Synthetic Biology for Human Health
Co-Chairs: Víctor J Cid (Professor of Microbiology, Complutense University, Faculty of Pharmacy); Charles L Evavold (Early Independence Fellow; Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard Medical School); Jonathan C. Kagan (Marian R. Neutra Professor of Pediatrics; Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital)
The emerging field of Synthetic Biology engulfs multidisciplinary approaches aimed at engineering living cells.
After the initial discoveries made in the second half of the 20th century, that boosted DNA recombinant technology and the rise of the Genomic Era at the turn of the millennium, our ability to manipulate cellular systems has been fueled in the latest years with further advances. Just to mention a couple of milestones, the breakthrough of computational science and artificial intelligence, and the development of powerful techniques such as CRISPR-Cas genomic editing or mRNA-based technology have been substantial to the current trends in biomedical research. Thus, we are living through a scientific-technical revolution that opens remarkable opportunities for the prevention and treatment of diseases, advancing research in medical and pharmaceutical sciences.
The prompt responsiveness of the scientific community to urgent crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemics, is evidence of this scenario. Engineering viruses, bacterial cells or communities, or even higher cells or tissues by means of Synthetic Biology approaches allows reprogramming biological systems, thus opening new research avenues to regulate tissue homeostasis, or to diagnose, prevent or treat diverse pathologies.
The production of pharmaceutics, from vaccines to drugs, by integrating heterologous genes or full pathways in a microbial chassis is an approach that contributes dramatically to lowering the cost of industrial production of essential drugs. Also, reprogrammed biological systems, either viral, bacterial or human, have proven efficient as oncolytic therapies. As a paradigm, human chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) T-cells, based on lymphocytes acquired from the patient, engineered ex vivo and reintroduced as an immunotherapy to treat tumors, stand as a state-of-the-art line of attack against tumors.
Main goals of the RCC Study Group on ‘Synthetic Biology for Human Health’:
-Exploration and debate on development and innovation in the field.
-Promoting a multidisciplinary approach by merging into Synthetic Biology from the diverse but overlapping fields of Microbiology and Immunology.
-Bridging the academic gap in this emerging field between the Spanish and Boston area-based scientific communities, by promoting research collaborations for potential joint international funding, and mobility of researchers.
-Designing both mammalian and microbial systems to advance knowledge of the innate immune response and cell death pathways, with the goal is to devising novel therapeutic interventions against inflammation, autoimmune disease and malignancies.
-Understanding at the molecular level the strategies involved in immune evasion by viral and bacterial pathogens during the development of infectious diseases.
-Discussing strategies to rewire innate immune and cell death pathways in lymphoid cells with diagnostic, preventive or therapeutic aims, as well as the means to develop humanized yeast systems amenable to drug discovery, or functional assessment of either pathologic mutations or microbial virulence factors.