BSGCT Blogs

Developing a practical, accessible resource to support Research Ethics Committees reviewing gene therapy trials. Authors: Rosie Munday, Hugh Davies and Stephanie Jones with the Oxford “A” Health Research Authority Research Ethics Committee. Following much public criticism of the oversight of…

By M. Rebeca Gil Garzón (PhD Student at Royal Holloway University of London, BSGCT Board member as an ECR). The journey so far… For any new technology there is always an adoption curve as the field gathers momentum. In the…

Authors: Rosie Mundy and Aimee Lucignoli Viruses have a long history of causing illness and disease, but a recent BSGCT blog post highlighted how they can also be used for good (https://www.bsgct.org/post/making-gene-and-cell-therapy-possible-viruses). By engineering, mutating and even a bit of…

Author: Sam Goldsmith PhD, Senior Commercialisation of Research Manager, CGT Catapult. The Valley of Death is a well-known and steep sided precipice over which the academic community are asked to traverse when translating novel therapeutic concepts into the clinic. However,…

So, we understand the problem. How do we fix it? Author: Alexander T. Baker, Senior Scientist, Accession Therapeutics Years of research have borne fruit, we have built an understanding of what causes a disease and, crucially, what needs to be…

Authors: Prof Alan Parker, February 2022. In late 2019, the world could never have foreseen the impact that a new, emerging zoonotic coronavirus could possibly have across the planet. Fast forward 12 months, hundreds of millions of cases of SARS-CoV-2…

Author: Dr Rajvinder Karda, University College London, 16 December 2021 Rare disease is defined by the European Commission on Public Health as life threatening or chronically debilitating conditions whose prevalence is less than 5 per 10,000 (1). NHS England published…

Authors: Dr Christos Georgiadis, October 2021. While this year has to most felt as though life came to a standstill, the field of genome editing has experienced unprecedented momentum. With CRISPR basking in the limelight following on from the joint…

Author: Prof. Rafael J. Yáñez-Muñoz, Royal Holloway University of London, 30 August 2021 Vaccines are very much still a hot topic in the news! What is going on with vaccines for COVID-19 (more exactly against the coronavirus causing it, which…

Authors: Miss Caitlin Dop and Dr Carly Bliss, May 2021. In response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, a number of COVID-19 vaccines have received emergency licensure. The majority of these vaccines deliver the genetic material encoding the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. This…