Approval for Vertex Pharmaceutical’s sickle cell treatment using CRISPR technology has brought use of the gene-editing therapy to a “collision point,” according to Professor Jacob Sherkow. Speaking to the MIT Technology Review, Sherkow explained how the patent on editing human cells using CRISPR is owned by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, not Vertex, […]

Professor Jacob Sherkow is a co-author on a new paper published by the National Academy of Medicine examining the rise of telehealth and the digital transformation of healthcare. The discussion paper is part of a new NAM Perspectives series explores emerging science and technology applications in order to better understand, anticipate, and develop governance for future […]

Professor Jacob Sherkow travelled to Cologne, Germany, in September to deliver a lecture as part of the CMMC Symposium in Molecular Medicine. The Symposium was titled “From Concepts to Clinic: a New Era of Nucleic Acid Therapeutics,” and aimed to provide attendees with an in-depth understanding of the chemical, biological and clinical challenges in the […]

Writing with fellow patent experts, Professors Bernard Chao and Timothy Holbrook of the University of Denver School of Law and Professor Mark A. Lemley of Stanford Law School, Professor Jacob Sherkow submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The brief is written in response to the decision made by the Patent Trial and […]

The Earth BioGenome Project has an ambitious plan to sequence a genome from every plant, animal, and fungus on the planet, as well as from many single-celled organisms, such as algae. As detailed in the New Yorker, the project faces a formidable foe in their quest to save the valuable genetic information encoded in each […]

Her cells are “immortal,” and so, it seems, is the legal battle over ownership of those cells. In an article about a recently settled lawsuit brought by the family of Henrietta Lacks, the woman whose cells were used without her knowledge or consent in research that helped develop treatments for many diseases, the New York […]

Professor Jacob Sherkow has co-authored a paper, “Regulating Direct-to-Consumer Polygenic Risk Scores,” that was published in JAMA. In the paper, the authors argue that polygenic risk scores, which are used to predict risk factors for particular conditions using genetic data, require better government regulation.  Read the full paper at jamanetwork.com. More from Sherkow on polygenic […]