April 3, 2024
Genetic Ethics
April 2, 2024
New Genetic Analysis Tool Tracks Risks Tied to CRISPR Edits
(PhysOrg) – University of California San Diego researchers have developed a new genetic system to test and analyze the underlying mechanisms of CRISPR-based DNA repair outcomes. As described in Nature Communications, Postdoctoral Scholar Zhiqian Li, Professor Ethan Bier and their … Read More
March 28, 2024
‘A Chance to Live’: How 2 Families Faced a Catastrophic Birth Defect
(New York Times) – Cases of trisomy 18 may rise as many states restrict abortion. But some women choose to have the babies, love them tenderly and care for them devotedly. In Texas last year, Kate Cox, whose fetus had … Read More
March 26, 2024
Overdosing on Chemo: A Common Gene Test Could Save Hundred of Lives Each Year
(KFF Health News) – Rosen was one of more than 275,000 cancer patients in the United States who are infused each year with fluorouracil, known as 5-FU, or, as in Rosen’s case, take a nearly identical drug in pill form … Read More
March 26, 2024
DNA Test Says It Can Predict Opioid Addiction Risk. Skeptics Aren’t So Sure.
(Washington Post) – Using a swab inside the cheek and a sophisticated computer algorithm, a DNA test recently approved by federal regulators promisesto assess genetic risk of opioid addiction. The test’s maker says results give doctors and patients a crucial … Read More
March 21, 2024
Surgeons Transplant Pig Kidney Into a Patient, a Medical Milestone
(New York Times) – Surgeons in Boston have transplanted a kidney from a genetically engineered pig into an ailing 62-year-old man, the first procedure of its kind. If successful, the breakthrough offers hope to hundreds of thousands of Americans whose … Read More
March 20, 2024
A Lifesaving Therapy for Children with a Rare Disease Is Now the World’s Most Expensive Drug, Raising Questions About Access
(CNN) – A new gene therapy for the fatal genetic disorder metachromatic leukodystrophy, or MLD, will carry a wholesale price of $4.25 million, its manufacturer announced Wednesday, making it the world’s most expensive medicine. Lenmeldy was approved by the US … Read More
March 18, 2024
DNA Tests Are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest
(The Atlantic) – Widespread genetic testing is uncovering case after secret case of children born to close biological relatives—providing an unprecedented accounting of incest in modern society. The geneticist Jim Wilson, at the University of Edinburgh, was shocked by the … Read More
March 14, 2024
A New Strategy to Attack Aggressive Brain Cancer Shrank Tumors in Two Early Tests
(ABC News) – A new strategy to fight an extremely aggressive type of brain tumor showed promise in a pair of experiments with a handful of patients. Scientists took patients’ own immune cells and turned them into “living drugs” able … Read More
March 11, 2024
Doctors Can Now Edit the Genes Inside Your Body
(Wall Street Journal) – It sounds like science fiction, but Odunsi is among dozens of people participating in studies on a controversial new forefront of the gene-editing revolution. Regulators last year approved the world’s first medicine using Crispr, the Nobel … Read More
March 7, 2024
The DNA Scandal That Threatens Thousands of Criminal Cases
(Wall Street Journal) – For nearly three decades, Yvonne “Missy” Woods was Colorado’s star forensic scientist, relied on by police and prosecutors to test DNA evidence in the state’s most baffling crimes. Her work was considered the gold standard by … Read More
March 7, 2024
One Twin Was Hurt, the Other Was Not. Their Adult Mental Health Diverged.
(New York Times) – Why do twins, who share so many genetic and environmental inputs, diverge as adults in their experience of mental illness? On Wednesday, a team of researchers from the University of Iceland and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden … Read More
February 27, 2024
Good Chemistry
(Aeon) – Good Chemistry takes viewers behind the scenes and beyond the headlines of the CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough. Centred on the work of the French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and the US biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who together became the first all-female … Read More
February 26, 2024
Meet the Fetal Surgeon Forging CRISPR’s Next Frontier: Curing Diseases in the Womb
(STAT News) – If UCSF is known for birthing the field of fetal surgery, UC Berkeley, located a short drive across the Bay Bridge, is famous in biomedical circles for pioneering CRISPR gene editing, the most powerful DNA-manipulating tool ever … Read More
February 26, 2024
A New Edition of European Journal of Human Genetics Is Now Available
February 23, 2024
‘All of Us’ Genetics Chart Stirs Unease Over Controversial Depiction of Race
(Nature) – Some geneticists have expressed their unease about a figure in a high-profile Nature paper that was published earlier this week, noting that it could be misinterpreted as reinforcing racist beliefs. The figure has reignited a long-standing debate among … Read More
February 21, 2024
MEGA-CRISPR Tool Gives a Power Boost to Cancer-Fighting Cells
(Nature) – The CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing system excels at altering and disrupting genes. But the changes it makes are permanent, which can be a big problem if the system goes awry. Now, a CRISPR-based system that targets a cell’s short-lived messenger … Read More
February 20, 2024
Scientists Find Genetic Signature of Down Syndrome in Ancient Bones
(New York Times) – Scientists have diagnosed Down syndrome from DNA in the ancient bones of seven infants, one as old as 5,500 years. Their method, published in the journal Nature Communications, may help researchers learn more about how prehistoric … Read More
February 19, 2024
Super-Speedy Sequencing Puts Genomic Diagnosis in the Fast Lane
(Nature) – Stark and others around the world have repeatedly demonstrated the feasibility and clinical benefit of rapid sequencing and interpretation pipelines for delivering timely, personalized interventions for previously enigmatic disorders. These workflows can generally deliver diagnoses in less than … Read More
February 19, 2024
‘All of Us’ Reports Half of the Genomes It Has Sequenced Are from Non-Europeans
(STAT News) – Six years ago, the National Institutes of Health placed its biggest ever bet on precision medicine, launching a study to enroll over 1 million participants in an ambitious data-gathering gambit unmatched in its scope and diversity. Since … Read More
February 14, 2024
More Patients Rely on Early Prenatal Testing as States Toughen Abortion Laws
(PBS) – Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, many health care providers say an increasing number of patients are deciding the fate of their pregnancies on whatever information they can gather before state abortion bans kick in. But early ultrasounds … Read More
February 14, 2024
What Exactly, Should You Eat? Inside the $190 Million Study Trying to Find the Answer
(Wall Street Journal) – The NIH study will involve 10,000 participants in total, some of whom are signing up for intense measures, like monitors that follow them and make sure they don’t eat smuggled food, or special eyeglass attachments to … Read More
February 1, 2024
Angiodema: Gene Therapy Blocks Painful Hereditary Disorder
(BBC) – Gene therapy has transformed the lives of people with a genetic disorder that causes painful and unpredictable swelling attacks. Angiodema, thought to affect 50,000 people worldwide, can be seriously debilitating, affect airways, and occasionally prove fatal. Patients treated … Read More
February 1, 2024
Why Do Women Have More Autoimmune Diseases? Study Points to X Chromosome
(New York Times) – Women are much more likely than men to have their immune system turn against them, resulting in an array of so-called autoimmune diseases, like lupus and multiple sclerosis. A study published on Thursday offers an explanation … Read More
February 1, 2024
We’re Naming Cancers All Wrong, Oncology Leader Says
(STAT News) – Naming cancers solely by the organs they originate in is getting a bit old, according to Fabrice André, a medical oncologist at Gustave Roussy in France and the president-elect of the European Society of Medical Oncology. Instead, … Read More
