Field Notes V

Welcome back to Field Notes! Hope you enjoy this week’s mix!

Using CRISPR to Fight Viruses in Humans

CRISPR is typically thought of as a tool to edit DNA in order to fix genetic defects that lead to disease or to enhance certain genetic traits — but what’s less talked about is the fact that the mechanism originally evolved in bacteria as a way to fend off viruses called bacteriophages. Now scientists have found a way to potentially adapt this ability to fight viruses in human cells using the Cas13 enzyme. While there are certainly questions still to be answered, such as how to deliver the Cas13 to target a virus in a living person, the potential of this technology to create an antiviral system that could detect and destroy viral DNA in vivo could be game-changing. Full paper here.

Gates and NIH Taking Moonshot on Gene-based Cures for HIV and Sickle Cell

The NIH last week published a very helpful overview of the Institute’s recently announced collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop in vivo gene-based cures for HIV and sickle cell disease. Though sickle cell disease, a heritable disease, and HIV, an acquired disease, present different scientific challenges, both disproportionately affect the developing world and gene-based treatments hold promise for both.

“In recent years, gene-based treatments have been groundbreaking for rare genetic disorders and infectious diseases. While these treatments are exciting, people in low- and middle-income countries do not have access to these breakthroughs. By working with the NIH and scientists across Africa, we aim to ensure these approaches will improve the lives of those most in need and bring the incredible promise of gene-based treatments to the world of public health.”

- Trevor Mundel, M.D., Ph.D., President, Global Health Program, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Highlighting the Importance of Inclusion in Genomic Medicine

Research presented last week at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) has once again highlighted the lack of diversity currently represented within genomic medicine. Africa is the most genetically diverse continent on the planet, and yet only 2% of genomic samples are taken from people of African descent. Most studies linking a DNA variant to a disease or other trait have been done on Europeans, and the human “reference genome” — hailed as the blueprint of humankind — is missing millions of DNA sequences that are found only in Africans, people of African ancestry are at risk of not benefiting from gene-based personalized medicine.

Guns, Germs, and More Germs

Yale historian Frank Snowden’s new book, Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present, is on the priority reading list here at Adjuvant. You can expect a more thorough commentary here when one of us gets to it, but until then, check out this review by Laura Spinney in Nature. Two spooky quotes from Kinney’s review:

The starkest reminder that the battle is not won, however, is that only one infectious disease has been eradicated globally: smallpox.

Salus populi suprema lex, he reminds us: public health must be the highest law. He has preached that message to generations of Yale undergraduates, and repeats it in this book. The risk is only that he is preaching to the converted.

Thanks!

-Michael Chang (mchang@adjuvantcapital.com)

-Charlie Petty (charlie@adjuvantcapital.com)