Gabriel Licina stood before an audience at Biohack the Planet conference and delivered an impassioned presentation about an initiative undertaken with two friends – to reverse engineer gene therapy drug Glybera in order to make it available free.
Josiah Zayner is an eccentric biohacker with a Ph.D. who maintains an engaging public persona while often clashing with regulatory bodies. His company, Odin, sells mail-order kits that allow individuals to experiment with CRISPR and glow-in-the-dark yeast technology.
CRISPR Kits
Josiah Zayner is a biophysicist who has developed mail-order CRISPR kits that enable anyone to genetically engineer their cells at home using CRISPR. While some worry this form of experimentation could have dire and life-altering repercussions, Zayner sees it as an opportunity to accelerate research, experimentation and development of this groundbreaking technology that could cure diseases such as cancer, blindness and Tay-Sachs as well as regenerate hearts limbs or organs for those in need – worrying that scientific communities tend to avoid taking risks with developing game-changing technologies he believes the scientific community is too coddled and risk averse in regards to creating revolutionary technologies like this game-changer technology.
This article originally appeared on Freethink and has been reproduced here with their permission.
