Fyodor Urnov

Fyodor Urnov is a professor of molecular therapeutics in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of technology and translation at the Innovative Genomics Institute. Urnov co-developed the toolbox for human genome and epigenome editing, co-named the term "genome editing," and contributed to advancing first-in-human applications in clinical settings. During his tenure at Sangamo Therapeutics, Urnov and colleagues performed the first demonstration using zinc-finger nucleases to modify DNA in human cells, coining the term "genome editing."

Urnov's career began after earning a Ph.D. in biology from Brown University and completing postdoctoral work at the National Institutes of Health. At Sangamo BioSciences, he co-led the development of genome editing tools and therapeutic epigenome editing, contributed to the first clinical human genome editing application, and worked on in vivo editors for Huntington's and tau dementia. Urnov also led a cross-functional team from basic discovery to the initial design of first-in-human clinical trials for sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia, in collaboration with UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital and UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center. He helped identify the genome editing target for the first medicine approved to treat sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia. Urnov later became director of the Center for Translational Genomics at the Innovative Genomics Institute and a professor in the Departments of Genetics, Genomics, and Development at the University of California, Berkeley.

Urnov has authored more than 100 scientific publications and is an inventor on 87 published patents related to genome editing and targeted gene regulation technology. His research has been widely cited in scientific literature, including a Nature paper and a subsequent article for Nature Reviews Genetics. He was named one of The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds by Thomson Reuters and received a Fellows Award for Research Excellence from the National Institutes of Health. Urnov was awarded the Horace Mann Medal from Brown University for his work co-developing the toolbox for human genome and epigenome editing and advancing first-in-human clinical applications. He was a co-author on a landmark study, "Patient-Specific In Vivo Gene Editing to Treat a Rare Genetic Disease," published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which was part of an effort to treat a newborn with a personalized CRISPR therapy.

A major focus of Urnov's work is expanding access to CRISPR therapies for genetic disease. He is committed to broadening the availability and utility of CRISPR-based therapies, with the goal of making genome editing accessible to the nearly 400 million people affected by one of the 7,000 diseases caused by gene mutations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Urnov organized resources to establish a nonprofit diagnostic clinical laboratory at the Innovative Genomics Institute for rapid SARS-CoV-2 testing, as described in Walter Isaacson's book "The Codebreaker." This initiative provided more than 500,000 free COVID tests to individuals in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.

Urnov is recognized as a public speaker and science communicator, a skill developed over a 30-year career as a professor of biology that began at Brown University, where he received a Presidential Award for Teaching Excellence, and continues at UC Berkeley. Whether addressing scientific peers, policymakers, or general audiences, Urnov focuses on the central question in modern medicine: how to make the promise of genome editing a reality for all who need it.