2016 Undergraduate Summer Research Program Participant and 2017 Student Mentor

Home Department: Bioengineering
Supported by: The Rose Hills Foundation
Mentor: Stanley Qi, Bioengineering and Chemical & Systems Biology

Photo of USRP student Aris Kare in the lab, displaying cells on a screen in bright colors while working in a fume hood.Aris is using a novel CRISPRi system to study pathological neuron cells afflicted by Huntington’s disease. He is particularly interested in down-regulating the “CAG” repeat sequence of the HTT gene that leads to the development of mutant Huntingtin protein. Ultimately, he aims to suppress the defective protein enough to halt the onset of Huntington’s disease, allowing for insight as to how mutant Huntingtin affects neuron cell physiology.

Poster presented at the Stanford Bio-X Interdisciplinary Initiatives Symposium on August 24, 2016:

Hunting for New Therapeutic Approaches: Using CRISPR Systems to Treat Huntington’s Chorea

Aris John Kare1, Dehua Zhao1, Lei Stanley Qi1,2,3
[Departments of Bioengineering1 and Chemical & Systems Biology2 and ChEM-H3, Stanford University]