Selection of just two scientists will stir controversy, given patent fight over genome editor’s discovery.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,812
The genetic editing technique has contributed to new cancer therapies and has the potential to be used in curing inheritable diseases.
Two women were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for their pioneering work on genome editing, which has the life-saving potential to be used to cure genetic diseases.el Prize in chemistry Wednesday for their pioneering work on genome editing, which has the life-saving potential to be used to cure genetic diseases.el Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for developing a method for genome editing that could be used to cure many diseases.
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna developed the Crispr tool, which can change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with high precision.
Researchers from the University of Iowa may have discovered a safe new way to manage blood sugar non-invasively. Exposing diabetic mice to a combination of static electric and magnetic fields for a few hours per day normalizes two major hallmarks of type 2 diabetes, according to new findings published Oct. 6 in Cell Metabolism.
“We’ve built a remote control to manage diabetes,” says Calvin Carter, Ph.D., one of the study’s lead authors and a postdoc in the lab of senior author Val Sheffield, MD, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics, and of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the UI Carver College of Medicine. “Exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) for relatively short periods reduces blood sugar and normalizes the body’s response to insulin. The effects are long-lasting, opening the possibility of an EMF therapy that can be applied during sleep to manage diabetes all day.”
The unexpected and surprising discovery may have major implications in diabetes care, particularly for patients who find current treatment regimens cumbersome.
Terahertz light pulses change gene expression in stem cells, report researchers from Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) and Tokai University in Japan in the journal Optics Letters. The findings come thanks to a new tool, with implications for stem cell research and regenerative therapy development.
Terahertz waves fall in the far infrared/microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum and can be produced by powerful lasers. Scientists have used terahertz pulses to control the properties of solid-state materials. They also have potential for manipulating living cells, as they don’t damage them the way that ultraviolet or infrared light does. Research so far has led to contradictory findings about their effects on cells, possibly because of the way the experiments have been conducted.
ICeMS microengineer Ken-ichiro Kamei and physicist Hideki Hirori worked with colleagues to develop a better tool for investigating what happens when terahertz pulses are shone on human cells. The apparatus overcomes issues with previous techniques by placing cells in tiny microwells that have the same area as the terahertz light.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for the development of a method for genome editing.
Emmanuelle Charpentier (left), and Jennifer Doudna, are the sixth and seventh women to win the prestigious award.
Watch Liz Parrish’s talk given on Sunday October 4, 2020, during the celebration of the annual event “Revolution Against Aging and Death Festival” (RAADfest 2020).
During her presentation Liz describes for the first time what BioViva Sciences and its exclusive partner Integrated Health Systems (IHS), are doing on the fronts of 1) Patient Access: 2) Research & Development and 3) Data Science.
Due to the pandemic situation caused by SARS-CoV-2 this year the Event was celebrated using online media technologies.
To watch all the presentations given during RAADfest 2020 visit the following website and follow the instructions:
From predicting viral load to identifying antiviral drugs, discover some of the AI projects working to fight COVID-19.
What can AI do in the race to contain COVID-19 and potential future pandemics? Discover how machine learning is powering collective pandemic intelligence.
Summary: Researchers have identified a network of genes in Zebrafish that regulate the process of determining whether certain neurons will regenerate.
Source: University of Notre Dame
The death of neurons, whether in the brain or the eye, can result in a number of human neurodegenerative disorders, from blindness to Parkinson’s disease. Current treatments for these disorders can only slow the progression of the illness, because once a neuron dies, it cannot be replaced.
A newly identified genetic factor allows adult skin to repair itself like the skin of a newborn babe. The discovery by Washington State University researchers has implications for better skin wound treatment as well as preventing some of the aging process in skin.
In a study, published in the journal eLife on September 29, 2020, the researchers identified a factor that acts like a molecular switch in the skin of baby mice that controls the formation of hair follicles as they develop during the first week of life. The switch is mostly turned off after skin forms and remains off in adult tissue. When it was activated in specialized cells in adult mice, their skin was able to heal wounds without scarring. The reformed skin even included fur and could make goosebumps, an ability that is lost in adult human scars.
“We were able to take the innate ability of young, neonatal skin to regenerate and transfer that ability to old skin,” said Ryan Driskell, an assistant professor in WSU’s School of Molecular Biosciences. “We have shown in principle that this kind of regeneration is possible.”