Lab News

Elia received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology from ETH Zurich in 2020. He joined the Corn Lab as a Master student in Molecular & Cellular Biology in March 2021. His research interests include blood diseases, genome engineering, functional genomics, DNA repair mechanisms and CRISPR based research.   

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Alexandra received her Bachelor’s degree in 2018 from the Technical University (TU) of Darmstadt. In February 2021 she joined the Corn Lab and is currently investigating separation-of-function mutations of several genes involved in the Fanconi Anemia (FA) pathway.

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Diego López León received his Master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Berne in 2013. In his Master thesis, he focused on bone marrow stromal cells and their role in CML in the lab of Prof. Adrian Ochsenbein at the DKF/ Inselspital Berne. After that, he worked as Research Assistant at the University of Fribourg, exploring the biology of cytotoxic T-cells and cytotoxic proteins against pathogenic bacteria. Diego joined the Corn lab as a technical expert in February 2021, working on HSCs gene editing. His research interests include gene editing on monogenic diseases, as well as the potential use of CRISPR/Cas9 system to treat cancer.

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Sebastian joined the Corn lab as a PhD student in March 2021. He received his MSc in Biochemistry from ETH Zurich in December 2020 with his work on the therapeutic potential of CRISPR Base- and Prime-Editors for the genetic disease Fanconi Anemia (FA).

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Mandy has just been awarded the Pioneer Fellowship which will allow her to transform her fundamental research into a startup focused on new treatments for blood disorders. The Pioneer Fellowship is hosted by the ETH Innovation & Entrepreneurship Lab.

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Kazuto is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo in Japan. He received the JSPS grant for the Promotion of Joint International Research to study mechanisms of CRISPR-Cas3 mediated genome editing in human cells. He joined the Corn lab in November 2020 and his stay for the research is scheduled for a period of 12 months.

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Grégoire has received his Ph.D. in Cell Biology and Physiopathology from the University of Bordeaux (France) in December 2019 in the lab of Prof. Moreau-Gaudry. He joined the Corn lab as a post-doctoral researcher in January 2021. His research interests include gene editing and monogenic diseases, with a special focus on gene therapy of sickle cell disease.

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Magda is a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry Polish Academy of Sciences. In this academic year, she received the Etiuda 8 grant which is dedicated to young scientists who want to do an internship abroad. Magda has been using CRISPR-Cas9 technology to shorten mutated CAG repeat tract in genes associated with polyQ disorders. Her scholarship is scheduled for 6 months.

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escholarship.org

Flipping the Hemoglobin Switch and Discovering Regulators Involved in Fetal Hemoglobin Reactivation

Author(s): Boontanrart, Mandy | Advisor(s): Corn, Jacob E | Abstract: The fetal to adult hemoglobin switch is a developmental process by which fetal hemoglobin becomes silenced after birth and replaced by adult hemoglobin. Diseases caused by defective or missing adult hemoglobin, such as Sickle Cell Disease or β-Thalassemia, can be ameliorated by reactivating fetal hemoglobin. We discovered that knockdown or knockout of β-globin, a subunit of adult hemoglobin, led to robust upregulation of γ-globin, a subunit of fetal hemoglobin. This phenomenon suggested that red blood cells have an inherent ability to upregulate fetal hemoglobin in the event that adult hemoglobin is lacking.We developed multiple gene-editing tools in an immortalized erythroid cell model to investigate the molecular mechanisms behind the increase in fetal hemoglobin. Time-course transcriptomics identified ATF4, a transcription factor, as a causal regulator of this response. Further analysis also converged upon downregulation of MYB and BCL11A, known repressors of γ-globin, described in detail in chapter 2. Further work in chapter 3 explores other possible fetal hemoglobin regulators as discovered by CRISPRi arrayed mediated knockdown experiments. This work furthers our understanding of fundamental mechanisms of gene regulation and how cellular and molecular events influence red blood cell differentiation.

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