Valentin Sluch, United States

I received my PhD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where I studied retinal development and disease using human pluripotent stem cells in the laboratory of Dr. Don Zack. During my PhD I developed novel stem cell differentiation and CRISPR gene editing methods. After completing my PhD, I pursued a postdoc at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in the department of ophthalmology where I studied misunderstood genes that cause retinal degeneration. Following my postdoc, I joined the Regenerative Medicine department at CRISPR Therapeutics. At CRISPR Therapeutics, I lead a group focused on CRISPR based gene editing addressing immune evasion and cell fitness of pluripotent stem cells that could be differentiated to pancreatic endoderm precursor cells and transplanted into patients to treat type 1 diabetes. CRISPR Therapeutics in collaboration with ViaCyte currently has two ongoing clinical trials (VCTX210 and VCTX211) addressing T1D.