Industry-related
When it comes to mRNA, seeing is believing
We are moving into a new era of genomic medicines that will target cancer, viruses and disease by editing our DNA and RNA. But the path to developing these drugs is not yet clear because of the incredibly small-scale drug developers are working with — our cells — and the complexity of the activities within them.
“It’s a very crowded, busy, hot, dynamic environment inside our cells,” said Dr. Sabrina Leslie, a biophysicist at UBC’s Michael Smith Laboratories and department of Physics and Astronomy. “To understand how cells grow, divide and are repaired we needed to look at the interactions of the molecules within them in detail. And then at how various drugs interact with our genome at the single-cell level.”
Dr. Leslie spoke with the UBC Science Focus Magazine team about her work to develop a high-resolution imaging platform (Convex Lens-induced Confinement, or CLiC) for drug development, and the commercialization of this platform through her spinout company ScopeSys.
