{"id":108190,"date":"2020-06-04T18:42:44","date_gmt":"2020-06-05T01:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/scientists-aim-gene-targeting-breakthrough-against-covid-19"},"modified":"2020-06-04T18:42:44","modified_gmt":"2020-06-05T01:42:44","slug":"scientists-aim-gene-targeting-breakthrough-against-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/scientists-aim-gene-targeting-breakthrough-against-covid-19","title":{"rendered":"Scientists aim gene-targeting breakthrough against COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-aim-gene-targeting-breakthrough-against-covid-192.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A team of scientists from Stanford University is working with researchers at the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience user facility located at the Department of Energy\u2019s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), to develop a gene-targeting, antiviral agent against COVID-19.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, Stanley Qi, an assistant professor in the departments of bioengineering, and chemical and <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/systems+biology\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">systems biology<\/a> at Stanford University and his team had begun working on a technique called PAC-MAN\u2014or Prophylactic Antiviral CRISPR in <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/human+cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">human cells <\/a>\u2014that uses the gene-editing tool CRISPR to fight influenza.<\/p>\n<p>But that all changed in January, when news of the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. Qi and his team were suddenly confronted with a mysterious new virus for which no one had a clear solution. \u201cSo we thought, \u2018Why don\u2019t we try using our PAC-MAN technology to fight it?\u2019\u201d said Qi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A team of scientists from Stanford University is working with researchers at the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience user facility located at the Department of Energy\u2019s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), to develop a gene-targeting, antiviral agent against COVID-19. Last year, Stanley Qi, an assistant professor in the departments of bioengineering, and chemical and systems [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,19,412,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-genetics","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}