Horizon Scanning Working Group genome engineering workshop
On the 26th and 27th of November, the Network’s Horizon Scanning Working Group held its second workshop designed to build a UK community around the latest advances in genome engineering technologies. The workshop was held at the Francis Crick Institute and was attended by approximately 40 experts drawn from the NMGN Clusters, academic genome engineering facilities, the pharmaceutical industry and third sector. Additional support from the Francis Crick and University Partnership Networking Fund enabled the participation of numerous delegates from KCL, UCL and Imperial College, who joined representatives from more than 20 organisations across England, Scotland and Wales.
The first meeting, held in February 2024 at the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Manchester Institute, focused on genetically altered mouse models, but the 2025 meeting broadened the scope to cover other model systems, including organoids, human iPS and CAR-T cells. Sessions focused on split recombinases, prime editors, CRISPR knockout screens and saturation mutagenesis, with researchers at the forefront of these fields presenting their latest work to the group. The meeting retained its strong focus on networking, knowledge exchange and promoting excellence in transgenic technologies for preclinical modelling and therapeutics: themes which are central to the goals of the National Mouse Genetics Network.
The meeting was organised by Antony Adamson of the University of Manchester, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, Ben Davies of the Francis Crick Institute and lead of the Horizon Scanning Associate Cluster, Natalia Moncaut of the CRUK Manchester Institute, Douglas Strathdee of the CRUK Scotland Institute in Glasgow, Lydia Teboul from the Mary Lyon Centre at MRC Harwell, and Andrew Wood of the Institute of Genetics and Cancer in Edinburgh and lead of the Network’s Degron Tagging Cluster.