E06 : A Study on Preventing Aortic Dissections in Marfan Patients by Base Editing Smooth Muscle Cells
| Students | Judy Wang
Isabell Zhang |
| School | HDSB - Iroquois Ridge High School - Oakville |
| Level | Senior 11/12 - Grade 11 |
| Group | Group 9 - Health Sciences II |
| Abstract | 1 in 5000 people live with Marfan syndrome, a connective tissue disorder affecting the FBN1 gene, increasing the risk of aortic dissections. Our project proposes a novel genetic engineering technology, base editing, to prevent these life-threatening complications by repairing aortic cells, saving lives and improving life quality. It makes single-stranded breaks in DNA to modify missense errors in genes, having shown promise in pre-clinical trials in stem cells from a Marfan patient and in mouse models with a similar aortic disorder. |