Maternal Antibodies May Cause Autism
The discredited idea that childhood vaccinations can cause autism remains in popular circulation. Part of the reason for the persistence of this completely invalidated hypothesis may be because real explanations for the disorder remain sparse. Unraveling the factors causing autism remains incredibly challenging....Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - July 15, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
FTO Gene Causes People to Want to Eat More
In 2007, researchers using gene association studies linked a gene to obesity. Basically, they found that fat people had a specific version of a gene much more often than the general population. The gene was dubbed FTO--for fat and obesity-associated-- and about 15% of people have only the version associated with obesity. Others have slightly different variants of FTO....Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - July 15, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
DNA Sequencing Helps Improve IVF Success
One of the continuing challenges with in vitro fertilization (IVF) has to do with the poor viability of embryos produced when eggs are fertilized in culture plates. Only about 30% of IVF embryos go on to produce a fetus when implanted. Actually, though, this frequency appears to be pretty similar to the frequency of implantation for naturally fertilized embryos....Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - July 10, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
Researchers Grow Human Liver in Mice
As a follow up to a recent article I posted about progress researchers have been making in growing human organs in the lab, a group in Japan just reported growing functional human livers in mice. The work was reported in Nature a few days ago....Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - July 2, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
Medicine before Germs and Anesthesia
It's often easy to romanticize history and imagine how exciting it might have been to life during Revolutionary War and the founding our nation. What is often forgotten, though, is how much progress in science and technology in our current lives we take for granted, and how difficult life was before many of these advances and innovations. ...Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - July 1, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
Replacing Organs without Organ Donors
The recent plight of cystic fibrosis sufferer 10-year Sarah Murnagham created somewhat of a controversy about organ donation. She required hospitalization due to her failing lungs, and it wasn't clear she would be able to get a new pair from a donor in time to save her life. Although she did get lungs in time, not everyone does. There are less organs than people that need them....Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - July 1, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
New Technique to Screen People for Unknown Viral Infections
Most virus tests look for telltale DNA sequences or other markers that signal the presence of a particular pathogen. However, Dr. Adrian di Biscelia's laboratory at the St. Louis University School of Medicine has developed a new open-ended approach that can signal the presence of any virus or other blood-borne pathogen. The technique not only identifies known viruses, but also finds whether there are previously uncharacterized pathogens....Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - June 19, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
NCI Announces $10 Million Project Targeting the RAS Oncogene
Earlier this week Harold Varmus, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Director announced the initiation of a RAS "megaproject." The RAS Project redirects $10 million of current research funding toward a large-scale coordinated research program that's focused on one of the most well-known cancer-causing genes--RAS....Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - June 19, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
Why Don't Naked Mole Rats Get Cancer?
In my recent overview of commonly used animal models for biomedical research, I didn't mention the naked mole rat. It is certainly not a common laboratory animal. However, recent work with it emphasizes unusual creatures can sometime hold interesting secrets that may have biomedical value....Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - June 19, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
Genes Can't Be Patented
In a unanimous decision the Supreme Court ruled today that natural genes are not patentable. The ruling boils down to the observation that patents must cover new inventions, not simply discoveries of natural phenomena. As stated in the Court's opinion, "genes and the information they encode are not patent eligible...simply because they have been isolated from the surrounding genetic material."...Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - June 7, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
FDA Authorizes Emergency Use of MERS Diagnostic Assay
Two days ago the Food and Drug Commissioner Margaret Hamburg authorized emergency use of the CDC's Novel Coronavirus 2012 Real-time RT-PCR Assay for the detection of the Middle East Coronavirus (MERS). Under the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act which was enacted in 2006 reauthorized in March this year the FDA can allow limited use of a non-approved medical products to address public health emergencies. The FDA authorization grants public health laboratories in the US clearance to use the CDC's MERS detection kit to identify the virus in patient samples....Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - May 24, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
Nanoparticle Flu Vaccine
Researchers from the Nabel laboratory at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) developed a synthetic nanoparticle flu vaccine that showed much higher effectiveness in both mice and ferrets compared with the standard seasonal vaccine. If the work pans out, it could enable production of a vaccine that provides better protection against more stains of influenza and is easier and faster to produce than the current seasonal vaccines....Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - May 21, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
Indiana Farmer Vernon Bowman Loses Lawsuit to Monsanto
Back in February the Supreme Court heard arguments from farmer Vernon Bowman on why he didn't need to pay royalties to Monsanto for growing their patented GMO soybeans that have been genetically modified to be resistant to the pesticide in Round-Up. Today, Mr. Bowman lost his case when the Court unanimously ruled against him. He owes Monsanto $84,000 in royalties....Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - May 13, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
Cloning Human Embryos
Last week researchers at Oregon Health and Science announced they had made human embryo clones using skin cells. The technique was similar to the one used to clone Dolly, the sheep, almost 20 years ago. Why has it taken so long to clone humans? Are we that different than sheep?...Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - May 13, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
Leading Researchers Emphasize Need to Regulate Stem Cell Therapy
Thirteen of the world's leading stem cell researchers just published a statement in the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Journal expressing alarm about initiatives to deregulate stem cell therapies. Recent actions by the Italian government allowing unapproved stem cell treatments precipitated the researchers' statement....Read Full Post (Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical)
Source: About.com Biotech Biomedical - May 4, 2013 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news
