A new gene therapy for a rare blood disorder will sell for €1.6 million ($1.8 million) in Europe, according to the maker of the recently approved treatment, whose sticker price is the latest indication that already high drug costs are continuing to climb.
After it goes on sale, the Zynteglo gene therapy from Bluebird Bio Inc. will be the second-most expensive drug in the world after Novartis’s $2.1 million Zolgensma gene therapy, which was recently approved for sale in the U.S.
You may be familiar with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad cow disease. Did you know there’s a lesser-known—but similar—illness that affects deer, moose, and elk? It’s called chronic wasting disease, and like mad cow, it is also a brain disease, thought to be caused by a malformed, twisted protein called a prion. CWD leads to unusual behavior, and often results in the animals becoming gruesomely thin before they die. First discovered in 1967, CWD now has been detected in at least 26 states, three Canadian provinces, Norway, Sweden, and South Korea.
Rae Ellen Bichell, a reporter with the Mountain West News Bureau and KUNC, explored chronic wasting disease in a multipart series titled “ Bent Out Of Shape.” She joins Ira to talk about the disease, research into its origin and spread, and what’s known about the possible effects of human exposure to CWD.
Check out the full series.
In a breakthrough that could save thousands of lives, scientists have found a way to convert all blood types to the universal type that is safe for all patients to receive, by using microbes found in the human gut.
Researchers from the University of British Columbia have figured out how to convert blood types A, B and AB into the universal Type O, which all patients can receive in a transfusion, regardless of their own blood type.
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Conclusions:
Extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields aren’t considered as a real carcinogenic agent despite the fact that some studies have showed impairment of the DNA integrity in different cells lines. The aim of this study was evaluation of the late effects of a 100 Hz and 5.6 mT electromagnetic field, applied continuously or discontinuously, on the DNA integrity of Vero cells assessed by alkaline Comet assay and by cell cycle analysis. Normal Vero cells were exposed to extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields (100 Hz, 5.6 mT) for 45 minutes. The Comet assay and cell cycle analysis were performed 48 hours after the treatment.
Exposed samples presented an increase of the number of cells with high damaged DNA as compared with non-exposed cells. Quantitative evaluation of the comet assay showed a significantly (0.001) increase of the tail lengths, of the quantity of DNA in tail and of Olive tail moments, respectively. Cell cycle analysis showed an increase of the frequency of the cells in S phase, proving the occurrence of single strand breaks. The most probable mechanism of induction of the registered effects is the production of different types of reactive oxygen species.
The analysis of the registered comet indices and of cell cycle showed that extremely low frequency electromagnetic field of 100 Hz and 5.6 mT had a genotoxic impact on Vero cells.
Oxford Nanopore systems offer real-time, scalable, direct DNA sequencing. This can be performed on the portable MinION device, the benchtop GridION and the high-thoughput, high-sample number PromethION.
Nanopore sequencing also offers, for the first time, direct RNA sequencing, as well as PCR or PCR-free cDNA sequencing.
With nanopore sequencing, the user chooses fragment length and the nanopore sequences the entire fragments. Reads approaching 1Mb have been reported.
And yet still; the system still requires everyone to carry an identification card.
The most extensive and detailed human genome sequence yet has been assembled using a hand-held device roughly the size of a cell phone.
An international team of scientists working at a lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz, created a portable nanopore sequencer that not only used DNA fragments hundreds of times longer than is standard, but closed 12 gaps in the known human genome, according to a UCSC press release. That makes the human genome it assembled the most complete one ever created to date. A paper describing the research was published in the scientific journal Nature Biotechnology.
The sequencer works by identifying changes in the flow of individual molecules of DNA when they pass through a microscopic membrane hole known as a nanopore. The device can read one million letters of DNA at a time, and has now been used to sequence a human individual’s entire genome, according to New Scientist.