Doctors & Patients

Who hasn’t heard about genome editing in the last few years? With over 10.000 PubMed entries, it is unsurprising that the scientific community and beyond are familiar with the term. The latest tool in the genome editing kit, CRISPR-Cas, allows scientists to make changes in the genetic material of a cell or an entire organism in a way that is easier, cheaper and faster than any previous genome editing technology.

Our report "Public attitudes to life sciences research in six European countries" shows that interest in life sciences research is generally high among citizens and that the three most accepted purposes of using genome editing are related to the medical field. 6000 persons were interviewed in this pan-European study which was led by the ORION partners VA in Sweden and CEITEC in the Czech Republic.

The aim with ORION is to explore ways in which research and funding organisations in life sciences and biomedicine can open up the way they fund, organise, and practice research. We have recently conducted a study in six European countries about the public’s attitudes toward Open Science and genome editing. At ESOF 2018 we would like to have your views.

At the core of the ORION project is co-creation, which involves collaborating with different groups of people (public, policy, industry) to come up with new ideas to support and increase the impact of scientific research. Over the next two years the Babraham Institute, together with MDC in Germany, VA in Sweden, and CEITEC in the Czech Republic will launch a co-creation exercise on emerging technologies.

Dr Luiza Bengtsson and Dr Emma Harris of the ORION Training Team together with their fellow MDC scientists Professor Uwe Ohler and Dr Philipp Boß held a citizen science session about their research topics at the re:publica conference in Berlin in May and discovered the fears and fascination sharing health data holds for the public.