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About 15 years ago, UNC Lineberger’s Dale Ramsden, Ph.D., was looking through a textbook with one of his students when they stumbled upon a scientific mystery.
A small line in the book indicated that a protein that helps repair major breaks in our genetic code did so by adding DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, as expected. However, there were hints that it could also add RNA, or ribonucleic acid, at least in a test tube. It seemed unlikely that this would occur during repair of DNA in living cells, since RNA is normally used only as a messenger to carry information from the genetic code to make proteins.
“You would think they must only add DNA during repair of our genetic code, because that’s the core of the central dogma of life; genetic information has to be DNA all the time,” said Ramsden, who is a professor in the UNC School of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s what we’re taught in school.”
It is predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) will transform many aspects of our life including healthcare and genomics. AI and machine learning have helped us to understand the genome of organisms and will potentially change the way we treat disease, determine effective drugs and edit genes.
Chemical substances and nanomaterials are processed on a massive scale in diverse products, while their risks have not been properly assessed. Time and again synthesised substances have been shown to pollute the environment more than lab tests predicted. This is the warning given by Professor of Ecotoxicology Martina Vijver from Leiden University in her inaugural lecture on 16 November.
Laboratory tests are inadequate, according to Vijver, because they do not imitate a complete ecosystem. In her inaugural lecture she will discuss in greater detail two examples of substances where more realistic research is needed: agricultural toxins and nanoparticles. ‘But the same can be said for many other groups of substances, such as antibiotics, plasticizers and GenX.’
Tell the FDA to identify and punish organisations who have broken US law by not reporting clinical trial results.
The US’s Food and Drug Administration has at last published its plan to identify and punish the organisations and people who have broken the law by not reporting clinical trial results. The FDA now wants to hear what we think about the plan.
The FDA Amendment Act 2007 says that lots of clinical trials in the US should be registered on ClinicalTrials.gov and report results information there within 12 months of the end of the trial. AllTrials’s FDAAA TrialsTracker shows that 628 clinical trials have broken this law since the first trials became due in January this year. We have written to the FDA every week to update them on the trials that have breached the law and shared with them a rolling estimation of the amount in fines the Agency could levy on the law breakers. The FDA has the power to fine people up to $10,000 a day and we have assessed that they could have raised $904,499,127 – nearly a billion dollars – but no one has ever been fined. That the FDA is now seriously considering how to start doing this is a long-awaited step forward.
These are the draft guidelines. The FDA is asking for comments on them to be submitted here. You don’t have to be a US citizen to comment.
Thoughts on the Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing held by Heales in Brussels.
When I first learned about the possibility of achieving human rejuvenation through biotechnological means, little did I know that this would lead me to meet many of the central figures in the field during a conference some seven years later—let alone that I would be speaking at the very same event. Yet, I’ve had the privilege to attend the Fourth Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing (EHA) held in Brussels on November 8–10, an experience that gave me a feel of just how real the prospect of human rejuvenation is.
A friendly, welcoming environment
As EHA was the first conference I’ve ever attended, I didn’t quite know what to expect; given that researchers, activists, and investors from all around the world were invited, I had imagined it would probably be a posh, formal event with violins playing on the background and people in suits and formal dresses discussing topics beyond my comprehension while enjoying champagne. Thankfully, the atmosphere was much more relaxed and informal, elegant but not intimidating, which favored the interaction among participants regardless of their backgrounds—though, alas, the topics discussed were indeed mostly beyond my comprehension, as they involved high-level biochemistry with which I’m nowhere near sufficiently familiar (yet).
