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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1751

The Oxford scientists are extraordinarily confident that their vaccine against the coronavirus will work.

The government’s chief medical officer insists a jab is still 12 to 18 months off and some form of social distancing will be needed until it’s in widespread use.

Their confidence is built on past success. The same vaccine technology has been used on other diseases, including the related coronavirus MERS, as well as Ebola.

ChAdOx1, pronounced “Chaddox-one”, is a version of a common cold virus that has been modified not only so that it doesn’t cause symptoms, but also so it carries some genetic material of the coronavirus.

Continue reading “Coronavirus: Why Oxford university is so confident in an early vaccine win” | >

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Most research about the genetics of schizophrenia has sought to understand the role that genes play in the development and heritability of schizophrenia. Many discoveries have been made, but there have been many missing pieces. Now, UNC School of Medicine scientists have conducted the largest-ever whole genome sequencing study of schizophrenia to provide a more complete picture of the role the human genome plays in this disease.

Published in Nature Communications, the study co-led by senior author Jin Szatkiewicz, PhD, associate professor in the UNC Department of Genetics, suggests that rare structural genetic variants could play a role in schizophrenia.

“Our results suggest that ultra-rare structural variants that affect the boundaries of a specific genome structure increase risk for schizophrenia,” Szatkiewicz said. “Alterations in these boundaries may lead to dysregulation of gene expression, and we think future mechanistic studies could determine the precise functional effects these variants have on biology.”

Continue reading “Whole genome sequencing reveals genetic structural secrets of schizophrenia” | >

It is now possible to use a cheap, lightweight and smartphone-powered DNA detector to identify DNA in blood, urine and other samples, on the spot.

At the moment, testing to identify DNA is done in laboratories using expensive, specialised equipment. To make this process faster and cheaper, Ming Chen at the Army Medical University in China and his colleagues developed a portable DNA detector made of 3D-printed parts that attach to a standard smartphone.

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Now, scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a way to use gene editing system CRISPR-Cas9 to edit a mutation in human-induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and then turn them into beta cells. When transplanted into mice, the cells reversed preexisting diabetes in a lasting way, according to results published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

While the researchers used cells from patients with Wolfram syndrome—a rare childhood diabetes caused by mutations in the WFS1 gene—they argue that the combination of a gene therapy with stem cells could potentially treat other forms of diabetes as well.

Virtual Event

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Capping decades of research, a new study may offer a breakthrough in treating dyskeratosis congenita and other so-called telomere diseases, in which cells age prematurely. Using cells donated by patients with the disease, researchers at the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center identified several small molecules that appear to reverse this cellular aging process. Suneet Agarwal, MD, Ph.D., the study’s senior investigator, hopes at least one of these compounds will advance toward clinical trials. Findings were published April 21 in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

If so, it could be the first treatment for dyskeratosis congenita, or DC, that could reverse all of the disease’s varying effects on the body. The current treatment, , is high-risk, and only helps restore the blood system, whereas DC affects multiple organs.

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Engineering researchers developed a next-generation miniature lab device that uses magnetic nano-beads to isolate minute bacterial particles that cause diseases. Using this new technology improves how clinicians isolate drug-resistant strains of bacterial infections and difficult-to-detect micro-particles such as those making up Ebola and coronaviruses.

Ke Du and Blanca Lapizco-Encinas, both faculty-researchers in Rochester Institute of Technology’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering, worked with an international team to collaborate on the design of the new system — a microfluidic device, essentially a lab-on-a-chip.

Drug-resistant bacterial infections are causing hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world every year, and this number is continuously increasing. Based on a report from the United Nations, the deaths caused by antibiotics resistance could reach to 10 million annually by 2050, Du explained.

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A drug that has shown promising results against coronavirus is going to be tested in four hospitals in Israel as part of a global clinical trial involving around forty clinical centers.

The drug, Selinexor, or XPOVIO as it is currently marketed in the US, has been developed by oncology-focused pharmaceutical company Karyopharm Therapeutics. Co-founded by Israeli scientist Sharon Shacham in 2008, the company is based in the US but maintains a regional office in Israel.

XPOVIO was developed for treating patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. It is FDA approved for this purpose. However, it has the potential to be a tool to fight the coronavirus, and clinical trials are needed to assess its effectiveness, according to Anat Haas Mizrahi, Karyopharm’s Israel general manager; and Dayana Michel, its senior medical director.

“In our research, we are committed also to develop drugs for additional purposes,” Haas Mizrahi told The Jerusalem Post. “One of the studies was focused on viral diseases, and we tested the drug for several of them. When the coronavirus emerged, we decided to look into our data and information, and we realized that there was an option that could be applicable for treating COVID-19, so we started looking into it.”

Continue reading “Coronavirus drug to be tested on patients in Israel” | >

Amazon is partnering with local grocery stores in India to let them sell goods through the company’s ecommerce platform. Under the “Local Shops on Amazon” program, the firm aims to bring small brick and mortar stores online.

The company said the project was in a pilot phase for the last six months with more than 5,000 stores onboard. Now, with the increasing demand for delivered groceries during the coronavirus pandemic, it has decided to formally launch the program. As a part of the launch, the Amazon is pumping ₹10 crores ($1.3 million) into this initiative.

[Read: Google Duo majorly improves low-bandwidth video quality with new codec].

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