Claudio Mussolino is a group leader at the Institute for Transfusion Medicine and Gene Therapy in Freiburg (Germany) since 2012. He received his PhD in 2009 at the TIGEM, Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine, in Napoli (Italy) where he established a mutation-independent approach to treat dominant forms of the blindness disorder Retinitis Pigmentosa using zinc finger-based designer transcription factors. Currently, Dr Mussolino research focuses on the development of novel and long-term therapeutic strategies for HIV patients. Using TALE- or CRISPR-based effectors Dr. Mussolino explores the potential of editing the genome or the epigenome of hematopoietic stem cells or T cells to render them resistant to HIV infection. Additional current projects include the adaptation of these methodologies to other acquired and congenital disorders of the immune system.