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Archive for the ‘genetics’ category: Page 274

Dec 9, 2019

Study shows inhibition of gene helps overcome resistance to immunotherapy

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Cancer immunology drugs, which harness the body’s immune system to better attack cancer cells, have significantly changed the face of cancer treatment. People with aggressive cancers are now living longer, healthier lives. Unfortunately, cancer immunology therapy only works in a subset of patients.

Now, a new study from scientists at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center helps explain why some people with advanced cancer may not respond to one of the leading immunotherapies, PD-1 blockade, and how a new combination approach may help overcome resistance to the immunotherapy drug.

The UCLA study, published today in the inaugural issue of the new scientific journal Nature Cancer, showed that genetic and pharmacological inhibition of the oncogene PAK4 overcomes resistance to anti-PD-1 therapy in preclinical models.

Dec 8, 2019

A Harvard geneticist’s goal: to protect humans from viruses, genetic diseases, and aging

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

George Church’s lab at Harvard Medical School is working to make humans immune to all viruses, eliminate genetic diseases and reverse the aging process. Scott Pelley reports on how close the geneticist’s team is to a breakthrough.

Dec 8, 2019

Can We Live Longer

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

The quest to live longer and healthier is not new. But the concept of reversing aging has recently stunned both the scienftific community and the public in general. Scientists have been able to reverse aging by 2.5 years to some participants in a groundbreaking experiment in the field of age reversal.

World leading scientists in the field of aging like David Sinclair think that aging is the ultimate disease that needs a cure. If scientsits were able to shed 2.5 years to the participants genomic age, the question raises itself, are we going to see an age reversal of a decade or more in the coming years?

Continue reading “Can We Live Longer” »

Dec 8, 2019

Sickle Cell Anemia Patient Becomes First Person in the U.S. to Have Her Genes Edited With CRISPR

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Last week, a woman named Victoria Gray became the first person in the U.S. to have her cells edited with CRISPR. The 41-year-old patient was suffering from sickle cell anemia.

RELATED: FIRST HUMAN TRIAL USING CRISPR GENE-EDITING IN US BEGINS

The condition, caused by a genetic mutation that messes with the shape of red blood cells, causes havoc on patients, and to make things even worse, the options for treatment are very limited and ineffective. The only current treatment for sickle cell anemia patients is a donor transplant that works for just 10% of patients, but all that is about to change.

Dec 7, 2019

Epigenetic Aging: Can It Be Slowed With Diet?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, genetics, life extension

New post!


Having a faster rate of epigenetic aging, as measured by the epigenetic age metric, AgeAccelGrim, is associated with a significantly increased risk of death for all causes in a variety of cohorts, including the Framingham Heart Study (FHS), the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study, the InChianti study, the Jackson Heart Study (JHS), and collectively, when evaluated as a meta-analysis (Lu et al. 2019):

Screen Shot 2019-12-07 at 2.23.27 PM.png

Continue reading “Epigenetic Aging: Can It Be Slowed With Diet?” »

Dec 7, 2019

Leading geneticist says reversing the aging process in humans could be 20 years away

Posted by in categories: genetics, life extension

“Aging reversal is something that’s been proven about eight different ways in animals,” geneticist George Church says. So when will humans get to turn back the clock? Church tells 60 Minutes it’s not that far away. See the full report, Sunday.

Dec 6, 2019

New tool for rapidly analyzing CRISPR edits reveals frequent production of unintended edits

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics

Amidst rising hopes for using CRISPR gene editing tools to repair deadly mutations linked to conditions like cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease, a study in Communications Biology describes a new innovation that could accelerate this work by rapidly revealing unintended and potentially harmful changes introduced by a gene editing process.

“We’ve developed a new process for rapidly screening all of the edits made by CRISPR, and it shows there may be many more unintended changes to DNA around the site of a CRISPR repair than previously thought,” said Eric Kmiec, Ph.D., director of ChristianaCare’s Gene Editing Institute and the principle author of the study.

The study describes a new tool developed at the Gene Editing Institute that in just 48 hours can identify “multiple outcomes of CRISPR-directed gene editing,” a process that typically required up to two months of costly and complicated DNA analysis.

Dec 6, 2019

Researchers program cancer-fighting cells to resist exhaustion, attack solid tumors in mice

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Awesome!


A new approach to programing cancer-fighting immune cells called CAR-T cells can prolong their activity and increase their effectiveness against human cancer cells grown in the laboratory and in mice, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The ability to circumvent the exhaustion that the genetically engineered cells often experience after their initial burst of activity could lead to the development of a new generation of CAR-T cells that may be effective even against solid cancers—a goal that has until now eluded researchers.

Continue reading “Researchers program cancer-fighting cells to resist exhaustion, attack solid tumors in mice” »

Dec 6, 2019

World must prepare for biological weapons that target ethnic groups based on genetics, says Cambridge University

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, existential risks, genetics, government, robotics/AI

Biological weapons could be built which target individuals in a specific ethnic group based on their DNA, a report by the University of Cambridge has warned.

Researchers from Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) said the government was failing to prepare for ‘human-driven catastrophic risks’ that could lead to mass harm and societal collapse.

In recent years advances in science such as genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous vehicles have opened the door to a host of new threats.

Dec 4, 2019

First experimental genetic evidence of the human self-domestication hypothesis

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

A new University of Barcelona study reveals the first empirical genetic evidence of human self-domestication, a hypothesis that humans have evolved to be friendlier and more cooperative by selecting their companions depending on their behaviour. Researchers identified a genetic network involved in the unique evolutionary trajectory of the modern human face and prosociality, which is absent in the Neanderthal genome. The experiment is based on Williams Syndrome cells, a rare disease.

The study, published in Science Advances, results from the collaboration between a UB team led by Cedric Boeckx, ICREA professor from the Section of General Linguistics at the Department of Catalan Philology and General Linguistics, and member of the Institute of Complex Systems of the UB (UBICS), and researchers from the team led by Giuseppe Testa, lecturer at the University of Milan and the European Institute of Oncology.