How cell therapy differs from gene therapy
Prof Anna David leads a team of scientists and clinicians at UCL that are finding new and fascinating ways to treat diseases in the unborn. Brittle bone disease One such …
Course: Making Babies in the 21st Century
Regulating the future
In this interview, Juliet Tizzard of the HFEA explains the difference between embryo research and embryo treatment. This separation is what allows research on genome editing to develop in the …
Need for new legislation
In this brief segment, Emily Jackson highlights the fact that genome editing has the potential to revolutionise treatment of disease and that we should try to avoid the scaremongering of …
What is gene therapy?
What is gene therapy? Gene therapy offers the possibility of correcting genetic errors. It is a technique that has already shown great potential. UCL is acknowledged as a leader in …
The implications of genome editing
What are the implications of the effort to engineer the human genome? Whatever they are, as Professor Bronwyn Perry states here, they are immense. It is clear that there is …
The potential of genome editing
To conclude the content for Week 6, we return to Dr Simon Waddington, and asks him what he thinks is the future of gene therapy and genome editing. In answering …
Targeted genome editing with CRISPR
When we think of bacteria, most of us probably think of the lurking menace of infection and disease. However, not all bacteria are bad. In fact, it could be that …
What is genome editing?
In this article, we will start by looking at mitochondrial donation, then move on to gene therapy, as well as gene editing. As before, we will explore the science, the …
What is international surrogacy?
International surrogacy International gestational surrogacy is a surrogacy arrangement involving a surrogate mother who lives in an overseas country. The surrogate may also be called the gestational carrier, as she …
International surrogacy and the law
Different legal frameworks are involved in cross-border surrogacy, so trying to untangle the legal obligations of each party can be tricky. For example, while U.K. permits only altruistic surrogacy, British …
Could international surrogacy ever be ethical?
Surrogacy enables people who are medically and socially infertile, including singles and same-sex couples, the opportunity to become parents and to enjoy the lifelong pleasures of parenthood. For many, this …
What’s special about the labour of labour?
Is carrying someone else’s child as part of a commercial contract necessarily exploitative? Does the fact that the work of pregnancy is carried out in the gestational carrier’s body result …
How antenatal care is changing
Dr Pranav Pandya, Director of the Fetal Medicine Unit at UCLH and a senior clinical lecturer at UCL, explains the current fetal screening programme and how non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) …
What is prenatal testing?
What is prenatal testing? The term prenatal testing can broadly be used to describe all tests that are performed during pregnancy with the aim to screen and diagnose maternal and …
PGD for risk genes?
Caroline carries the BRCA mutation, an unexpected inheritance from her father. Here she provides an insightful view on the implications of carrier knowledge in terms of personal health and family …
