we carry out our prominent studies of Türkiye on Gene Therapy and Cancer Immunotherapy R&D, which provides to constitute our expert researcher staff to realize our research.”.

Taştan was in charge as a Project Coordinator and those who were in his team are as follows:  INTERGEN Genetics and Rare Diseases Diagnosis Research & Application Center Researcher Assoc. Prof. Serdar Ceylaner, TRGENMER (Transgenic Cell Technologies and Epigenetics) post graduate scholarship holder Enes Bal, Sibel Pınar Odabaş, Gamze Yelgen, Ayşenur Kurt, Bahar Çandur and under graduate scholarship holder Görkem Akgül.

ÜSKÜDAR NEWS AGENCY (ÜNA)