Gene Therapy News and Research

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Gene therapy is an experimental technique that uses genes to treat or prevent disease. In the future, this technique may allow doctors to treat a disorder by inserting a gene into a patient’s cells instead of using drugs or surgery.

Skin flaps deliver cancer-fighting therapy

Using gene therapy, plastic surgeons have delivered cancer fighting proteins through skin flaps placed on cancerous tumors on rats with a 79 percent reduction in tumor volume, according to a study in the May issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

8 May 2008

Adult human stem cells shown not to pose a cancer risk when implanted into different organs

A new study by UC Davis researchers provides evidence that methods using human bone marrow-derived stem cells to deliver gene therapy to cure diseases of the blood, bone marrow and certain types of cancer do not cause the development of tumors or leukemia.

6 May 2008

Forty-one percent of registered nurses find generics are less effective than name brand drugs say American Society of Registered Nurses

In a national online survey conducted by the American Society of Registered Nurses, 41% of the 781 Registered Nurses surveyed on April 28 reported that generic drugs are less effective than their equivalent brand-name counterparts.

5 May 2008

Man's sight restored by gene therapy

Eye specialists at London's Moorfields Eye Hospital in Britain have restored a man's sight by using gene therapy.

28 Apr 2008

Gene therapy restores vision in patients with rare congenital blindness

In a clinical trial at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, researchers from The University of Pennsylvania have used gene therapy to safely restore vision in three young adults with a rare form of congenital blindness.

27 Apr 2008

Chronic inflammation triggers cell fusions that could protect neurons

Chronic inflammation triggers bone marrow-derived blood cells to travel to the brain and fuse with a certain type of neuron up to 100 times more frequently than previously believed, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

20 Apr 2008

Cutting-edge surgical training facility to open at the University of Sydney

A new facility for the training of the next generation of microsurgeons in both molecular biology and advanced surgical techniques will be officially opened by the Governor of NSW, Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir AC CVO, at the University of Sydney on Tuesday 22 April.

17 Apr 2008

Nanomagnets used to carry genes to fight tumours

A revolutionary cancer treatment using microscopic magnets to enable 'armed' human cells to target tumours has been developed by researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

17 Apr 2008

New vector carries big genes linked to inherited blindness

Some clinicians and researchers hope that individuals with inherited diseases (such as cystic fibrosis and recessive Stargardt disease, which causes progressive loss of sight) might one day be cured by providing them with a corrected version of their disease-causing faulty gene, i.e., by gene therapy.

16 Apr 2008

New technique traces ancestry of disease genes

A team of researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and the Israeli Institute of Technology (Technion) in Haifa has developed a technique to detect the ancestry of disease genes in hybrid, or mixed, human populations.

9 Apr 2008

Scientists visualize the machinery of mRNA splicing

Recent research at Yale provided a glimpse of the ancient mechanism that helped diversify our genomes; it illuminated a relationship between gene processing in humans and the most primitive organisms by creating the first crystal structure of a crucial self-splicing region of RNA.

7 Apr 2008

Novel approach may lead to safer delivery of genetic therapies

A novel strategy for circumventing safety problems that have plagued gene therapy has been offered by a complex multicenter group of researchers, including Professor Claudio Napoli, a Full Professor at the II University of Naples and Adjunct Professor at the Sbarro Research Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine and the Center of Biotechnology at the College of Science and Technology of Temple University.

24 Mar 2008