Gene Silencing News and Research

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Fifth patient dosed in Benitec's TT-034 Phase I/IIa clinical trial for prevention of HCV infection

Benitec Biopharma, a biopharmaceutical company focused on providing potentially curative therapies with its proprietary gene-silencing technology called ddRNAi or "expressed RNAi," is pleased to advise that the fifth patient in the company's 'first in man', Phase I/IIa dose escalation clinical trial of TT-034 for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, has today, been dosed at the Duke Clinical Research Unit.

29 Apr 2015

Scientists identify small RNA molecule that can suppress cancer-causing genes in GBM

Northwestern Medicine scientists have identified a small RNA molecule called miR-182 that can suppress cancer-causing genes in mice with glioblastoma mulitforme (GBM), a deadly and incurable type of brain tumor.

6 Apr 2015

Rigontec raises €4.8 million in second closing of Series A financing round

Rigontec GmbH, a privately held biopharmaceutical company developing RNA-based immunotherapeutics for the treatment of cancer and viral diseases, today announces it has raised €4.8 million in a second closing of its Series A financing round from Forbion Capital Partners, a Dutch life-sciences venture capital firm, and Sunstone Capital, a Copenhagen based venture capital investor.

24 Mar 2015

Fourth patient dosed in Benitec Biopharma's Phase I/IIa hepatitis C trial

Benitec Biopharma, a biopharmaceutical company focused on providing potentially curative therapies with its proprietary gene-silencing technology called ddRNAi or "expressed RNAi," today announced that the fourth patient in the company's Phase I/IIa dose escalation clinical trial of its lead program TT-034 for treating hepatitis C was dosed at the Duke Clinical Research Unit.

11 Mar 2015

Combination therapies may overcome resistance to targeted cancer drugs

A protein called YAP, which drives the growth of organs during development and regulates their size in adulthood, plays a key role in the emergence of resistance to targeted cancer therapies, according to a new study led by UC San Francisco researchers.

10 Feb 2015

Parents can pass silenced genes to offspring through a specific mechanism

For more than a century, scientists have understood the basics of inheritance: if good genes help parents survive and reproduce, the parents pass those genes along to their offspring. And yet, recent research has shown that reality is much more complex: genes can be switched off, or silenced, in response to the environment or other factors, and sometimes these changes can be passed from one generation to the next.

4 Feb 2015

Phase IIb trial shows platinum-resistant ovarian patients treated with PM1183 live longer

Zeltia announces today that its pharmaceutical division PharmaMar has data from a group of 33 randomized patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer demonstrating that PM1183 shows a significantly superior median overall survival compared to topotecan.

4 Dec 2014

TET1 enzyme may be important target for cancer diagnostics, treatment

Mutations in the KRAS gene have long been known to cause cancer, and about one third of solid tumors have KRAS mutations or mutations in the KRAS pathway. KRAS promotes cancer formation not only by driving cell growth and division, but also by turning off protective tumor suppressor genes, which normally limit uncontrolled cell growth and cause damaged cells to self-destruct.

27 Nov 2014

Janssen submits YONDELIS NDA for treatment of advanced soft tissue sarcoma

PharmaMar announces that Janssen Research & Development, LLC has submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) for YONDELIS (trabectedin) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of patients with advanced soft tissue sarcoma (STS), including liposarcoma and leiomyosarcoma subtypes, who have received prior chemotherapy including an anthracycline.

26 Nov 2014

Researchers discover a new way to combat influenza virus infection

The influenza virus, like all viruses, is a hijacker. It quietly slips its way inside cells, steals the machinery inside to make more copies of itself, and then -- having multiplied -- bursts out of the cell to find others to infect.

21 Nov 2014

Promising new approach for combating colorectal cancer

Scientists at the University of York are working on a promising new approach for tackling colorectal cancer, the second most common cause of cancer-related death.

23 Sep 2014

Internal production of hydrogen peroxide can lead cells to exit cell cycle and become senescent

What happens inside cells when they detect the activation of a cancer-inducing gene? Sometimes, cells are able to signal internally to stop the cell cycle. Such cells are able to enter, at least for a time, a protective non-growth state.

30 Aug 2014

Idera collaborates with TMA to advance new potential treatment approach for myositis

Idera Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing nucleic acid therapeutics for patients with cancer and rare diseases, and The Myositis Association (TMA), the only nonprofit organization dedicated to solely serving all patients with inflammatory myopathies, today announced a collaboration to advance a new potential treatment approach for polymyositis and dermatomyositis known as Toll-like receptor (TLR) antagonism.

7 Aug 2014

Alnylam announces new pre-clinical results with DC for ALN-CC5 to treat complement-mediated diseases

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced today new pre-clinical results with its Development Candidate (DC) for ALN-CC5, a subcutaneously administered investigational RNAi therapeutic targeting complement component C5 in development for the treatment of complement-mediated diseases.

10 Jun 2014

Study: RNAi silencing strategy blocks production of mutant huntingtin protein

A targeted gene silencing strategy blocks production of the dysfunctional huntingtin (Htt) protein, the cause of Huntington's disease, a fatal, inherited neurodegenerative disorder.

22 May 2014

Scientists discover protein potentially good target for influenza A virus

Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered that a protein produced by the influenza A virus helps it outwit one of our body's natural defense mechanisms. That makes the protein a potentially good target for antiviral drugs directed against the influenza A virus.

11 Apr 2014

Idera Pharmaceuticals reports positive top-line results from Phase 2 trial of IMO-8400

Idera Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced positive top-line data from its randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled Phase 2 trial of IMO-8400 in 32 patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis.

28 Mar 2014

UMass Medical School students win 2014 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award

Colin Conine and Emma Watson, PhD students in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, received the 2014 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award for research into the mechanisms governing epigenetic inheritance and the complex interactions between diet, gene expression and physiology.

26 Mar 2014

Scientists unlock one of mysteries of modern genetics

Scientists at Indiana University have unlocked one of the mysteries of modern genetics: how acquired traits can be passed between generations in a process called epigenetic inheritance. The new work finds that cells don't know to silence some genes based on information hardwired into their DNA sequences, but recognize heritable chemical marks that are added to the genes. These chemical tags serve as a form of molecular memory, allowing cells to recognize the genes and remember to silence them again in each new generation.

21 Mar 2014

IIN collaborates with Nanyang Technological University to establish Nanomedicine

Northwestern University's International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN) is collaborating with Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, to establish the NTU-Northwestern Institute for Nanomedicine.

24 Feb 2014