Page URL: https://www.progress.org.uk/

This week at the Progress Educational Trust (18 June 2021)

Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, Professor Vardit Ravitsky, Dr Norah Fogarty and Dr Peter Mills, speakers at the Progress Educational Trust's FREE-to-attend public event 'Changing the Human Genome: What Next for Germline Genome Editing?', being held online on Wednesday 14 July 2021The Progress Educational Trust (PET)'s next free-to-attend online event will be 'Changing the Human Genome: What Next for Germline Genome Editing?', taking place on Wednesday 14 July 2021 from 5.30pm-7.30pm (BST).

This event is supported by the Association of Reproductive and Clinical Scientists, and will be chaired by Sarah Norcross (Director of (PET). Speakers include:

  • Professor Robin Lovell-Badge (Member of the World Health Organisation's Expert Advisory Committee on Developing Global Standards for Governance and Oversight of Human Genome Editing)

  • Professor Vardit Ravitsky (President of the International Association of Bioethics)

  • Dr Norah Fogarty (Group Leader at King's College London's Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine, and one of the first researchers to edit the genomes of human embryos in order to study the function of a gene)

  • Dr Peter Mills (Assistant Director of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, and project lead for the report Genome Editing and Human Reproduction: Social and Ethical Issues)

How should germline genome editing be used, governed and regulated, nationally and internationally? What criteria would need to be met, before the use of germline genome editing in treatment could be given the green light?

These questions are the subject of an imminent report by the World Health Organisation (WHO), and will be explored in detail at the 14 July event. Find out more here, and register for your free place here.

One of the speakers at the event – Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, who is Chair of Trustees at PET and a contributor to the forthcoming WHO report – also led the task force that has developed the latest guidelines of the International Society for Stem Cell Research.

These guidelines cover a wide range of research and clinical practices involving stem cells and human embryos, including genome editing. Robin discusses the new guidelines with Sandy Starr (Deputy Director of (PET) in the following video.