John Zuris, PhD

Senior Director – Delivery and Editing Technologies at Editas Medicine

Speaker

John Zuris is the Senior Director of Delivery and Editing Technologies at Editas Medicine, a genome editing company focused on using CRISPR gene editing technology to treat patients suffering from severe diseases. His group leverages Editas’ proprietary engineered AsCas12a nuclease to achieve the best editing outcome for a chosen indication, with a key focus on treating sickle cell disease. John made notable contributions to Editas’ first sickle cell program, Reni-cel, which is an ex vivo autologous treatment for sickle cell disease. The group in recent years has pivoted to developing a potential in vivo treatment option for sickle cell, as such an approach may be able to provide clinical benefit to a far broader set of patients both nationally and globally. His group is currently tasked with developing methods to achieve efficient targeted delivery and in vivo gene editing using lipid nanoparticle delivery technology. Prior to joining Editas Medicine, John completed his postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. David Liu (Harvard University-Broad Institute) where he developed a lipid nanoparticle delivery system for CRISPR-Cas9 RNPs which allows for highly efficient genome editing in ex vivo and in vivo applications.