Our lab aims to cure genetic diseases using state-of-the-art genome-engineering technology. This involves using patient-specific induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to derive tissue from patients who carry disease mutations that could benefit from therapeutic genome editing with CRISPR.
Our major accomplishments include establishing precise genome editing methods for disease modeling and therapy, establishing an efficient method to produce single base changes in iPSCs, and pioneering the use of CRISPRi to epigenetically control gene expression in iPSCs.
Bruce Conklin, MD
Bruce R. Conklin is a senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes. He is also a professor in the Departments of Medicine, Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, and Ophthalmology at UC San Francisco, as well as the deputy director of the Innovative Genomics Institute. Conklin earned a bachelor’s degree in public health from UC Berkeley and completed his medical training at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. During medical school, he spent 2 years as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Scholar in the lab of Nobel laureate Julius Axelrod, PhD, at the National Institute of Mental Health. Conklin completed his residency in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and did his postdoctoral training in molecular pharmacology with Henry Bourne, MD, at UC San Francisco.
Give Heart Cells a Beat
At the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco, one of the most popular exhibits is “Give Heart Cells a Beat,” which opens a rare window into the microscopic world of the beating human heart. The exhibit is made possible through a long-running collaboration with scientists in the Conklin Lab.