Despite the quarantine due to COVID-19, I attended the largest meeting of scientists working on gene therapies from all over the world. Because it was vitrual. The American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy conference covered recent developents in gene editing including prime editing in vivo (prime editors split in two parts and delived with AAVs), stem cell therapies (many clinical trials for treatment of inherent disorders with HSC therapies are ongoing or have already shown promissing results), viral delivery (many efficient, tissue- and cell type-specific, and safe viruses have been developed including AAVHSC that are very efficient in transduction of both human and murine HSCs and human liver. The conference even has a commenrcialization track where experts in clinical trials, manufacturing, and FDA regulations exchange their practical knowledge. First time experience of a virtual conference was surprisingly sussessful. Typically, such conferences with dozens of talks simultaneously happening in different sections and hundreds of posters presented at the same time are frustrating, but doing it at home on the laptop allowed me to do more than I would have probably done in person. Added presenting my PhD work at this conference to my list of goals.
