Personalized Medicine: Using Skin & Blood Cells to Cure Blindness

While the idea of adapting treatment for individual patients has been around for centuries, recent strides in stem cell research have made personalized medicine a reality. Since 2006, scientists including Leah Foltz have mastered methods for reprogramming adult cells into stem cells. In her research, Foltz uses stem cells created from the skin or blood of a patient with an inherited blinding disease. With gene-editing technology, she can correct the disease-causing mutation to better understand what goes wrong and to potentially use these cells as a personalized treatment.

Speaker: Leah Foltz, UC Santa Barbara