Precision Genome Engineering: From Basic Mechanisms to Application (L1)
March 9-12, 2026
| Fairmont Banff Springs, Banff, AB, Canada
Jonathan S. Weissman, Cecilia Cotta-Ramusino and Joseph Bondy-Denomy
Scholarship Deadline: Nov. 21, 2025 | Abstract Deadline: Feb. 18, 2026 | Early Registration Deadline: Jan. 9, 2026
| 4:00–8:00 PM |
Registration |
Van Horne Foyer |
| 6:00–8:00 PM |
Welcome Mixer |
Van Horne Foyer |
| 7:00–8:00 AM |
Breakfast |
President's Hall |
| 8:00–8:10 AM |
Welcome Remarks (Joint) |
Van Horne A/B |
| 8:10–9:00 AM |
Keynote Session (Joint) |
Van Horne A/B |
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* Jonathan S. Weissman, Whitehead Institute, HHMI, and MIT
Session Chair |
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* Anastasia Khvorova, RNA Therapeutics Institute, UMass Chan Medical School
Session Chair |
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Jennifer A. Doudna, HHMI/University of California, Berkeley
CRISPR Enzyme Evolution and Applications |
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| 9:00–11:00 AM |
Delivery (Joint) |
Van Horne A/B |
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* Charles Gersbach, Duke University
Session Chair |
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Daniel J. Siegwart, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Development of Signal Peptide Engineered Nucleic Acid Design (SEND) mRNAs and Ionizable Phospholipid (iPhos) Lipid Nanoparticles (LNPs) that Control Localization of Protein Therapeutics |
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Anastasia Khvorova, RNA Therapeutics Institute, UMass Chan Medical School
Barcoded Libraries for Targeted siRNA Delivery |
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Leah R Sabin, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
A Modular, Antibody-Based AAV Retargeting Approach For In Vivo Gene Delivery to the CNS |
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| 9:30–9:50 AM |
Coffee Break |
Van Horne Foyer |
| 9:50–9:55 AM |
Award Recipient Acknowledgement |
Van Horne A/B |
| 11:00–1:00 PM |
Poster Setup |
Van Horne C |
| 11:00–5:00 PM |
On Own for Lunch |
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| 1:00–10:00 PM |
Poster Viewing |
Van Horne C |
| 2:30–4:30 PM |
Symposia Spotlight 1: Screening and Delivery |
Van Horne A |
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* Gerald Schwank, University Zurich
Session Chair |
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* Shannon M Miller, Scripps Research
Session Chair |
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Clare Cahir, The Rockefeller University
Cap1 Forms a Cyclic Tetra-adenylate-induced Membrane Pore during the Type III-A CRISPR-Cas Immune Response |
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Christopher J Frangieh, Columbia University Medical Center
Resolving Ambiguity from Variants of Uncertain Significance by Linking Variants, Phenotype, and Allele-specific Expression Bias in Inborn Errors of Immunity |
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Bria L Macklin, Gladstone Institutes
Mutation Agnostic CRISPR Therapeutics to Treat Dominant Neurodegenerative Disease |
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Bushra Raj, University of Pennsylvania
High throughput in vivo Mapping of Signaling Histories with CRISPR Barcodes |
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Christopher Baehr, UC Berkeley
Chemically Modified CRISPR Enzymes for Multi-organ Genome Editing in vivo |
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Wayne Ngo, University of California, Berkeley
Amplified genome editing by in vivo editor production |
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Wells H Burrell, New York Genome Center
Rational Design of Synthetic Proteins Using a Genome-Scale CRISPR Screen |
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| 4:30–5:00 PM |
Coffee Available |
Van Horne Foyer |
| 5:00–7:00 PM |
New Editing Modality |
Van Horne A |
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* Britt Adamson, Princeton University
Session Chair |
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* Xiao Wang, University of Pennsylvania
Session Chair |
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Samuel H Sternberg, Columbia University
CRISPR Guided Transposons |
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Cecilia Cotta-Ramusino, Tessera Therapeutics
Discovery and Application of New Gene Editing Modalities to Treat Disease |
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Erik J Sontheimer, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Prime Assembly with Linear DNA Donors Enables Large Genomic Insertions |
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Shannon M Miller, Scripps Research
Short Talk: Programmable CRISPR-free gene insertion |
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Liam J Bartie, Arc Institute / University of California, Berkeley
Short Talk: Programmable Genome Rearrangement at Megabase Scale with Bridge Recombinases |
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| 7:00–8:00 PM |
Social Hour with Dinner |
President's Hall |
| 7:30–10:00 PM |
Poster Session 1 |
Van Horne C |
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
| 7:00–8:00 AM |
Breakfast |
President's Hall |
| 8:00–11:00 AM |
Understanding and Therapeutic Application of CRISPR |
Van Horne A |
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* Phoebe A Rice, University of Chicago
Session Chair |
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Noa Oded Elkayam, EmendoBio
Short Talk: Remote Presentation: AI-Enhanced Optimization of OMNI Nucleases Expands the CRISPR Toolbox for Therapeutic Applications |
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Xiao Wang, University of Pennsylvania
Developing Bespoke Gene Editing Treatments for Patients with Carbamoyl Phosphate Synthetase 1 (CPS1) Deficiency in Real Time: Successes and Challenges |
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Britt Adamson, Princeton University
DNA Damage Response and CRISPR |
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Benjamin P Kleinstiver, Massachusetts General Hospital
Engineered Technologies for Modifying Single Bases to Several Kilobases |
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Charles Gersbach, Duke University
Cell Reprogramming by CRISPR-based Activation of Endogenous Master Transcription Factors |
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Gerald Schwank, University Zurich
Short Talk: Rescue of Monogenic Obesity by In Vivo Base and Prime Editing in the Brain |
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| 8:45–9:05 AM |
Coffee Break |
Van Horne Foyer |
| 11:00–1:00 PM |
Poster Setup |
Van Horne C |
| 11:00–5:00 PM |
On Own for Lunch |
|
| 1:00–10:00 PM |
Poster Viewing |
Van Horne C |
| 3:00–4:30 PM |
Career Roundtable (Joint) |
Van Horne B |
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Kusumika Mukherjee, Cell Press
Senior Scientific Editor |
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Ying Tam, Acuitas Therapeutics
Chief Scientific Officer |
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Zachary Zappala, Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Director |
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Ralph J Garippa, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Director |
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| 4:30–5:00 PM |
Coffee Available |
Van Horne Foyer |
| 5:00–7:00 PM |
Intersection of Gene Editing High Throughput Screening and Machine Learning |
Van Horne A |
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* Joseph Bondy-Denomy, University of California, San Francisco
Session Chair |
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Hyongbum Henry Kim, Yonsei University College of Medicine
Experimental and Machine Learning Approaches to Create New Genome Editing Tools |
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Jonathan S. Weissman, Whitehead Institute, HHMI, and MIT
Learning our Fate from a Data-driven Virtual Map of Mammalian Development |
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Randall J. Platt, ETH Zurich
Transcriptome-wide Recording in Human Cells |
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Shengdar Q Tsai, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Short Talk: High-throughput Biochemical and Cellular Approaches towards Developing a CRISPR Therapeutic Genome Editing Platform |
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Dowoon Gu, Korea University
Short Talk: Combination of Abasic Substitution and Extension in Guide RNA Inherently Harness Fidelity of SpCas9 for Genome Editing |
|
| 7:00–8:00 PM |
Social Hour with Dinner |
President's Hall |
| 7:30–10:00 PM |
Poster Session 2 |
Van Horne C |
| 7:00–8:00 AM |
Breakfast |
President's Hall |
| 8:00–11:00 AM |
Therapeutic Application |
Van Horne A |
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* Cecilia Cotta-Ramusino, Tessera Therapeutics
Session Chair |
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Yuxuan Wu, YolTech Therapeutics
Remote Presentation: Design of Therapeutic Editors Aided by AI and High Throughput Approaches |
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Micah Benson, KSQ Therapeutics
CRISPR Screen-Informed Design of T cell Therapies |
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Sarah Pierce, Broad Institute
Short Talk: Prime Editing-installed Suppressor tRNAs for Disease-Agnostic Genome Editing |
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Haihua Chu, Beam Therapeutics
Unlocking the Potential of base Edited HSCs for Therapeutic Applications with Epitope Engineering |
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Luigi M Naldini, San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy
Gene Editing: Therapeutics and Genotoxicity |
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X. Shawn Liu, Columbia University Medical Center
Short Talk: Silencing of Pathological Alleles in Inborn Errors Immunity by CRISPR-IMPRINT |
|
| 9:00–9:20 AM |
Coffee Break |
Van Horne Foyer |
| 11:00–5:00 PM |
On Own for Lunch |
|
| 2:30–4:30 PM |
Symposia Spotlight 2: New Editing Modality and Therapeutics |
Van Horne A |
| |
* Shengdar Q Tsai, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Session Chair |
|
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* Micah Benson, KSQ Therapeutics
Session Chair |
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Shirley Pei Shan Chia, National University of Singapore
Variant-By-Variant Activity Profiling Reprograms A CRISPR-Associated Transposon Towards Precise DNA Insertion |
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Phoebe A Rice, University of Chicago
Structural Basis for Directionality of Large Serine Integrases |
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Sébastien Levesque, Boston Children's Hospital - Harvard Medical School
In Cellulo DNA Assembly for Targeted Genomic Integration and Rearrangement in Human Cells |
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Holt A Sakai, Broad Institute
Directed Evolution of Small RNA-stabilizing Motifs that Improve Prime Editing |
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Lilly van de Venn, ETH Zurich
AutoDISCO Enables Sensitive and High-throughput CRISPR/Cas Off-target Detection in Cells and Organisms |
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Kah Min Yap, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
Rewiring Endogenous Genes in CAR T Cells for Tumour-Restricted Payload Delivery |
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Aditya V Ansodaria, UMass Chan Medical School
Enhancing the Efficacy and Purity of Prime Editing using Chemically Modified Editing Templates and Modification-Tolerant Polymerases |
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| 4:30–5:00 PM |
Coffee Available |
Van Horne Foyer |
| 5:00–6:45 PM |
CRISPR Biology |
Van Horne A |
| |
* Benjamin P Kleinstiver, Massachusetts General Hospital
Session Chair |
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* X. Shawn Liu, Columbia University Medical Center
Session Chair |
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Joseph Bondy-Denomy, University of California, San Francisco
Mechanisms of CRISPR-Cas Antagonism by Bacteriophages |
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Mitchell R. O'Connell, University of Rochester Medical Center
Pulling the Plug on Bacteriophage Infection: The Pore Behavior of CRISPR and Anti-phage Defense Associated Membrane Proteins |
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Elizabeth Kellogg, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Mechanism of Programmable Transposases |
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Kazuo Nakamura, Gladstone Institutes
Short Talk: Phage Defense and Genome Editing using Novel Retrons Sourced from Isolated Environmental Bacteria |
|
| 6:45–7:00 PM |
Meeting Wrap-Up: Outcomes and Future Directions |
Van Horne A |
| 7:00–8:00 PM |
Social Hour with Dinner |
President's Hall |
| 8:15–9:15 PM |
Entertainment |
President's Hall |
