Building upon two decades of cutting-edge research around the clinical utility of advanced sequencing, geneticists and genetic counselors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have launched the Preventive Genomics Clinic, the first academically affiliated clinical service to provide comprehensive DNA sequencing, interpretation and reporting of disease-associated genes for healthy adults and their children who are seeking to understand and mitigate their…
For children with Ewing sarcoma, an aggressive bone cancer, a combination of two different classes of drugs may work synergistically to turn off the drivers fueling this disease, finds a new study. The combination appears to be more powerful than relying on either treatment alone. The study, published online last month in Clinical Cancer Research, is the latest in a series of investigations performed by researchers at Dana…
– RINVOQ (upadacitinib) met all primary and ranked secondary endpoints across a variety of patients with moderately to severely active rheumatoid arthritis[1-7]– Durable remission rates with RINVOQ (as assessed by DAS28-CRP<2.6) were observed at week 26[1-2] – RINVOQ significantly inhibited radiographic progression even without methotrexate[1] – Approval supported by efficacy and safety data from one of the largest registrational Phase…
Novo Nordisk to award promising start-ups free space at Boston’s premier, biotech-capable shared lab facility BOSTON, Aug. 14, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Wanted: high-potential life sciences and biotech start-up companies looking for an opportunity to be part of a vibrant innovation ecosystem where companies develop truly transformational science. Novo Nordisk, a global healthcare company committed to discovering, creating and co-creating innovation to solve…
Bacteria, like people, have complicated relationships: they can either be friendly, neutral or antagonistic toward each other, and those relationships can change depending on the situations in which they find themselves. As interest in identifying the bacterial species present in the human microbiome that contribute to health and disease has exploded in recent years, so too have efforts to understand…
Patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who engaged in moderate exercise while undergoing chemotherapy tended to have delayed progression of their disease and fewer severe side effects from treatment, according to the results of a new study. Even low-intensity exercise, such as walking four or more hours a week, was associated with a nearly 20 percent reduction in cancer progression or…
Beta-amyloid plaques, the protein aggregates that form in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, disrupt many brain functions and can kill neurons. They can also damage the blood-brain barrier — the normally tight border that prevents harmful molecules in the bloodstream from entering the brain. MIT engineers have now developed a tissue model that mimics beta-amyloid’s effects on the blood-brain barrier,…
Tubingen, Germany-based CureVac has entered a Collaboration Research Agreement with Yale University to focus on lung therapies. CureVac focuses on mRNA therapeutics. Messenger RNA (mRNA) is a family of RNA molecules that transport genetic information from DNA to the ribosome, where it specifies the amino acid sequence that creates proteins. In theory, by coding your own mRNA, it should be possible to insert it into the…
PD-1 is a protein on our T cells that normally keeps these immune cells from running amok. A growing number of cancer drugs are designed to inhibit PD-1, enabling patients’ T-cells to attack and kill cancerous cells. PD-1 blockers such as pembrolizumab (Keytruda) have been helpful in treating several cancers including melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer,…
Cells often create compartments to control important biological functions. The nucleus is a prime example; surrounded by a membrane, it houses the genome. Yet cells also harbor enclosures that are not membrane-bound and more transient, like oil droplets in water. Over the past two years, these droplets (called “condensates”) have become increasingly recognized as major players in controlling genes. Now,…