Workshops

Dr. Francisco Martin is a professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Granada and principal investigator of the Gene and Cell Therapy Group at GENYO.

Dr Martin is the main founder and principal scientific advisor of LentiStem Biotech. Over the past 25 years, his work has focused on developing more efficient and safer gene modification tools for advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) targeting cancer and rare diseases.

Dr. Martin's research includes ex vivo approaches using lentiviral vectors and genome-editing tools (CRISPR) for the genetic modification of haematopoietic stem cells and T cells. His group is developing new therapeutic strategies for treating Pompe disease, refractory type B leukaemia, and solid tumours (CAR-T cells) using these technologies.

He has supervised more than eight projects focused on developing new genome-editing tools and their application in generating GE-ATMPs. He is currently president-elect of the Spanish Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (SETGyC), coordinator of the gene therapy program of the TerAv+ network and coordinator of the work packages of the COST GenHumDi network.

In 2022, Dr. Martin was appointed coordinator of the Genomic Medicine area and was recently appointed deputy scientific director of GENYO.

Dr. Julián Cerón is the Principal Investigator of the group '¨Modelling diseases in C. elegans'¨ at Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Genetics at the University of Barcelona.

His team uses CRISPR-Cas9 technology to mimic human mutations in nematodes, and to tag endogenous genes in vivo. His group developed the NESTED CRISPR methodology to insert large fragments of DNA efficiently into the genome (Vicencio et al., Genetics, 2019).

Dr. Cerón's lab contributed to demonstrating the suitability of minimal PAM Cas9 variants for genome editing in animals (Vicencio et al, Nature Comm 2021), and promotes the use of C. elegans as an animal model to characterise novel Cas nucleases (Vicencio Ceron and Morena-Mateos, CRISPR Journal, 2022).

Dr. Ceron´s present research is focused in developing novel Cas9 nucleases with distinct features to expand the CRISPR-Cas toolbox. He is a co-inventor on two patents recently filed on novel Cas9 nucleases isolated from metagenomes of the Deep Ocean.

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Dr. Yonglun Luo is a geneticist specialised in genome technology and regenerative medicine, and a full professor at the Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University and the Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark.

His research interests encompass gene transcription control, single-cell and spatial RNA sequencing, cancer biology, genetics, epigenetics, stem cell biology, CRISPR gene editing and gene therapy.

Within the CRISPR field, his research focuses on the discovery of alternative CRISPR gene-editing systems with high activity and specificity, design of CRISPR with high throughput profiling and deep learning modelling, development and improvement of CRISPR delivery using lipid nanoparticles, and the application of CRISPR gene editing as therapy for neuromuscular diseases.

Throughout his career, Professor Luo has been involving several significant CRISPR research projects from the Innovation Fund Denmark, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Lundbeck Foundation, and Horizon 2020. He has also led the delivery technology working group for the GenE-HumDi COST-Action. Professor Luo’s research aims to make CRISPR more effective, safer, affordable, and reachable for all patients.

Amalie Lykke Olsen, MEng, is a PhD student at the Department of Biomedicine, Faculty of Health, Aarhus University in Denmark. She has been working on the development of lipid nanoparticle formulations to improve the in vivo delivery efficiency and specificity of CRISPR-Cas9 RNA components for a novel Duchenne muscular dystrophy therapy.

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Dr. Carla Fuster is a biologist with a PhD in Biotechnology from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain) and with over a decade of experience in CRISPR technology. Her interdisciplinary background spans rare diseases to cancer cell therapy.

Currently at the Universitätsklinikum Freiburg, Dr. Fuster’s research focuses on two interconnected topics: optimising gene-editing strategies in the context of immunotherapies and, more strongly, understanding and identifying the potential genotoxic consequences derived from off-target editing activity.

She is the leader of the Safety Issues Working Group for GenE-HumDi, a COST-Action consortium represented by researchers from over 40 countries dedicated to advancing gene editing approaches for human diseases.

Dr. Fuster’s research aims to ensure the safety and reliability of CRISPR platforms to accelerate their translation into clinical applications.

Dr. Laura Torella is a Biologist and Biotechnologist with a Ph.D. in Applied Medicine and Biomedicine from the University of Navarra. Her expertise lies in in vivo gene therapy, genome editing, and rare diseases, with a strong focus on optimising CRISPR-based strategies for safer and more precise gene-editing approaches.

During her first postdoctoral experience, she explored the mechanisms of unexpected AAV integration at CRISPR-Cas-induced DNA breaks, aiming to understand the role of DNA repair pathways in determining insertion frequency.

Dr. Torella is an active member of the scientific community; she has served as a Student Board Member of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy and is the Young Researcher and Innovator Committee Coordinator for the COST Action GenE-HumDi. She also moderates Genome Editing Chat, an educational webinar series supported by GenE-HumDi in collaboration with CRISPR Medicine News.

Her research aims to advance genome editing technologies for more reliable and precise editing outcomes, a crucial requirement for therapeutic applications.