Two conditional transgenic mouse lines based on CRISPRa and CRISPRi enable epigenome editing in vivo.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,332
Artificial intelligence uncovers the building blocks of life and paves the way for a new era in science
The idea is to offer the predictions for the structure of practically every protein with a known sequence of amino acids free of charge. “We believe that this is the most important contribution to date that artificial intelligence has contributed to scientific knowledge,” he said following the publication of DeepMind’s research in the medical journal Nature.
DeepMind, a company bought by Google, predicts with unprecedented precision the 3D structure of nearly all the proteins made by the human body.
New Treatment Option for Advanced Urothelial Cancer Patients Shows Promise in a Phase 2 Clinical Trial
The company that makes SG was testing it mainly against other cancers, but Dr. Tagawa, who is also a professor of urology and a member of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine, and his colleagues showed in a 2015 pilot trial that it shrank tumors in three of six patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma that had not responded to platinum-based chemotherapy. That trial led to the enrollment of a group of 45 patients with treatment-refractory urothelial carcinoma (amongst many others with various advanced cancers) with encouraging results.
A new treatment for advanced urothelial cancer was effective with tolerable side effects in an international, multi-center phase 2 clinical trial led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian.
The trial results prompted a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accelerated approval of the treatment on April 13, giving patients with this very aggressive type of cancer a new therapeutic option.
In the study, published online April 30 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the researchers gave the treatment, sacituzumab govitecan (SG), previously known as IMMU-132 and now by the trade name Trodelvy, to 113 patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma, the most common type of bladder cancer. The trial population had progressed despite treatment with platinum-based chemotherapy and immune-boosting checkpoint inhibitors, and overall had a median of 3 prior lines of therapy. Treatment with SG was followed by sustained reductions in tumor size for 31 patients (27 percent), including complete tumor disappearance in six patients. The most common severe side effects included very low white blood cell count in 34 percent (with fever in 10 percent) and severe diarrhea in 9 percent, which were managed with dose adjustment and best supportive care.
Could Covid vaccine be taken as a pill?
Right now, protection against Covid-19 comes via an injection. But in future, those vaccines could come from inhalers or even pills.
In a white, airy laboratory in Medicon Village, one of southern Sweden’s largest science parks, chemist Ingemo Andersson holds up a thin, plastic inhaler, half the size of a matchbox.
Her team is hoping this tiny product could play a big role in the global fight against coronavirus allowing people to take powdered versions of future vaccines at home.
Researchers are looking at easier ways for people to get the vaccine, including via inhalers and tablets.
Sergey Young: breaking the barrier of maximum lifespan
The news we like: “In five to 10 years time from now, we’ll have a new, special kind of drugs: longevity drugs. And unlike today’s medication, which always focused on one disease, this kind of drug will will give us an opportunity to influence aging as a whole and a very fatalistic way, working on healthspan, not only on lifespan… it’s very likely that this new drug will be developed with the help of artificial intelligence, which will compress drug development cycle by two or three times from what they are today.”
Ahead of the launch of his new book Growing Young, Sergey Young joins us for a video interview to discuss longevity horizons, personal health strategies and disruptive tech – and how we are moving towards radically extending our lifespan and healthspan.
Sergey Young, the longevity investor and founder of the Longevity Vision Fund is on a mission to extend healthy lifespans of at least one billion people. His new book, Growing Young, is released on 24th August and is already rising up the Amazon charts.
“It’s been amazing three years journey,” Young told Longevity. Technology. “I spent hours and days in different labs in the best clinics in the world and best academic institutions. I even talked to Peter Jackson! I’m very excited to share with everyone, so every reader can start their longevity journey today.”
Developing The First ICs In Orbit
Over six decades of integrated circuit production we’ve become used to their extreme reliability and performance for a very reasonable price. But what about those first integrated circuits from the early 1960s? Commercial integrated circuits appeared in 1961, and recently Texas Instruments published a fascinating retrospective on the development of their first few digital ICs.
TI’s original IC product on the market was the SN502, a transistor flip-flop that debuted at $450 (about $4100 today), which caught the interest of NASA engineers who asked for logic functions with a higher performance level. The response was the development of the 51 series of logic chips, whose innovation included on-chip interconnects replacing the hand interconnects of the SN502. Their RCTL logic gave enough performance and reliability for NASA to use, and in late 1963 the Explorer 18 craft carried a telemetry system using the SN510 and SN514 chips into orbit. 52 and 53 series chips quickly followed, then in 1964 the 54 series TTL chips which along with their plastic-encapsulated 74 series equivalents are still available today.
Considering that in 1961 the bleeding edge of integrated circuit logic technology was a two-transistor chip with hand interconnects, it seems scarcely conceivable that by ten years later in 1971 the art had advanced to the point at which the first commercially available microprocessors would be produced. It’s unlikely that many of us will stumble upon any of the three-figure SN1-series logic chips, but to read about them is a fascinating reminder of this pivotal moment in the history of electronics.