Caleb Lushington

Caleb is a PhD candidate in the Paul Thomas Genome Editing Laboratory under the supervision of Prof. Paul Thomas and Dr Fatwa Adikusuma. This UoA lab is based at SAHMRI in the Life Long Health theme with support from the Robinson Research Institute.

In his Honourary year (BSC), Caleb worked in an interdisciplinary environment using cutting-edge technologies in the field of genome editing. A large focus of his studies have been directed towards the improvement of the Prime Editing system that have since been applied both in vitro and in vivo. These improvements have allowed for the modelling of genetic diseases with high efficiency. 

His PhD now looks to expand upon previous expertise to further improve editing systems and apply them in a genetic disease setting. This includes the in vitro and in vivo modelling of genetic diseases (CF and DMD) with a more simplified and precise editing system, useful for pathological research. Following this, he intends to underpin the clinical relevance of modified editing systems by applying them in the correction of disease models to healthy disease free subjects.