Page 18 - Christiana Care Focus

Christiana Care takes leadership role at 2019 BIO International Convention
Bringing CRISPR technology to minority communities: Eric Kmiec heads expert panel
While the extraordinary potential of CRISPR gene editing technology is now being realized, it is not yet reaching minority communities.
That was the take-away message of a panel discussion on how genome editing can impact unmet medical needs moderated by Eric Kmiec, Ph.D., director of Christiana Care’s Gene Editing Institute, at the
2019 BIO International Convention in Philadelphia on June 5. Innovation and industry leaders converged in Philadelphia
and the Delaware Valley for the biggest annual event in bioscience.
“More than two decades after the National Institutes of Health set out to ensure
the inclusion of minorities and women
in federally funded clinical research, minorities still account for less than 10% of patients enrolled in clinical trials,”
Dr. Kmiec said.
Read Dr. Kmiec’s interview with Front Line Genomics at frontlinegenomics.com
For example, take sickle cell disease. It affects one in every 2,500 African- Americans. Compare that with cystic
fibrosis, which occurs in one of every 2,500 whites. Since 1996, there have been nine drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of cystic fibrosis and only one for sickle cell disease.
“Over the past seven years, more than 80% of the participants in genome studies have been from people of European descent,” said Debra Mathews, Ph.D., associate professor, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. “There’s a huge amount of genetic diversity that we simply don’t have access to, to develop treatments for certain diseases.”
Eric Kmiec, Ph.D., Christiana Care’s Gene Editing Institute; Jonathan Marron, M.D., MPH, pediatric oncologist, bioethicist, researcher, Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, Harvard Medical School; Debra Mathews, Ph.D., associate professor, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics; and Giorgio Sirugo, M.D., Ph.D., medical geneticist and adjunct associate professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
news.christianacare.org
16 CHRISTIANA CARE HEALTH SYSTEM
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