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Archive for the ‘genetics’ category: Page 378

Dec 7, 2018

FDA Approves Drug That Targets Key Genetic Driver of Cancer

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Imagine one drug that can target and kill malignant cells for some patients with many types of cancer. A new drug called Vitrakvi (larotrectinib), now approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, shows promise of doing just that for both adults and children with a variety of sometimes rare cancers that share one specific genetic mutation.

The mutation, called a TRK fusion, occurs when one of three NTRK genes becomes mistakenly connected to an unrelated gene and ignites uncontrolled growth. By solely targeting this mutation, the drug is designed to turn off growth signaling with a minimum of other toxicities.

According to the drug manufacturer, Loxo Oncology, this specific mutation can occur in a small subset of various adult and pediatric solid tumors ranging from cancers of the appendix, bile ducts, breast, lung, pancreas and thyroid to melanoma, GIST and various sarcomas.

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Dec 6, 2018

Double the stress slows down evolution

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

Neoliberalism slows down evolution! Just kidding…or am I? 🧐😁🤣🙈.


Like other organisms, bacteria constantly have to fight to survive in hostile living conditions. Together with colleagues in Finland, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön have discovered that bacteria adapt to their environment more slowly and less efficiently as soon as they are exposed to two stress factors rather than one. This is due to mutations in different genes. The slower rate of evolution led to smaller population sizes. This means that evolution can take divergent paths if an organism is exposed to several stress factors.

Bacteria rarely live alone; they are usually part of a community of species that is exposed to various stress factors. They can often react to these factors by adapting to new environmental conditions with astonishing speed. Antibiotics that enter soil and water via and accumulate there in low concentrations can trigger the evolution of resistance in – even though these concentrations are so low that they inhibit only slightly or not at all. However, bacteria do not only have to fight ; they also have to deal with predators. This is why they often grow in large colonies that cannot be consumed by predatory organisms.

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Dec 5, 2018

Bioquark — Electroceuticals — Real Bodies

Posted by in categories: aging, bioengineering, biotech/medical, business, DNA, futurism, genetics, innovation, neuroscience, science
Stefania De Matteo of HealthQe at Real Bodies Milan giving an overview of some of the new bio-physical tools (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwPANPNRY4g) being developed for a 2019 biotech world
With major pharma companies like GSK entering the “electro-ceuticals” space (and groups like RegenerAge Clinic beginning to utilize them in combinatorial protocols) we are seeing a re-emergence of these century old principles back into the mainstream bio-medical discussion

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Dec 5, 2018

12th Jaipur Literature Festival: AI, cli-fi, genetics sessions on line-up

Posted by in categories: genetics, mapping, robotics/AI

https://paper.li/e-1437691924#/&h=AT3mdHzXuCejMgVQDYy6JiVw58…e-BeRlnE2g


“Our world is changing so fast… this year we have sessions on artificial intelligence, genetics and what the future holds for our planet. There is a new term now — cli-fi. We have a beautiful session on cli-fi, on what would happen if bees disappear.

”I feel at this moment in our country it is very very important to give impetus to empirical thinking,” the author of ”Paro: Dreams of Passion” said.

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Dec 5, 2018

In World First, Woman Gives Birth After Receiving Uterus Transplant from Dead Donor

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

A team of doctors in Brazil have announced a medical first that could someday help countless women unable to have children because of a damaged or absent uterus. In a case report published Tuesday in the Lancet, they claim to have successfully helped a woman give birth using a transplanted uterus from a deceased donor.

According to the report, the team performed the operation on an unnamed 32-year-old woman in a Brazilian hospital in September 2016. The woman had been born with a rare genetic condition that left her without a uterus, known as Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome, but she was otherwise healthy. The donor was a 45-year-old woman who had suddenly died of stroke; she had had three successful pregnancies delivered vaginally in the past.

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Dec 4, 2018

The FDA just approved a drug that targets cancers based on DNA, rather than where the tumor is in your body

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

  • The FDA on Monday approved a new cancer treatment in an unconventional way: not by tumor type, but rather by the genetic mutation the drug targets.
  • The drug, Vitrakvi, was developed by Loxo Oncology in partnership with pharma giant Bayer.
  • It’s only the second time the FDA has approved a cancer drug’s use based on a certain mutation rather than a particular tumor type.

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday took an unconventional approach to approving a new cancer drug.

The drug, Vitrakvi, was developed by Loxo Oncology. It’s the company’s first drug to get approved.

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Dec 4, 2018

Blood test to detect cancer within just 10 minutes developed by scientists

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

A blood test can detect cancer within just 10 minutes, scientists have found, raising hopes that hard-to-spot diseases could be picked up early when treatment is most effective.

Currently doctors use symptoms and a raft of tests and biopsies to determine if cancer is present which can sometimes take months.

The new method from the University of Queensland looks for differences in the genetic code of cancerous and healthy cells.

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Dec 4, 2018

“Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Goldman Sachs analysts ask

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

Analyst Salveen Richter and colleagues laid it out:

The potential to deliver “one shot cures” is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically engineered cell therapy, and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies… While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.

For a real-world example, they pointed to Gilead Sciences, which markets treatments for hepatitis C that have cure rates exceeding 90 percent. In 2015, the company’s hepatitis C treatment sales peaked at $12.5 billion. But as more people were cured and there were fewer infected individuals to spread the disease, sales began to languish. Goldman Sachs analysts estimate that the treatments will bring in less than $4 billion this year.

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Dec 4, 2018

The US Military Is Genetically Engineering New Life Forms To Detect Enemy Subs

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

The Pentagon is also looking at living camouflage, self-healing paint, and a variety of other applications of engineered organisms, but the basic science remains a challenge.

How do you detect submarines in an expanse as large as the ocean? The U.S. military hopes that common marine microorganisms might be genetically engineered into living tripwires to signal the passage of enemy subs, underwater vessels, or even divers.

It’s one of many potential military applications for so-called engineered organisms, a field that promises living camouflage that reacts to its surroundings to better avoid detection, new drugs and medicines to help deployed forces survive in harsh conditions, and more. But the research is in its very early stages, military officials said.

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Dec 3, 2018

CRISPR has many promising applications—but the gene-edited twins represent something more troubling

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

Last week Chinese researchers rocked the world with reports that twin babies whose genes the scientists’ edited prior to birth had been born, the product of secret experiments that are being widely decried as unethical. Even as that story plays out, it is true that CRISPR gene editing is already being used in humans, in ways that illustrate just how unethical this recent use was.

“Patients’ parents have been emailing me a lot,” says Hye Young Lee, a researcher at the University of Texas San Antonio whose work looks at alternative delivery methods for CRISPR. Lee says she normally gets a few emails a month from the parents of the patients she works with, but that the number of emails went up recently—in relation, she suspects, to the news of the CRISPR babies, which is creating the illusion that CRISPR and other gene editing techniques are ready for extensive use in humans.

The scientific community’s current consensus is that they’re far from being at that stage—and it’s impossible to know now when or if they will be. But gene editing is being used in adult humans, to early trials to treat genetic diseases. In terms of gene editing for adults, “I know that there are things going on,” Lee says, but it’s nothing like this week’s news. Although her own work is at least a few years away from being ready for human testing, there are some cautiously progressing trials at drug companies using CRISPR in adult humans who have diseases that are the result on mutations in a single gene.

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