Genetic News and Research

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City Of Hope opens new center for diabetes research and care

City of Hope has established a new Diabetes Research Center that will expand its pioneering investigations into diabetes, endocrinology and metabolic diseases, create an infrastructure to support translational research and enhance clinical care for diabetes and its related complications.

22 Mar 2011

Girls with medical conditions causing short stature go undiagnosed

Primary care doctors are less likely to refer short girls than short boys for diagnostic testing that can reveal underlying medical reasons for their short stature, according to a new study of an urban pediatric population in Philadelphia. Girls with medical conditions causing their short stature may go undiagnosed, or may be diagnosed later than boys, limiting timely treatment.

21 Mar 2011

Differences between therapeutic radiation therapy and exposure to excessive nuclear plant fallout radiation

"The Canadian Association of Radiation Oncology (http://www.caro-acro.ca) is the voice for specialists in Canada who treat patients' cancer with radiation. In that capacity," explains Dr. Matthew Parliament, president of CARO-ACRO, "we work with proven, controlled, targeted application of various forms of radiation therapy to treat and cure cancer."

21 Mar 2011

Study identifies gene linked to higher risk of multiple sclerosis in children

Canadians have one of the highest rates of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in the world with approximately 1,000 new cases diagnosed each year. Primarily striking in adulthood, physicians and researchers with the Canadian Pediatric Demyelinating Diseases Network (CPDDN), a multi-institutional and multidisciplinary group, have found that MS is being increasingly diagnosed in children.

21 Mar 2011

Study unravels molecular mechanism of biomolecule RNA that plays dynamic regulatory role in protein selection

If a big bunch of your brain cells suddenly went rogue and decided to become fat cells, it could cloud your decision-making capacity a bit. Fortunately, early in an organism's development, cells make firm and more-or-less permanent decisions about whether they will live their lives as, say, skin cells, brain cells or, well, fat cells.

21 Mar 2011

Sarsia Seed provides follow-up funding for APIM Therapeutics

APIM Therapeutics AS, an early-stage Norwegian therapeutic company, is pursuing a novel drug approach with the ability to potentiate the action of a wide range of chemotherapeutic drugs currently used to treat several types of cancer.

21 Mar 2011

Research outlines how cilia disease gene products regulate early cilium formation

An international collaboration jointly led by University College Dublin, University of Alabama and Simon Fraser University, British Columbia has outlined in the Journal of Cell Biology how cilia disease gene products regulate important aspects of early cilium formation and the integrity of the ciliary transport gate.

21 Mar 2011

Life Technologies enters clinical trials for DNA SBT platform for analysis of Human Leukocyte Antigen system

Life Technologies Corporation today announced that it is the first life science tools provider entering clinical trials to prove the safety and effectiveness of their DNA sequence-based typing (SBT) platform for analysis of the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) system. Submission for 510(k) clearance of this SBT platform will follow completion of the clinical trials, which is anticipated this summer.

21 Mar 2011

Tiny Locked Nucleic Acid-based compounds inhibit entire disease-associated microRNA families

A study published online in this week's Nature Genetics demonstrates that tiny Locked Nucleic Acid (LNA)-based compounds developed by Santaris Pharma A/S can inhibit entire disease-associated microRNA families. This provides a potential new approach for treating a variety of diseases including cancer, viral infections, cardiovascular and muscle diseases.

21 Mar 2011

Drug delivery breakthrough for Alzheimer’s disease

Till date all attempts to get drugs into the brain were countered by the blood-brain barrier - the natural defense against potentially harmful chemicals floating around the body. However this new finding from a team from University of Oxford shows that now scientists have successfully switched off a gene implicated in Alzheimer’s disease in the brains of mice by exploiting tiny particles naturally released by cells, called exosomes.

21 Mar 2011

U-M professor shows how plasticity of brain restores critical functions related to learning, memory

When Geoffrey Murphy, Ph.D., talks about plastic structures, he's not talking about the same thing as Mr. McGuire in The Graduate. To Murphy, an associate professor of molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Michigan Medical School, plasticity refers to the brain's ability to change as we learn.

19 Mar 2011

ACRIN, ECOG, NCI intent to merge their clinical cancer research programs

The American College of Radiology's Imaging Network and the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group, National Cancer Institute Clinical Trials Cooperative Group members, today announced their intent to merge their clinical cancer research programs.

19 Mar 2011

New insight into Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Armed with a zebrafish model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy and a library of 1,200 chemicals already approved for human use, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have identified a compound that reverses the loss of muscle structure and function associated with DMD, seemingly by compensating for the loss of a critical protein.

19 Mar 2011

Researchers discover process that regulates DNA maintenance

DNA contains all of the genetic instructions that make us who we are, and maintaining the integrity of our DNA over the course of a lifetime is a critical, yet complex part of the aging process.

19 Mar 2011

RainDance Technologies launches ASDSeq and XSeq Research Screening Panels

RainDance Technologies, Inc., today announced the commercial availability of the ASDSeq™ and XSeq™ Research Screening Panels. Developed in collaboration with Emory University and Greenwood Genetic Center, the two comprehensive panels enable researchers to simultaneously interrogate key genes known to be linked to X-chromosome disorders and syndromic forms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) using next-generation sequencing.

18 Mar 2011

Sage Bionetworks, AstraZeneca enter cancer research collaboration

Sage Bionetworks and AstraZeneca have initiated a collaboration to make new insights into certain cancers using advanced computational models of disease genetics. This deeper understanding of cancer will potentially help better match patients with appropriate treatments and might one day lead to new cancer therapeutics.

18 Mar 2011

Quest Diagnostics enters definitive merger agreement to acquire Celera for $8 per share

Quest Diagnostics Incorporated, the world's leading provider of diagnostic testing, information and services, and Celera Corporation, one of the world's pioneers in genetic diagnostics discovery and development, announced today that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Quest Diagnostics will acquire Celera for $8 per share, representing a transaction value of approximately $344 million, net of $327 million in acquired cash and short-term investments.

From Quest Diagnostics 18 Mar 2011

Celera reports net revenue of $34.9 million for fourth quarter of 2010

Celera Corporation today reported net revenues of $34.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2010 that ended December 25, 2010, compared to $39.2 million for the prior year quarter.

18 Mar 2011

Study reveals new mechanism underlying reproduction in plants

A team of researchers at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ci-ncia (IGC), Portugal, discovered that pollen, the organ that contains the plant male gametes, communicate with the pistil, their female counterpart, using a mechanism commonly observed in the nervous system of animals.

18 Mar 2011

New tool for studying microRNA expression in zebrafish

A new research tool for studying microRNA expression in zebrafish will help researchers study the effects of miRNA on the early development of this model organism and better understand developmental and disease mechanisms in humans, as described in Zebrafish, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

18 Mar 2011