3rd International Conference on CRISPR Technologies

American Institute Of Chemical Engineers, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

The 3rd International Conference on CRISPR Technologies will be held in Wurzburg, Germany on September 16-18, 2019. This conference provides a multidisciplinary forum for biologists, chemists, engineers, and ethicists to advance Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technologies for genetic manipulation. Organized under the auspices of the Society for Biological Engineering (SBE), a technical community within the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), this international conference will bring together renowned experts, established researchers, young investigators, private sector scientists and engineers, and graduate students. This group will assess the state of CRISPR technologies and identify the challenges of integrating genome engineering approaches in cells, plants, and animals. Importantly, the social, ethical, and economic implications of CRISPR-based technologies will be heavily emphasized. CRISPR technologies have advanced rapidly in the past decade and have already proven to be transformational for genome engineering. Present and future applications of CRISPR technologies range from medicinal therapeutics and organ transplantation to uses in livestock, crops, food organisms, and industrial microbes. While our knowledge of different CRISPR systems is rapidly advancing, the lack of integration between biologists and engineers impairs the safe and effective implementation of basic research into clinical and industrial applications. For example, an integrated approach that brings biologists and engineers together would greatly benefit efforts to produce CRISPR-edited organoids from engineered cells to ultimately reconstruct tissues that could be transplanted into patients. Additionally, CRISPR-based approaches will be critical in engineering livestock and agriculture that can better perform in our rapidly changing climate. These ambitious goals require the intersection of viewpoints, knowledge, and technologies from multiple disciplines, and this conference will provide a mechanism for such collaborations. Furthermore, the broader social and ethical implications of genome editing will be a highlighted topic of discussion. The Society for Biological Engineering has a very strong track record in organizing important new scientific meetings, and the proceedings of the conference will be disseminated to the public on AIChE's website. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.