Basil Hubbard - Associate Professor

Area of Research

The Hubbard lab works on gene editing (e.g. CRISPR), synthetic biology (e.g. genetic circuits and “smart” drugs), and xenobiology (chemically-modified nucleic acids and proteins).

Research Challenge

Our primary goal is to develop macromolecular therapeutics to treat diseases considered intractable with conventional small-molecules.

Proposed Solution

Rather than use conventional small-molecule drugs, we design macromolecular therapeutics that are protein-, nucleic acid-, and cell-based.

Impact to Date

One of our major impacts to date has been demonstrating that chemical modification of CRISPR guide RNAs using xenonucleic acids can vastly increase the on-target specificity and safety of gene editing tools (see Cromwell et al., Nature Communications, 2018). We have also shown that chemical modification of guide RNAs can be used as a strategy to overcome problems with genetic variance when performing gene editing therapy (see Krysler et al., Nature Communications, 2022).  

Publications

Google Scholar

Notable Awards

• Canadian Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics (CSPT) Junior Investigator Award (2019)

Keywords: Gene editing, CRISPR/Cas systems, macromolecular therapeutics, epigenetic drugs, protein-based drugs, xenobiology, nucleic acid-based drugs, mRNA therapeutics, “smart” drugs, cell-based therapies.