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Hydrogel controls inflammation to speed healing – Futurity: Research News

Wednesday, January 1st, 2020

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Researchers have established a baseline set of injectable hydrogels that show promise to help heal wounds, deliver drugs, and treat cancer.

Critically, theyve analyzed how the chemically distinct hydrogels provoke the bodys inflammatory responseor not.

The researchers designed the hydrogels to be injectable and create a mimic of cellular scaffolds in a desired location. They serve as placeholders while the body naturally feeds new blood vessels and cells into the scaffold, which degrades over time to leave natural tissue in its place. Hydrogels can also carry chemical or biological prompts that determine the scaffolds structure or affinity to the surrounding tissue.

We dont want zero inflammation; we want appropriate inflammation.

The study demonstrates it should be possible to tune multidomain peptide hydrogels to produce appropriate inflammatory response for what theyre treating.

Weve been working on peptide-based hydrogels for a number of years and have produced about 100 different types, says Jeffrey Hartgerink, a chemist and bioengineer at Rice University. In this paper, we wanted to back up a bit and understand some of the fundamental ways in which they modify biological environments.

The researchers wanted to know specifically how synthetic hydrogels influence the environments inflammatory response. The two-year study offered the first opportunity to test a variety of biocompatible hydrogels for the levels of inflammatory response they trigger.

Usually, we think of inflammation as bad, Hartgerink says. Thats because inflammation is sometimes associated with pain, and nobody likes pain. But the inflammatory response is also extremely important for wound healing and in clearing infection.

We dont want zero inflammation; we want appropriate inflammation, he says. If we want to heal wounds, inflammation is good because it starts the process of rebuilding vasculature. It recruits all kinds of cells that are regenerative to that site.

The labs tested four basic hydrogel typestwo with positive charge and two negativeto see what kind of inflammation they would trigger. They discovered that positively charged hydrogels triggered a much stronger inflammatory response than negatively charged ones.

Among the positive materials, depending on the chemistry generating that charge, we can either generate a strong or a moderate inflammatory response, Hartgerink says. If youre going for wound-healing, you really want a moderate response, and we saw that in one of the four materials.

But if you want to go for a cancer treatment, the higher inflammatory response might be more effective, he says. For something like drug delivery, where inflammation is not helpful, one of the negatively charged materials might be better.

Basically, were laying the groundwork to understand how to develop materials around the inflammatory responses these materials provoke. That will give us our best chance of success.

Researchers at Texas Heart Institute (THI) helped analyze the cellular response to the hydrogels through multidimensional flow cytometry.

The results of this work lay the groundwork for specifically tailoring delivery of a therapeutic by a delivery vehicle that is functionally relevant and predictable, says Darren Woodside, vice president for research and director of the flow cytometry and imaging core at THI. Aside from delivering drugs, these hydrogels are also compatible with a variety of cell types.

One of the problems with stem cell therapies at present is that adoptively transferred cells dont necessarily stay in high numbers at the site of injection, he says. Mixing these relatively inert, negatively charged hydrogels with stem cells before injection may overcome this limitation.

Hartgerink says the work is foundational, rather than geared toward a specific application, but is important to the long-term goal of bringing synthetic hydrogels to the clinic.

We have been speculating about a lot of the things we think are good and true about this material, and we now have more of a sound mechanistic understanding of why they are, in fact, true, Hartgerink says.

The research appears in Biomaterials.

Additional coauthors are from Rice and the Texas Heart Institute. The National Institutes of Health, the Welch Foundation, the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology, the National Science Foundation, and a Stauffer-Rothrock Fellowship supported the research.

Source: Rice University

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Hydrogel controls inflammation to speed healing - Futurity: Research News

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Whats The Real Difference Between Organic And GMO? – Forbes

Saturday, December 21st, 2019

As the new year approaches, food is front and centerits stocked in our homes for gatherings with friends, offered at office holiday parties and constantly on our minds as we plan menus for family dinners or brainstorm next years healthy eating plan. Its a seasonable time to consider what happens to your food before it hits your plate. And for many consumers, thats something of a puzzle, particularly when it comes to understanding organic versus GMOsor genetically modified organisms.

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Asking questions like Is organic non-GMO? and How do GMOs compare to organic food? can help you make better sense of what youre feeding yourself and your loved ones. Heres a helpful guide to boost your knowledge and inform your nutritional choices all year round.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines GMOs as organisms whose genetic materialor DNAhas been altered or modified in some way that does not occur naturally. In most cases, genetic engineering works by transferring individual genes from one organism to another. Most commonly found in crops such as soybeans, corn and canola, GMOs are designed to provide a higher nutritional value to food, as well as protect crops against pests.

Organic foods, on the other hand, do not contain any pesticides, fertilizers, solvents or additives. According to the Organic Trade Association (OTA), USDA-certified organic foods are grown and processed according to strict federal guidelines that cover everything from soil quality and pest control to animal raising practices. Similarly, organic livestock raised for meat, eggs and dairy products must be given organic feed, and cannot receive antibiotics, growth hormones or any animal by-products.

Is organic non-GMO?

Theres plenty of debate surrounding GMO and organic food, which can make grocery shopping around the holiday season a harrowing experience. Making a key distinction can go a long way.

For those looking to avoid the use of chemical pesticides, along with the high costs of organic food, non-GMO products are a viable alternative. Thats because non-GMO products dont contain any GMO ingredients. However, that doesnt mean they are grown organically.

Organic isand always has beennon-GMO, says Laura Batcha, CEO and executive director of the OTA. But non-GMO is not always organic.

Understanding the pros and cons of both options can also empower consumers. Heres how industry experts weigh in:

Why GMO?

Why organic?

A critical eye

So what are the shortcomings of GMOs and organic items? Common arguments against GMOs include the consumption of harmful bacteria and toxins, increased risk of allergic reaction and outcrossing, or the mixing of crops from conventional seeds with GM crops, which may have an indirect effect on food safety and food security, reports WHO.

Opponents of organic food argue that its significantly more expensive than GMO or non-GMO foods, has a shorter shelf life compared to GMO foods and may have higher bacteria levels due to limited pesticide and herbicide usage.

How to make the right choice for you and your family

Both categories of foodnon-GMO and organicare subject to strict regulatory guidelines and have gone through rigorous verification programs. That alone may provide consumers with the peace of mind theyre looking for when holiday grocery shopping.

If organic is the way you want to go, Batcha offers these tips to get the best bang for your buck:

Shop smart: Look for specials on organic products, and buy in bulk whenever you can to cut costs.

Prioritize: Think about what your family eats a lot of, and what your healthy eating priorities are.

Comparison shop: Organic fresh produce is sometimes sold at the same price as conventional, so check out organic produce aisles.

Pick and choose carefully: While conventional milk can be cheaper, recent research published by Cambridge University Press suggests that organic milk is free of pesticide and antibiotic residues. If your family drinks milk, its worth the extra cost to buy organic.

A little common sense goes a long way, too. Cookies, cakes and other sugar-laden treats, even if organic, are still not the healthiest option. And if you really want to know what youre eating, try cooking from scratcheven if it means incorporating some DIY cooking hacks. Understanding the differences between organic vs. GMO foods will allow you to provide your loved ones with the right nutritional options.

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Whats The Real Difference Between Organic And GMO? - Forbes

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2020s visions: We’ll get flying cars just before becoming software-based people – CNET

Saturday, December 21st, 2019

UberAir is planning on taking to the skies over Melbourne by 2020, even if that seems highly ambitious.

In some ways, the future that so much science fiction promised us is already here. We have genetically altered humans, conversations with computers and robots that run around the woods and do backflips.

But the decade beginning in 2020 will take us even further toward a world where far-out ideas like hooking brains up to computers -- and even immortality -- become topics of serious conversation.

Vivek Wadhwa, author of the 2017 book The Driver in the Driverless Car, expects that along the way, several other major advances will be in common use by 2030, including the ever-delayed flying car, medical tricorders, bionic exoskeletons and unlimited clean energy.

"Some technologies will take longer to reach the masses than others, but they will be at hand," he tells me. "The 2020s will be when the incredible promises of technology finally happen."

As 2019, the year in which Blade Runner was set, draws to a close, here's a deeper look at what the next 10 years will bring.

Predicting that George Jetson's or Rick Deckard's favored method of commuting is just around the corner has become the ultimate futurist's faux pas, but here we are again. The barrier to flying around town isn't technology at this point; it's laws and logistics. A number of small companies make flying cars right now, but most require a pilot's license and might cost as much as a helicopter, preventing airborne autos from becoming a replacement for the average driver's Prius anytime soon.

What could happen for the rest of us is a system of flying taxis. Uber hopes to beta-test limited flight-sharing in select cities using small, electric VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) vehicles as soon as 2023.

Now playing: Watch this: Bell Nexus flying taxi could hit the skies next year

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The driverless future will arrive much sooner. A Tesla can already valet-park itself and take the wheel on the highway -- not completely self-driving, but a start. Several other automakers aim to catch up in the next few years, moving toward fully autonomous driving by the mid-2020s. There's even been a rumor that Apple could create a driverless electric car that adds augmented reality or some sort of smart displays to the concept by 2025.

But engineer, inventor and former BT "futurologist" Ian Pearson sees our self-driving destiny playing out differently.

"I think there's going to be a shock in the 2020s on that one," he says.

Pearson envisions bans on personal cars in city centers in favor of electric "pods" (sometimes called personal rapid transit) that would be inexpensive and basic -- perhaps akin to big, covered golf carts -- running on designated roadways and controlled from riders' phones.

The future of moving around cities could be pods like these in use at London's Heathrow Airport.

If you're looking to go farther than just across town, Elon Musk has promised he'll be ready to ferry us around the globe on super-fast flights via space using the same rockets he hopes will begin carrying humans to the moon and Mars in the 2020s.

Musk has always been a little loose with meeting self-imposed timelines -- SpaceX took several years longer to get its commercial space business off the ground than the founder initially promised -- so it's tough to say how soon regular folks might be catching a ride on his Starship. Other space companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are closer to ferrying space tourists in the next few years, at least for a quick joyride in the skies.

Now playing: Watch this: First look inside Virgin Galactic's space passenger terminal

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The 2020s are opening with millions speaking to digital assistants, and the decade will see the ways we interact with computers evolve and even surpass how we communicate with other humans.

Bill Gates said earlier this year that natural language inputs and AI voice assistants will improve to the point they might be able to fill the role of a human secretary.

"I do think that we'll have executive assistant-type capability in a five- to 10-year period," Gates told MIT Technology Review in the above video.

Pearson thinks that instead of talking to smart speakers or phones, we could soon be conversing with our own eyeballs. He says he first thought up the idea for an "active contact lens" back in 1991. The notion of an augmented reality display floating on your cornea would have been perfect cyborg sci-fi movie fodder back then, but now at least one startup seems to have it just about worked out, with a tiny display that seems just right for embedding in contacts.

We'll soon see if hiding your screen on your eyeball is appealing, but Elon Musk is already thinking one step ahead. His startup Neuralink is just one outfit working on brain-computer interfaces that use our thoughts as input mechanisms rather than taking the time to type, speak or gesture our commands.

Musk hopes to demonstrate the technology with paralyzed patients in 2020, and by 2030 it may become significantly easier to communicate with the digital world than the human sitting next to you.

In 2030, artificial intelligence may be as smart as your biological friends.

"I think that in three to five years you will see a computer system that will be able to autonomously learn how to understand," IBM Watson lead developer David Ferrucci says in 2018's Do You Trust This Computer. "Not unlike the way the human mind works."

Famed futurist Ray Kurzweil has been claiming for years we'll have humanlike AI by 2029. He doesn't see it, though, as the start of the robot apocalypse (as some, including the late Stephen Hawking, have predicted), but rather as a new era of liberation from the limitations of human biology.

Now playing: Watch this: Ray Kurzweil at SXSW

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Kurzweil laid out his vision in his 2005 book The Singularity is Near, and he's doubled down on it over the years. His basic idea is that advanced AI and nanotechnology will perfect our bodies and enhance our brains in such a way that we're not cyborgs, but our best selves: funnier, smarter, sexier and resistant to disease. But that's just the beginning.

All this comes, according to Kurzweil, by 2029, just in time for a new era when we can upload our minds to become fully software-based people, leaving our bodies behind to live forever in the cloud.

But that's predicted for the 2030s. You'll have to check back in a decade for how that pans out.

The genetic engineering genie has been let out of its bottle, with the first children allegedly born from engineered embryos living anonymously somewhere in China today.

Less illicit uses of gene-editing technologies like CRISPR/Cas9 (which acts like a pair of molecular scissors for DNA) will continue to move forward to help tackle disease and force us to wrestle with the ethical questions involved in the inevitable era of "designer babies" who have their genes altered to match the whims and desires of their parents.

Now playing: Watch this: CRISPR explained with crisps (and assorted snacks)

3:36

Zoltan Istvan, author and Republican candidate challenging President Trump for the 2020 GOP nomination, says an emerging related technology called in vitro gametogenesis could soon shift how we approach infertility and having children. The process basically allows for sperm or eggs to be created from an individual's stem cells.

"It could change how women approach their lives, since they will no longer be on a timetable. ... They'll be able to have children at any age," he tells me. "This tech can also be used for men, and individuals may not even need partners anymore to have children."

Istvan expects the approach could be tested on humans within two to four years and commercially available by 2027.

In the meantime, look for more medical innovations, like a male birth control pill, chips implanted in the brain to give memory a boost and 3D-printed organs.

It's easy to go down the rabbit hole of optimistic outcomes, but there's also a darker timeline to consider. We may already be witnessing the opening scenes of multiple tragedies that could play out over the next decade. Here are just a few:

SpaceX alone hopes to nearly quintuple the 8,000 satellites launched since the dawn of the space age by middecade. Its competitors aim to launch their own mega-constellations of hundreds or thousands more satellites. Collisions in a congested orbital space over Earth could lead to a worst-case scenario called "Kessler syndrome," in which orbit becomes so full of debris it's no longer safe for astronauts or satellites. We would say goodbye to GPS, satellite communications and space exploration for some time.

This image of a distant galaxy group from Arizona's Lowell Observatory is marred by diagonal lines from the trails of Starlink satellites shortly after their launch in May.

At this point, most experts agree that better robots, artificial intelligence and automation will displace millions of workers in the 2020s. The impact on society and what we do about it may shape the coming years.

Istvan and Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang are among the politicians already campaigning on the issue of implementing a universal basic income as a safety net for those who inevitably lose their jobs to tech.

And what about all the potential nightmares we're already navigating online, from deepfakes to concerns over privacy?

"Advances in artificial intelligence will open up new opportunities for mass surveillance and mass-manufactured emotional manipulation," Interchain Foundation President and Tendermint CEO Jae Kwon says. "It will get worse before it gets better."

I've ignored the elephant on the barstool in the corner: a climate and environmental crisis that's already in motion and stirring up deadly extreme weather events with increasing frequency and leaving plastic waste in nearly every nook and cranny of the planet.

To echo Kwon, this also will get worse before it gets better.

Now playing: Watch this: The world's most dangerous lake is finally getting a...

2:37

But technology loves nothing more than a big problem to solve, and plenty of possible solutions could take off in the next decade. It may be the long-promised holy grail of clean fusion power, or the notion of replacing all those planet-warming fossil fuels with the very carbon dioxide that they produce (technologies already exist to capture CO2 and convert it into raw materials).

"I also think we'll see some quite advanced materials arriving, like spray-on solar [photovoltaic power] films," Pearson says. "We'll also see water supply being solved in the developing world with desalination and water collection tech."

Author and MIT scientist Andrew McAfee is so confident technology will help us turn around the mass consumption streak weighing so heavily on the environment that he's inviting people to take him up on a bet the US will consume less energy in 2029 than it does in 2019.

So far, no one has taken that bet. Interestingly, Kurzweil has put down money on his own bet that a machine will pass a test of "human-level intelligence" by 2029.

Let's plan to meet back here in a decade to see who's right. Or just look me up in the cloud.

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Viewpoint: Confused about GMOs and pesticides? Here’s a science-based handbook for combating anti-biotech fallacies – Genetic Literacy Project

Saturday, December 21st, 2019

Junk science is everywhere these days. From scare stories about pesticides to allegations that genetic engineering threatens humanitys future, the internet teems with misinformation about food, farming and biotechnology. A recent (and very disappointing) example comes from the usually reputable Scientific American. In August, the news outlet ran an opinion piece claiming that vegetables today are less nutritious and more toxic than they were in years past:

Why are nutrients in our food declining? Well, for one, we are killing the soil it grows in. Prodigious use of biocides (herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, as well as synthetic chemical fertilizers and antibiotics) kill or disrupt soil microorganisms that allow plants to absorb nutrients. Also, increased atmospheric CO2 is accelerating photosynthesis; plants grow faster but contain fewer nutrients, which is expected to lead to worldwide nutrient deficiencies. Vegetables becoming more like sugary snacks? Not good.

Experts quickly pounced on Scientific American for running an article filled with so many inaccuracies, which was later updated to address some of this criticism. For the record, no, your vegetables arent morphing into sugary snacks, and pesticides arent killing the soil. Theyre a necessary part of any farming systemand becoming more environmentally friendly as time goes on. This story was but one example of the mass of misinformation that proliferates online, poisoning discussions about important technologies and threatening to grind innovation in agriculture to a halt.

With so much on the line, scientists are pushing back against the misinformation onslaught. My colleagues William Kerr and Peter Phillips at the University of Saskatchewan and I are aiding that effort with a new book that takes on a variety of common myths surrounding food production and crop biotechnology: GM Agriculture and Food Security: Fears and Facts.

As academics, the three of us have researched and written about agriculture, biotechnology, food and innovation for more than 20 years, with over 400 publications between us. We certainly dont know everything, but we wanted to share our insights with those interested in separating sound science from media and activist hype.

Do farmers really need pesticides?

Have you ever wondered why farmers use chemicals in their fields? To inform readers about the reasons for farm pesticide use, we discuss how proficiently weeds produce seeds compared to domesticated plants. Weeds frequently produce 1,000 seeds or more every summer. Kochia, a noxious weed in all parts of Canada, is capable of producing 25,000 seeds per year. By comparison, a really good head of wheat produces 40 seeds, but would normally produce 25-35. If farmers didnt use chemicals to control weeds, within a few years, weeds would dominate the entire field, making it difficult to grow a crop.

How GMOs help save our forests

Perhaps youve also pondered how we will sustainably feed 10 billion people, the projected global population by 2050, without cutting down millions of acres of forest. Currently, roughly 800 million people dont get enough to eat on a daily bases, so we felt it was necessary to discuss how innovations in food production have already sustainably increased crop yields around the world, and are poised to continue doing so.

Hawaiis papaya industry was decimated in the 1990s by a disease known as ring-spot virus. Virus-resistant papaya varieties have since allowed Hawaiian farmers to not just save their livelihood but actually increase their production. Likewise, newly developed gene-edited sorghum doubled crop yields of this African staple food in a recent study, fueling expectations that CRISPR is going to have a revolutionary impact on agriculture.

A related question, often asked and answered by organic farming proponents, is whether locally sourced food is capable of meeting the increasing global demand for calories. Many people enjoy the fruits and vegetables they grow in their backyard gardens, so the romantic notion that locally produced food is capable of combating hunger around the world sounds plausible. But we highlight the many reasons why local food self-sufficiency should not be viewed as equivalent to food security.

Food processing is essential to ensure harvest production spikes are leveled out, thus preventing food price spikes months later. Societies that are forced to rely on locally produced crops are more likely to face market disruptions and food insecurity as a result. The discrepancy between popular ideas about sustainable farming and what science says on the topic leads us to another issue worth exploring.

The assault on expertise

400 years ago, Galileo was castigated by the authorities of the day for arguing that the sun, not the Earth, was the center of our universe. We sometimes doubt that much has changed over the last four centuries, as todays experts are often ridiculed for defending scientific facts against attacks from ideological activist groups.

The three of us strongly believe that consumers should know who the experts are: people with degrees who spend their careers conducting original research. This is essential because the discussion around crop biotechnology has become a pitched political battle as anti-GMO activists continue to spin conspiracies to undermine the credibility of academically trained scientists. The work of US Right to Know, an organic industry-funded special interest group, illustrates this point. The anti-GMO outfit has filed freedom of information requests on over 50 university faculty that have published peer-reviewed journal articles that quantify the benefits of GM crops. Two of us belong the group of academics that USRTK has targeted. Our private communications were posted online out of context, and this information has been used to accuse us of shilling for the biotech industry.

To help combat the assault on expertise, we examine the difference between science and opportunistic activism. Science, simply put, is a process that leads to compilations of knowledge. As research methods are agreed to and standardized, carefully conducted experiments expand our understanding of a given scientific topic. Activism, meanwhile, involves cherry picking data that fits a predetermined conclusion. Claims that the weed killer glyphosate cause cancer are often justified with reference to such cherry-picked research.

This isnt to say a new study that contradicts all of the known literature is incorrect, but it should trigger additional research to confirm, or reject, the new findingsbefore activist groups and the press promote any particular conclusion.

What you should know about factory farming

An equally important topic of discussion is so-called industrial agriculture. Many urban consumers that no longer enjoy close connections to agriculture tend to view farms as small, red-barn operations, like the ones our grandparents generation ran. The reality of todays multi-thousand acre, million-dollar-equipment farms is largely incomprehensible to most consumers, which needs to change if society is going to have an informed conversation about the benefits and challenges of modern food production.

While we highlight the economic and environmental benefits from the commercialization of GM crops in various countries, the consolidation within the seed development industry raises legitimate concerns. For example, the increased cost of obtaining regulatory approval for GM crop varieties has become so high that public university researchers are beginning to avoid genetic modification as a plant breeding technology. The regulatory headache and expense are simply not worth it to them.

Meanwhile, much of society is fixated on consolidations at the start of food supply chains, rather than consolidations that have occurred within the food processing and retail sectors. Companies such as Kraft and Walmart have far more influence over the products available in grocery stores than the agricultural firms at the start of the supply chain, yet virtually no attention is given to firms that are closer to consumers.

Mergers and acquisitions within the grocery retail sector can lead to increased market power in the hands of a few large, global firms, which in turn creates the potential for higher prices due to reduced competition. Retail firms have far more power over the price we consumers pay for food than the firms at the start of food supply chains.

Focus on the future

The internet has put limitless amounts of information at our fingertips. Sadly, much of it is misinformationjunk science meant to skew our perception of important topics like food safety and biotechnology. The risk this poses cannot be overstated.

Producing an abundant food supply to economically and sustainably feed a world population of 9+ billion people is a Herculean task. Innovative plant breeding technologies can help us do it, but these advances are being threatened by arduous, unnecessary regulations and deliberate misinformation campaigns led by activist who see mainstream science as a threat to humanity. The only long-term solution is an informed populace that wont be fooled by propaganda.

Stuart J. Smyth is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and holds the Industry Funded Research Chair in Agri-Food Innovation at the University of Saskatchewan. Follow him on Twitter

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Meet the Russian geneticist who wants to edit your children – Russia Beyond

Saturday, December 21st, 2019

CRISPR, a tool used to edit genes, has the power to shape the future of the human genome. The international community is wary of the technology, but a lone Russian scientist says we should already be doing more tests...on human embryos.

Denis Rebrikov would have been following the news with great interest when CRISPR, a method for editing the genes of living organisms, made international headlines last year.

It was reported that a Chinese geneticist named He Jiankui had edited the genomes of twin girls without consulting the global scientific community. Known to the world as Lulu and Nana, the babies had their CCR5 gene altered in the womb in the hope of improving their resistance to HIV. When Hes experiments were made public, the Chinese authorities cracked down on his research, and the resulting international uproar led to further restrictions on human testing using CRISPR.

As it turned out, Rebrikov had already been planning his own tests for quite some time.

A geneticist himself, Rebrikov worked for years in relative obscurity at the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University that is, until he went public with his intentions last summer to pick up the torch where He left off. When I see a new technology come forward, he says, I want to see how it works and how I can improve it. Where Rebrikovs vision differs from Hes is in whether or not experiments should be conducted openly or not. The Russian scientist believes everything should be done in the public eye, and with the involvement of the state.

Conversations over genome editing are nothing new for Russia. In fact, a public conversation on its national importance has been taking place over the past two years.

A watershed moment came in 2017 when President Vladimir Putin addressed a youth forum in Sochi. In some of his first public comments on the subject, the president described the technologys potential applications, from the medicinal to the military, calling its use (and potential misuse) as fearsome as the atomic bomb. Elsewhere he confirmed it as a technology that will determine the future of the whole world.

Accordingly, Russia has been investing heavily into genetic research. $2 billion was reportedly spent on establishing official research programs in 2017, with an additional $3.3 billion invested this past April. The payoffs when they come will be enormous. Not only may the health of the nation be improved: as with any technology, innovation brings with it a geopolitical edge. Words like biodefense have circulated within the upper echelons of Russian society, and major figures like Mikhail Kovalchuk (director of the Kurchatov Institute, made famous by this years Chernobyl series) have pushed for Russia to become a global leader in genetics.

This kind of environment is encouraging for figures like Rebrikov, who decided to go public in June with his intention to continue working with genes affecting HIV transmission. But there was difficulty in finding parents who were willing to participate in such a study, so Rebrikov changed course and decided to work with genes connected to hearing loss in children. He found five couples who would qualify for the experiment; one of which met with the scientist to discuss potential risks and benefits. The couple as of yet has not decided on whether they want to participate, even in theory.

Rebrikov hadnt gotten as far as He Jiankui before becoming an international sensation, but this was intentional: he may want the scientific community to know there are no secrets in his lab. For him, comparisons to nuclear weapons can be taken in his stride. The situation is completely analogous to developing an atomic bomb, he says. Can bad people use technology for bad purposes? Of course, but did ethical concerns stop the Soviet Union from doing so?

While international the reaction has not been as heated as it was with He, there have been numerous articles published in major journals like Nature and Science demanding that the international community pressure Rebrikov to stop any future applications of the technology. Some have gone as far as to call him rogue.

In contrast with policies in China and the United States, though, Russias response has been more cautiously optimistic. Whereas other global powers have placed effective moratoriums on embryonic genetic editing (with little chance of these policies changing any time soon), an official panel including leading Russian experts met in July to discuss the question. Figures ranging from Kovalchuk to prominent endocrinologist Maria Vorontsova were invited to speak at the gathering.

Human embryo

The scientist also receives support from the Pirogov Institute. Sergey Lukyanov, Rebrikovs colleague and former PhD advisor, says that his intentions are admirable: [He] is one of those people who takes action towards any imperfection of the universe that can, from his point of view, be corrected. For him, this is an opportunity to bring happiness to parents to have healthy children.

Rebrikov is not without his critics, however. Prominent researchers like Pavel Tishchenko, a bioethicist at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Institute of Philosophy, have called for increased restrictions. Tishchenko organized an ethics panel in October 2019 to review the case and is concerned that parents might not be aware of all the risks involved, or that ethics and regulatory committees might not be as rigorous as necessary.

One of the main questions that needs answering, Tishchenko has said, is who will bear responsibility for possible complications down the line. The edited genes in the Chinese twins might have effects beyond HIV resilience (especially as the CCR5 gene is linked to memory formation), and he claims that todays scientists are not equipped to make the necessary judgment calls.

The Russian Ministry of Health has since come out with an official statement calling genetic experimentation on humans premature. Interesting enough, however, no concrete regulations have been introduced that would definitively prohibit experiments like the ones Rebrikov suggests. Under the current rules, a grey zone exists that may allow for certain experiments depending on whether or not the embryos were created for research purposes or previously discarded, or on whether the experiments are conducted for research purposes or for a clinical trial.

For now, it seems like Rebrikov has put some of his plans on hold. He has said publicly that he will definitely not transfer an edited embryo without the permission of the regulator, but all the same has expressed frustration with the delays. I want the rules to be set, he said, but nobody is doing this. Moreover, the couple which consulted with him has not yet expressed interested in progressing further, and the global attention paid to his research may make any future missteps into a potential international incident.

But temporary setbacks are no guarantee that the status quo is going to last. The current regulatory limbo, despite the rhetoric from Rebrikovs critics, still allows for dramatic steps to be made in the future. And given the potential for genetic engineering to change the world, it may be that Russia may still allow Rebrikov and his team to develop their research further than any other scientist on the planet.

Only time will tell.

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The rise of identity politics is a reminder of Haldane’s worst fears about genetic manipulation – The National

Saturday, December 21st, 2019

When I first heard about JBS Haldane years ago, I only knew about the final act of his life: that he was a British biologist who moved to India, became a citizen there and died there in 1964. Even that sliver of detail was intriguing. Scientists usually moved from India to the West. What prompted this man to travel in the reverse direction?

Four years ago, I started to examine his life in more detail and grew steadily more fascinated. Here was a man who, as a boy, was often a guinea pig for his scientist father; who wrote his first scientific paper when he was in the trenches during the First World War; who went repeatedly to Spain to help fight Francisco Francos fascist forces; who ruined his body in experiments for Britain's Royal Navy during the Second World War; who got into constant tussles with every kind of authority figure; and who wrote reams of elegant essays on science for the lay reader.

But where Haldane really spoke to me, across the years, was in his astute thinking about how science and politics intersect. Over the past few decades, we have lived in a time when scientific objectivity is often confused for apolitical neutrality. Climate change aside, scientists hardly ever took political stances, or expressed their views on matters of ideology, or occupied the sphere of the public-interest intellectual.

This was not always the case, though. In the first half of the 20th century, during Haldanes time, scientists were vociferous about their politics and their stances on social issues Haldanes own voice the loudest of them all. He decried imperialism and exploitative capitalism. He criticised British and American government policies. He never made a secret of his radical politics and eventually became a card-carrying member of the British Communist Party.

His own scientific field genetics was perhaps the most politicised area of study in his time, and he recognised that. Even while the fundamentals of genetics were being established, the West fretted about their implications. Britain and America worried that the white race was being diluted because the feeble-minded and feeble-bodied were allowed to reproduce, or because immigrants and people of colour were having children with white men and women. The state machinery moved to prevent this. In Britain, about 65,000 people were segregated because they were considered unfit to reproduce. In America, an equal number of people were sterilised.

Haldane lambasted these measures, calling them not only unethical but also unscientific. Similarly, when Nazi Germany formulated racial purity laws and marched towards ethnic cleansing, Haldane excoriated that false science as well. The Nazi doctrine of "blut und boden" blood and soil was rubbish, he wrote witheringly. The only way blood differed was in its basic groups A, B, O and AB so the characteristic of a race is not membership of a particular blood group". And none of the soils of Germany were unique to it, he added. Friesland is not unlike northern Holland, Brandenburg is like western Poland.

Race was not a meaningful category in any sense, Haldane argued. The genes of people can vary more within a so-called race than between two racial groups a fact science has repeatedly confirmed

Like other members of his class and nation, Haldane grew up believing that some races were inferior to others. But as genetics progressed and its implications became clearer, he changed his views. Race was not a meaningful category in any sense, he argued. In fact, the genes of people can vary more within a so-called race than between two racial groups, he wrote a fact that science has repeatedly confirmed.

In his most famous essay, Daedalus, Haldane warned that as humanity refines its skills to manipulate its own genes, it will have to construct a new morality to deal with these powers responsibly. He recognised a fundamental truth: genetics is the science of differences and with such a science, the invasion of politics is inevitable.

Haldanes ideas ring with increased urgency today. All around us, we see the rise of identity politics of an exclusionary politics based on who belongs, or does not belong, to a nation. Who should or should not cross a border. Who should or should not be thought of as a citizen.

In India, Haldanes adopted home, the government has just passed a bill to expedite the citizenship process for refugees fleeing religious persecution from three of its neighbouring countries. Refugees of every faith except Islam have been promised a quick track to citizenship. The signal is loud and clear: Muslims do not belong here.

Around the world, communities and groups have come to believe that they are distinct, or special, or superior, even though science emphasises that this is false

Echoes of this are everywhere. In China, Uighurs are being segregated. In America, the president wants to build a wall to keep out Mexican and South American immigrants and refugees. In Britain, a narrative that the country should turn inward rather than ally itself with a larger union has conclusively won. There is sectarian strife in Lebanon and Iraq, and white nationalism in Europe. Around the world, communities and groups have come to believe that they are distinct, or special, or superior, even though science emphasises that this is false.

Toss genetic engineering into this mix and things only get more incendiary. Haldane was unequivocal in his belief that the social differences of class need to be stripped away. But at the moment, the danger is that if and when scientists figure out how to re-tailor the human genome, the rich will first buy themselves better genes. The inequalities of wealth will be compounded by new inequalities of ability and physiology. If we are not cautious, the gaps in human society will yawn wider and wider.

At a time like this, Haldanes life and work offer us plenty of guidance. He urged his readers and his students to adopt the scientists perspective of sceptical rationality: to question authority, to demand proof for received wisdom, to make decisions based on evidence.

But Haldane was not a proponent of scientism; he did not believe that peace and progress could be delivered exclusively through science.Haldanes university degree was in the classics, not in biology or chemistry or any other scientific discipline, and he always saw his field with the eyes of a humanist who had wandered into it.

He believed, therefore, that we have to consider our societys frailties and foibles, even as we decide what to do with new science and technology. We have to find ways to live with each other before we discover how science can best improve the human condition. And this is an urgent task. The march of science does not wait for us to grow mature enough to know how to use it wisely. He believed, therefore, that we have to consider our societys frailties and foibles, even as we decide what to do with new science and technology.

Haldane was, in his country and in his time, one of the most famous scientists around perhaps even as well-known as Einstein, and certainly the most politically vocal in his profession. Since then, he has sunk somewhat into obscurity. The 21st century, though, is an appropriate time to remember him and through his work, to rediscover lessons for our own age.

Samanth Subramanian is a regular contributor for The National. His latest book is titled A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of JBS Haldane

Updated: December 21, 2019 11:17 AM

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How Plant Breeding Innovation is Different from GMO and how PBI can improve food security in Africa – THISDAY Newspapers

Saturday, December 21st, 2019

By Bennett Oghifo

Africa has a big challenge with feeding its large population that is put at 1.3 billion as at 2018. Africas population is 16% of the worlds human population.

Food security in Africa is of global concern, considering its position as the worlds second-largest and second-most populous continent. According to available data, Africas land area is about 30.3 million km, including adjacent islands, and it covers 6% of the Earths total surface area and 20% of its land area.

Africans have been producing their food by tilling the continents vast arable land, using traditional methodsthat are now found to have diminishing returns.

Scientists recommend the use of more modern sustainable methods of food production in Africa. These scientists have narrowed down on two of these systems Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), and Plant Breeding Innovation (PBI).

The application of GMOs for food security has raised global controversies among proponents and those who oppose it, because of their belief that organic foods are healthier than inorganic.

Genetically modified foods, also known as genetically engineered foods, or bioengineered foods are foods produced from organisms that have had changes introduced into their DNA using the methods of genetic engineering.

On the other hand, Plant Breeding Innovation (PBI) should be understood in the context of New Breeding Techniques and Precision Breeding Techniques which refer to the tools and methods used to develop new varieties more precisely and rapidly, according to scientists. Precision is just the definition of the accuracy of the technique. It is applicable in both animals and plants. These tools are broad, among which is gene editing. Plant breeding innovations are those specific to plants.

So, PBI is critical for sustainability and food security, and benefits all in the food chain, including farmers and consumers.

Scientists say PBI is not a new concept; breeding has improved over the years. Latest technologies such as GMOs and products of genome editing are an advancement of science and breeding over the years, and are not bad, scientists insist.

They want policy makers to adopt regulatory policies that are science-based, proportionate to risk, and risk/benefit-based, predictable and promote innovations. And that gene editing techniques should not be put into the same category as GMOs.

According to a Scientist, Dr.Joseph Odusanya, the Chief Executive Officer of Biocrops, seed and seedling production company in Abuja, Nigeria,It is pertinent to establish that breeding has always been with us. It is from making positive selection, looking for elite characteristics and multiplying those.

Odusanya said plant breeding is the discipline but that genetic modification, gene transformation or productions of transgenic organisms are just techniques employed in the breeding process.

He said, Many breeding techniques include air layering, grafting, etc that do not change move or transpose or translocate DNA of plants like we do in GMO.Interestingly there is a paper that shows that plants undergo genetic modification on their own naturally. This has been documented. If nature can do it on its own, I wonder why all the hue and cry.

Odusanya stated that plant breeding has been with us for more than a century in various forms with increasing sophistication. GMOs on the other hand are fairly recent dating back only to the 1070s. The GMO technology is by itself getting very sophisticated as well.It has gone beyond introducing bioinsecticides or making plants selective to herbicides, today, we can decide on the amount of starches and the structure of the starches desired.

What we have today is pure designer series of organisms.Designer plants, designer animals and even humans have been engineered. Many ethical issues and probable scientific questions remain unanswered but when we consider the low hanging fruits of either GM technology or breeding as we know it traditionally, we will be doing our works loads of goodness by latching in on them early.

The world, he said was close on genetically modifying microorganisms that would recondition the soil naturally in such a way that degraded soils could be rejuvenated and use of mineral fertilisers will be cut by 95%.

Also discussing the difference between GMO and PBI and why they should not be subjected to the same regulatory policies, an avid Biotechnologist and Business Strategist in Kenya, Doris Wangari said, The creation of GMOs involves inserting genesfrom other speciesinto DNA through modern biotechnology techniques. Genome editing, on the other hand, allows scientists to alter the DNA of an organism without necessarily adding genes from a different organism (usually they use sexually compatible species).

Today, plant breeders can also use genome editing tools to introduce genetic variation. There are different types of genome editing tools such as site-directed nucleases (SDNs) and Oligonucleotide-Directed Mutagenesis (ODM). SDNs currently utilized in plant research include Meganucleases (MN), Zinc Finger Nucleases (ZFNs), Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases (TALENs) and the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)-associated proteins. These Genome editing techniques are precise editing of an existing genome usually by deletion, substitution, silencing.

Wangari said in many instances the Genome edited end-product usually does not have the detectable foreign gene, hence term natural. This becomes hard for the regulators to regulate what they cannot detect. However, some aspects of Genome editing result in formation of GMOs like site-directed nucleases. There is therefore need for regulators to allow for early consultation with the researchers to understand the technique they will be utilising in their work so as to determine whether or not to regulate. This is the approach Kenya is taking.

On how farmers would benefit in terms of cost in ratio to yields, she said the Genome Editing techniques are still very new and that most of the work is still in research an trial phase. I am not sure the cost-benefit analysis has been done in some of the products as this is done in the last stage of research when they compare the performance of the GE product yields to farmers and conventional crops yields to determine the costs.

She said if Africas population is to be fed adequately, then new technologies must come into play. Feeding Africas population is a challenging task. My opinion would be for the various stakeholders to allow for an integrated approach when it comes to food production. We need to embrace new technologies which offer a chance to improve our agricultural systems.All things considered, Africa can no longer depend on traditional methods of agriculture to feed its population and would need all the modern technics of food production to ensure food security, said Professor Ismail Cakmak, Faculty Member, Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University, Istanbul Turkey.

Prof. Cakmak, who was a resource person at a workshop OCP Africa organised in Lagos, Nigeria, in June, this year, believes GMOs or PBI requires sufficient amounts of fertilizers. There is no change in the demand for nutrients by GMO or Breeding. Even if you breed, you need more nutrients because they have higher yield capacity. The higher the yield capacity, the higher the nutrient demands.

OCP Africa is a subsidiary of OCP Group, a Moroccan company and the worlds largest producer and exporter of phosphate and phosphate-based fertilisers. The multinational company drives a bilateral partnership between Nigeria and Morocco on the supply of phosphate to blending plants in several states across Nigeria.

The scientist noted that production of more food in Africa would also be affected byclimate change, which he said had become a major challenge. Extreme weather condition has negative impact on plant grown, on yield capacity of the plant, because of temperature variation, flooding from excessive rainfall. These have huge impact on the yield capacity of the crop. The increase in yield of food crop will be limited in the next 10 years, 20, 30 years because of the increase in the number of environmental problems caused by climate change.

Prof. Cakmak, who had his PhD at Cornell University, Stuttgart Germany, said he was currently working with two professors from the UK and Australia to develop a programme on crop nutrition at theMohammed VI Polytechnic University, Morocco.

He is also working on the HarvestPlus programme to improve the micronutrient content of food crops, stating that HarvestPlus is a breeding programme, adding that there are a lot of breeding programmes in Nigeria by IITA.

There is an ongoing programme to enrich maize, he said, explaining that because HarvestPlus is a plant breeding programme that incorporates an Agronomic programme that uses fertilizer strategy to improve the micronutrient content of staple food crops by using micronutrient content fertilizer.

Prof. Cakmak said his other function is to coordinate the Agronomic Programme under the HarvestPlus Programme, explaining that for instance, they apply it on maize to ensure that it contains zinc, iodine, selenium, adding that the programme will start in Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Rwanda.

Regulations

It is a fact that Africa needs more food with nutrient content with the application of GM and Gene Editing, but these must be done with safety in mind, scientists say.

John McMurdy, the Director of Emerging Markets at CropLife International, Washington DC, in a presentation, Innovations in plant breeding at crossroads noted the goal of the African Seed Trade Association to promote the use of improved quality seed, wondering how the industry (and the agricultural research community) will take advantage of newer innovations in plant breeding, like gene editing or CRISPR technology.

He said governments worldwide make regulatory decisions on Gene Editing, stating that the transformational ability of gene editing platforms to make precise base pair deletions, edits, and additions makes the potential benefits of the technology quite remarkable.

However,the introduction of gene edited products into global markets has accelerated questions on how they should be considered from a policy standpoint, specifically whether or not some of these products should be assessed and managed under current GMO regulations or whether they should be managed in the same fashion as conventionally developed varieties, he said.

The global seed industry,McMurdysaid, encourages innovation in plant breeding, and advocates government policies that are based on sound scientific principles. Consistent science-based policies regarding products of plant breeding are necessary to ensure timely access to the benefits of products developed through these latest tools.

Inconsistent criteria, standards, and arbitrary categorisation applied to products of gene editing will inevitably impede investment and innovation in agriculture, and limit the realisation of societal and environmental benefits.

McMurdysaid lack of consistent criteria between governments especially trading nations also risks disrupting trade. A rationale solution promoted by the global seed industry is that: Plant varieties developed through the latest breeding methods should not be differentially regulated if they are similar or indistinguishable from varieties that could have been produced through earlier breeding methods.Many countries around the world are in fact adopting progressive policies consistent with aspects of this position, especially in South America (e.g. Argentina, Brazil, Chile and most recently Colombia).

As a primary trade partner, European governments and consumers often ideological view against GMOs has stifled and, in many cases, ground progress to a halt on the African continent, he said.

Outside of South Africa, and a few more recent examples of approvals of insect resistant cotton technology, the vast majority of public and private funded research remains either on the shelf or behind high fences under confined field trial.

While it remains to be seen whether the impasse will be broken on African farmers being afforded the same access to GMOs as farmers in much of the Western Hemisphere, recent decisions by the European court systems have the potential to similarly negatively impact gene editing technology.

In a late July 2018 ruling, the European court of justice ruled that the circa-2001 EU rules for GMOs shall also be applied to newer forms of targeted mutagenesis (including gene editing). This includes all of the onerous provisions that have effectively banned cultivation of GMOs in most of Europe (and, ironically, positioned them collectively as the worlds second largest importer of GMOs).

While the EU Commission now grapples with how to potentially implement these rules for a technology that they were not designed for, this decision shocked much of the EU based public research enterprise, seed industry, and food value chain.

African governments, McMurdy said are at regulatory crossroad, stating that African farmers could benefit significantly from gene edited products, noting ongoing research projects focused on improving disease resistance, pest resistance, drought tolerance and crop composition and nutrition in many indigenous and staple crops to Africa such as cassava, cowpea and banana.

It will be up to African governments and policy makers to set the landscape in which the African seed industry will be able to market and deliver these products, he said.

Some African policy makers, he said are insisting that, following the ECJ ruling,gene edited crops are GMOs for now and/or we need to put in place a system to look more closely at these technologies.

The dilemma, he said would be what policies are put in place, those of much of the world that is working to increasing sustainable production using gene editing and other plant breeding innovations, or policies mirroring the decision of a single 28 member European court on the interpretation of an 18 year-old regulation.

Presenting Genome Editing Applications in Crop Developments, Dr. Rashmi S. Nair of The Nair Continuum LLC said, Based on need to improve Agricultural productivity and increased knowledge of genomics, researchers have developed many new ways for breeding more productive, efficient plants using genome editing.

Regulators around the world have also been developing regulations to approve products developed using various genome editing techniques.

General agreement among many regulatory agencies is that where no new DNA is introduced, end-product should not be considered genetically modified.

However, the impact of the ruling of the EU Court of Justice to regulate most products developed using genome editing as GMOs is still being evaluated globally.

A Scientist in Nigeria,Dr.RufusEbegba, who is theDirector General,NationalBiosafetyManagement Agency (NBMA), believes Africas population can be fed using, among other methods, biotechnology, which he described as a scientific tool to develop new variety of living organism, whether plant, animal or microbes, and that as it concerns food, it should be looked at from the standpoint of improved crops and animals.

Ebegba said, Modern biotechnology that is being tailored towards safety is the application of biosafety to ensure that the products which are genetically modified are safe. For sure, it is a major step in ensuring food security.

For instance, in Nigeria right now, we have a National Biotechnology Development Agency (NBDA), we also have National Biotechnology Policy, we have agriculture policy that promotes the use of biotechnology, we also have agricultural research institutes and some Universities that are doing genetic engineering with the intent of producing genetically modified objects. All these show that Nigeria has put in place structures to adopt the use of genetically modified organisms.

Also, Nigeria has a law known as National Biosafety Management Act 2015, and this Act gave room for the establishment of the National Biosafety Management Agency.

The governments intention, he said was to ensure that the activities of biotechnology and its products are safe for human consumption and for the environment. In Nigeria, one major thing we also have is the National Biosafety Policy; we have also National Biosafety Regulation and Guidelines for various sectors.

According to him, Risk Assessment is a major step before any genetically modified organism can be used. So, Risk Assessment is very important to determine whether any genetically modified has any risk, if it can be tolerated and risk management strategies are also adopted.

He said food security has a lot of considerations and not just to make the food available, stating that the food must be affordable, have nutrients, and it should be wholesome and safe.

Stating the position of the Nigerian government, he said some permits had been granted for the introduction of some genetically modified crops, like the commercialisation of cotton for which permit has been granted, we also granted permit for the use of genetically modified cowpea, ie, beans also for commercialisation.

He said although these crops have not been fully brought to the market, but that the multiplication of the seeds were ongoing. Then, we have also granted permit to test for the efficacy of the modification of some of the crops like genetically modified cassava for increase in ion content, increase in Vitamin A content. We have also granted some permit to delay harvest deterioration in cassava and to increase the starch content.

There is also permit granted for genetically modified rice for nitrogen use efficient, water use efficient and soil tolerant, adding that these are on-gong processes.

Nigeria, he said has granted permit for genetically modified maize for the production of animal feeds and that the permit for soya beans was basically for the production of vegetable oil. These have been imported into the country, after going through extant laws. The poultry industry needed more grains and the Ministry of Agriculture actually confirmed that the production of maize in the country is not adequate to drive the poultry industry. So, the need for the importation of some of these grains has arisen.

However, he said the genetically modified crops that have been approved have not really reached the farmers but that in respect of the cotton that is insect resistant, some farmers have been selected by the permit holder to set up demonstration plots and to multiply the seeds for commercialisation. Farmers, he said are looking forward to using the seeds.

Also speaking on the use of modern technics in agriculture to ensure food security in Africa, a Nigerian scientist, Dr. Rose Gidado, aDeputy Director, National Biotechnology Development Agency, saidfood security depends on four interrelated factors: quantity of food, which involves increasing agricultural productivity; access to food, which is determined both by income levels and quality of infrastructure; nutrition; and overall stability of the food system, such as resilience to shocks. Genetically-modified (GM) crops/foodscan contribute tofood quality, access to food, nutrition or stability of food systems.She said genetically modified crops already benefit smallholder farmers in several major ways. For example, they help farmers control pests and disease. This leads to higher production and increased income, which in turn provides them with increased ability to consume more nutritious food. Let us take the example of pest-resistant GM cotton. Although GM cotton is not directly consumed, it indirectly contributes to food security by raising household income levels and improving access to more nutritious food.In Nigeria the insect Maruca vitrata destroys nearly US$300m worth of blackeyed peas a major staple crop. It forces farmers to import pesticides worth US$500m annually. To solve the problem, scientists at the Institute for Agricultural Research at Nigerias Ahmadu Bello University have developed a pest-resistant, transgenic black eyed beans variety using insecticide genes from the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium. These techniques have the potential to address a wide range of agricultural, health, and environmental issues in African countries, leading to increased productivity and therefore contributing to increased food security. The importance of building capacity in biotechnology is reinforced by the rising concern over the impact of climate on agriculture.

Dr. Gidado, who is the Country Coordinator,Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa(OFAB) Nigeria Chapter, noted thatfarmers could benefit in terms of cost to ratio to yields by reduction in production cost per hectare planted with PBR Cowpea, if of the 3 million hectares 1million is planted to PBR Cowpea the savings from reductionThey also benefit in cost of insecticide is sixteen billion and two hundred million naira (N16,200, 000,000.0) annually. A 20% yield increase per hectare translates to forty-eight billion naira (N48,000,000,000.0) annually at N120,000.0 per tonne.Stakeholders should continue to support, promote and encourage the use of appropriate technologies like biotechnology in order to attain Nutrition and food security, she said.

The Nigerian governments position

In September this year, the Nigerian government said it was doing all that was necessary to apply Genetic Engineering and Bio-Technology to ensure food safety and security in the country.Nigerias Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, who inaugurated a training workshop on Basic Laboratory Training on Living Modified Organisms Detection and Identification in Abuja, said the government had recognised the immense importance of Genetic Engineering and Bio-Technology to the progress of the nation, adding that it would boost local production of food and commodities and minimise the need for continuous import.Dr. Onu said, The Federal Ministry of Science and Technology. will continue to support the National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA) in carrying out this very important mandate to help our country not only in the area of agriculture but also protecting our environment and in ensuring the desire of our nation to industrialise rapidly is achieved.Nigeria has embraced bio-Technology and genetic engineering, for better improvement in crops and animal production, said the acting Director General/CEO of National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), Prof. Alex U. Akpa.He said, We have made significant investments in modern Bio-Technology to assist in deepening awareness of the Technology and its impact on national growth and development.

Farmers reaction

As these scientists said, Nigerian farmers are eagerly waiting for the genetically modified seeds. We are even waiting for the seeds, said Chief Daniel Okafor, the vice national chairman, All Farmers Association of Nigeria, an umbrella body of farmers in Nigeria with not less than 30 million members, according to Okafor.

He stated that the genetically modified seed trial was done by scientists at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. They brought it to us and it is now being multiplied.

Chief Okafor, who is the national chairman of potato farmers, said this was the ideal thing to do to increase the cultivation of cotton for use in the nations textile industry, as well as for cotton oil. Cotton can generate a lot of revenue and a lot of employment.

He said Nigeria should produce and use biotechnology cotton like other countries do, adding that we are ready to work with any organisation that can make it happen.

He appealed to banks and other lenders to support every farmer that is interested in BT cotton, stating that more research should be done to ensure whatever was produced would be fit for consumption with the right nutritional value and that it should be good for the environment.

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Dyno Therapeutics Launches to Improve Viral Vectors for Gene Therapy – BioSpace

Tuesday, December 17th, 2019

Gene therapy is a way of delivering healthy genes or genetic material to cells in order to treat genetic disorders. The most common way to do this is using adeno-associated viruses (AAVs). The outer part of the virus, called the capsid, is generally retained, but the viral genes are replaced with the therapeutic genes. Attempts have been made to improve the capsid or shell of the virus, but usually fail. George Church and his team at Harvard Medical School with the original researchers at the Karolinska Institute and Lund University in Sweden, have developed a technique to modify the capsid. They have also launched a company, Dyno Therapeutics, to develop the approach.

The groups research, by senior author Tomas Bjrklund, with Lund, was published in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

The technique allows the researchers to engineer the virus shell to deliver the gene package to the exact cell type in the body they intend to treat. The process leverages computer simulations and modeling with gene and sequencing technology.

Thanks to this technology, we can study millions of new virus variants in cell culture and animal models simultaneously, Bjorklund said. From this, we can subsequently create a computer simulation that constructs the most suitable virus shell for the chosen applicationin this case, the dopamine-producing nerve cells for the treatment of Parkinsons disease.

The technique also dramatically decreases the need for laboratory animals. The millions of variations on the same therapy can be studied in the same individual.

The authors wrote, A challenge with the available synthetic viruses used for the treatment of genetic disorders is that they originate from wild-type viruses. These viruses benefit form infecting as many cells as possible in the body, while therapies should most often target a particular cell type, for example, dopamine neurons in the brain.

Current approaches to finding the most advantageous viruses for gene therapy use random screening, enrichment and, the authors say, serendipity. Their technique is dubbed BRAVE (barcoded rational AAV vector evolution). In BRAVE, each virus displays a peptide derived from a protein. That peptide as a known function on the AAV shell surface and what they call a unique molecular barcode in the packaged genome.

By sequencing the RNA-expressed barcodes, they can map the binding sequences from hundreds of proteins simultaneously. They liken the technique to accelerating evolution from millions of years to just weeks.

Bjorklund said The reason we can do this is that we study each generation of the virus in parallel with all the others in the same nerve cells. Unlike evolution, where only the best suited live on to the next generation, we can also learn what makes the virus work less well through this process. This is crucial when building computer models that interpret all the information.

The study showed the potential for using machine learning for AAV design, although the research fell short of actually designing an improved AAV that could be used in clinical testing. Thats where Dyno Therapeutics comes in, working to improve and develop the technique.

Luk Vandenberghe, director of the Grousbeck Gene Therapy Center at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, told C&EN, Chemical & Engineering News, What theyve done here is truly a remarkable tour de force.

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A New Genetic Based Dating App Will Soon Arrive in The Market – Science Market News

Tuesday, December 17th, 2019

Harvard biologist George Church already needed to apologize for a palling around with Jeffrey Epstein even after the financier pleaded to responsible for preying on minors a decade in the past. Now hes elevating eyebrows once morewith plans for a genetics-based courting app.

In an interview with 60 Minutes, Church stated his expertise would pair people based on the propensity of their genes, when mixed in kids, to remove hereditary ailments. Yuko, in contrast, the app, as described, to the Nazi purpose of cultivating a grasp race: I believed we realized after World War II that we werent going to be doing that, she stated.

The church was a part of the coterie of scientists with whom Epstein ingratiated himself via large donations, and Epstein helped bankroll his lab from 2005 to 2007. Church has admitted he repeatedly met and spoke with Epstein for years after the 2008 plea deal that landed him on the intercourse-offender registry.

Epstein had a twisted take on genetics, internet hosting scientific conferences at which he expressed his want to propagate his personal genome by impregnating as much as 20 girls at a time at his New Mexico ranch, like cattle inventory.

Within the 60 Minutes interview, Church referred to as his ties to Epstein unlucky and added: You do not all the time know your donors in addition to you want to.

However, a lot of the phase was dedicated to Churchs genetic-engineering work at Harvard Medical School, together with the app that might theoretically display out potential mates with the improper DNA.

The geneticist didnt drop the apps to identify, or how far alongside its in improvement. He additionally didnt reply to a request for a remark.

Within the interview, the Church acknowledged the drawbacks of genetic sorting. He suffers from dyslexia, consideration deficit dysfunction, and narcolepsyissues that may render him an incompatible match to many. Yuko stated the choice standards could be a sticking level for Churchs app thought.

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Sangamo Highlights Advancements in Genomic Medicine Pipeline and Expanded R&D and Manufacturing Capabilities at R&D Day – Business Wire

Tuesday, December 17th, 2019

BRISBANE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: SGMO), a genomic medicine company, is hosting an R&D Day today beginning at 8am Eastern Time. During the event, Sangamo executives and scientists plan to provide updates across the Companys clinical and preclinical pipeline, as well as an overview of manufacturing capabilities to support clinical and commercial supply. A live webcast link will be available on the Events and Presentations page of the Sangamo website

The talent, R&D capabilities, manufacturing expertise, and operations infrastructure we have brought to Sangamo have enabled us to advance a genomic medicine pipeline that spans multiple therapeutic areas and now also extends into late-stage development, said Sandy Macrae, CEO of Sangamo. As we make progress in clinical development, we gain insights into the use of our technology and are applying those insights as we advance new programs, such as the gene therapy for PKU and the genome regulation candidates for CNS diseases we are announcing today.

Macrae continued: We will continue to pursue a dual approach of retaining certain programs for our proprietary pipeline while also establishing pharmaceutical partnerships to gain access to therapeutic area expertise and financial, operational, and commercial resources. Strategic collaborations will be a particularly important consideration as we advance programs for diseases affecting large patient populations.

R&D Day updates on clinical and preclinical pipeline programs:

Gene therapy product candidates for hemophilia A, Fabry disease, and PKU

SB-525 is a gene therapy product candidate for hemophilia A being developed by Sangamo and Pfizer under a global development and commercialization collaboration agreement. The transfer of the SB-525 IND to Pfizer is substantially completed. Pfizer is advancing SB-525 into a Phase 3 registrational study in 2020 and has recently begun enrolling patients into a Phase 3 lead-in study.

At R&D Day, Sangamo executives are presenting data from the SB-525 program which were recently announced at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting.

The cassette engineering, AAV engineering and manufacturing expertise which Sangamo used in the development of SB-525 are also being applied to the ST-920 Fabry disease program, which is being evaluated in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial, as well as to the newly announced ST-101 gene therapy program for PKU, which is being evaluated in preclinical studies with a planned IND submission in 2021.

Engineered ex vivo cell therapy candidates for beta thalassemia, kidney transplantation, and preclinical research in multiple sclerosis (MS)

Sangamo is providing an overview of the Companys diversified cell therapy pipeline this morning. Cell therapy incorporates Sangamos experience and core strengths, including cell culture and engineering, gene editing, and AAV manufacturing. At R&D Day, Sangamo scientists today are reviewing the early data presented this month at ASH from the ST-400 beta thalassemia ex vivo gene-edited cell therapy program, which is being developed in partnership with Sanofi.

Sangamo is also providing updates on the companys CAR-TREG clinical and preclinical programs. CAR-TREGS are regulatory T cells equipped with a chimeric antigen receptor. Sangamo is the pioneer in CAR-TREGS, which may have the potential to treat inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. TX200 is being evaluated in the STEADFAST study, the first ever clinical trial evaluating a CAR-TREG cell therapy. Tx200 is being developed for the prevention of immune-mediated organ rejection in patients who have received a kidney transplant, a significant unmet medical need. Results from this trial will provide data on safety and proof of mechanism, building a critical understanding of CAR-TREGS in patients, and may provide a gateway to autoimmune indications such as Crohns disease and multiple sclerosis (MS). Sangamo is also presenting preclinical murine data demonstrating that CAR-TREGS accumulate and proliferate in the CNS and reduce a marker of MS.

In vivo genome editing optimization

Clinical data presented earlier this year provided evidence that Sangamo had successfully edited the genome of patients with mucopolysaccharidosis type II (MPS II) but also suggested that the zinc finger nuclease in vivo gene editing reagents were under-dosed using first-generation technology. Sangamo has identified potential improvements that may enhance the potency of in vivo genome editing, including increasing total AAV vector dose, co-packaging both ZFNs in one AAV vector, and engineering second-generation AAVs, ZFNs, and donor transgenes.

Genome regulation pipeline candidates targeting neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimers and Parkinsons

Sangamo scientists today are presenting data demonstrating that the companys engineered zinc finger protein transcription factors (ZFP-TFs) specifically and powerfully repress key genes involved in brain diseases including Alzheimers, Parkinsons, Huntingtons, ALS, and Prion diseases. Sangamo is advancing its first two genome regulation programs toward clinical development:

Sangamo scientists are also presenting data demonstrating progress in the development of new AAV serotypes for use in CNS diseases.

Manufacturing capabilities and strategy

Sangamo is nearing completion of its buildout of a GMP manufacturing facility at the new Company headquarters in Brisbane, CA. This facility is expected to become operational in 2020 and to provide clinical and commercial scale manufacturing capacity for cell and gene therapy programs. The Company has also initiated the buildout of a cell therapy manufacturing facility in Valbonne, France. Sangamos manufacturing strategy includes in-house capabilities as well as the use of contract manufacturing organizations, including a long-established relationship with Thermo Fisher Scientific for clinical and large-scale commercial AAV manufacturing capacity.

R&D Day webcast

A live webcast of the R&D Day, including audio and slides, will be available on the Events and Presentations page of the Sangamo website today at 8am Eastern Time. A replay of the event will be archived on the website.

About Sangamo Therapeutics

Sangamo Therapeutics is committed to translating ground-breaking science into genomic medicines with the potential to transform patients lives using gene therapy, ex vivo gene-edited cell therapy, and in vivo genome editing and gene regulation. For more information about Sangamo, visit http://www.sangamo.com.

Sangamo Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of United States securities law. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the therapeutic potential of Sangamos product candidates; the design of clinical trials and expected timing for milestones, such as enrollment and presentation of data, the expected timing of release of additional data, plans to initiate additional studies for product candidates and timing and design of these studies; the expected benefits of Sangamos collaborations; the anticipated capabilities of Sangamos technologies; the research and development of novel gene-based therapies and the application of Sangamos ZFP technology platform to specific human diseases; successful manufacturing of Sangamos product candidates; the potential of Sangamos genome editing technology to safely treat genetic diseases; the potential for ZFNs to be effectively designed to treat diseases through genome editing; the potential for cell therapies to effectively treat diseases; and other statements that are not historical fact. These statements are based upon Sangamos current expectations and speak only as of the date hereof. Sangamos actual results may differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties related to dependence on the success of clinical trials; the uncertain regulatory approval process; the costly research and development process, including the uncertain timing of clinical trials; whether interim, preliminary or initial data from ongoing clinical trials will be representative of the final results from such clinical trials; whether the final results from ongoing clinical trials will validate and support the safety and efficacy of product candidates; the risk that clinical trial data are subject to differing interpretations by regulatory authorities; Sangamos limited experience in conducting later stage clinical trials and the potential inability of Sangamo and its partners to advance product candidates into registrational studies; Sangamos reliance on itself, partners and other third-parties to meet clinical and manufacturing obligations; Sangamos ability to maintain strategic partnerships; competing drugs and product candidates that may be superior to Sangamos product candidates; and the potential for technological developments by Sangamo's competitors that will obviate Sangamo's gene therapy technology. Actual results may differ from those projected in forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties that exist in Sangamos operations. This presentation concerns investigational drugs that are under preclinical and/or clinical investigation and which have not yet been approved for marketing by any regulatory agency. They are currently limited to investigational use, and no representations are made as to their safety or effectiveness for the purposes for which they are being investigated. Any discussions of safety or efficacy are only in reference to the specific results presented here and may not be indicative of an ultimate finding of safety or efficacy by regulatory agencies. These risks and uncertainties are described more fully in Sangamo's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018 as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 1, 2019 and Sangamo's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2019 that it filed on or about November 6, 2019. Except as required by law, we assume no obligation, and we disclaim any intent, to update these statements to reflect actual results.

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Want to Make Your City a Startup Hub? You’ll Need to Befriend 25 Founders, 8 Investors, and 10 Experts First – Inc.

Tuesday, December 17th, 2019

Surge Cities, our second annual ranking of choice metro statistical areas for planting and growing companies, is ostensibly about places. But it's really about people.

For entrepreneurs, what matters is whom you know--also how many you know, how well you know them, how willing they are to help you, and how far you have to go to meet for coffee.

Startup founders with high local connectedness--defined as quality relationships with about 25 other founders, eight investors, and 10 experts--double the revenue growth of those with low connectedness, says Startup Genome, the research and policy organization that is Inc.'s Surge Cities partner. The best way to develop those relationships is through "centers of gravity--places people can meet and build meaningful connections and continue to create value from them," says Arnobio Morelix, Startup Genome's chief innovation officer.

Now, cities vying for entrepreneurial parity with San Francisco, New York, and Boston are engineering their own centers of gravity. Commonly labeled innovation districts, these urban campuses pack in startups and mature companies alongside accelerators and co-working facilities; universities and medical centers; coffee shops, food trucks, outdoor spaces--you get the picture. The operating principle is density. Ideally, smart, creative people bounce off one another in serendipitous "creative collisions" that produce new ideas, relationships, and ventures.

There are roughly 20 substantive innovation districts in the U.S. and more than 100 on the rise worldwide, according to the Brookings Institution. To get an idea how they're serving entrepreneurs, Inc. interviewed three dozen founders in 10 districts around the country. Although a few cited tax credits as the chief advantage (many innovation districts are in opportunity zones), the vast majority said their locations have helped them attract talent, forge partnerships, find early customers, and learn from peers. More developed districts like the St. Louis Cortex Innovation Community, the Chattanooga Innovation District in Tennessee, and Wake Forest's Innovation Quarter in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, earned more love than smaller districts, but no founders regretted their locations.

"The momentum and collaboration over the past 10 years have been amazing to see," says Heidi Jannenga, co-founder and chief clinical officer of WebPT, which develops office-management software for rehab therapists. WebPT was among the first startups in the PHX Core in Phoenix, which today is home to more than 130 companies and six million square feet of research and academic facilities. Like any relatively new district, PHX Core needs to get denser, says Jannenga, and a few more restaurants and other amenities wouldn't hurt. "But what sets us apart" from places like Silicon Valley, she says, "is the generosity. Everyone here is pulling for one another."

The denser the district, the more likely that even the most prosaic activities--attending a networking event, or just crossing the street to get to one--will yield a new customer or business partner. "In this building, there are drug-discovery startups, a company looking at genetic engineering in agriculture, and another looking at drug-delivery systems," says Edward Weinstein, co-founder and CEO of Canopy Biosciences, located in the St. Louis Cortex. Canopy now sells its research tools to a number of district startups "because we talk to them every day," he says. "My last company was 10 miles away, and for eight years, we never met folks in the startup scene."

Stephen Culp is the co-founder of four businesses and a nonprofit in an art deco building in Chattanooga's Innovation District. One day, he was refueling at nearby coffee roaster Mad Priest when he accidentally smacked into Drew Belz, founder and CEO of Fancy Rhino, a nearby branding and video-editing business. Over Belz's broken mug, conversation ensued. Now Fancy Rhino is working with Delegator, Culp's digital ad agency, on a proposal for a D.C.-based think tank. "The more people run into each other, the more they realize what they have in common," Culp says. "The same is true for companies."

Virtually all entrepreneurs said they'd experienced the kind of informal, peer-to-peer exchanges that provide founders advice and emotional sustenance. That's the collegiality Gabe Cooper missed while launching his first software company in a Phoenix suburb. "We weren't near anyone else doing tech," he says. "So we spent a lot of time flying to Silicon Valley to see other tech entrepreneurs."

Cooper moved to the area that would become the PHX Core in 2012, and two years later launched a second company: donor-management system Virtuous CRM. "Here you can be part of all these conversations--people in the coffee shop are talking about customer acquisition," says Cooper. "One of HubSpot's first employees hangs around here. I can just grab him and say, 'Hey, Dan, how should we comp our sales development reps?' " (That Dan would be HubSpot sales director Dan Tyre.)

This ethos of mutual support is embodied by Venture Caf, a nonprofit that hosts five-hour events every Thursday evening in 10 innovation districts around the world, with more on the way. The events, which attract up to 500 people, are designed to tempt founders from their caves with eclectic programming, product demos, and, most important, conversation with people who may change the course of their companies.

Beyond serendipitous interactions, the other universally cited benefit of innovation districts is access to talent. Every firm we interviewed said the amenities and ambiance in these collaborative cores can make recruiting a breeze.

"There are new buildings. A beautiful park. Food trucks. People riding by on bikes and electric scooters," says Brian Platz, co-founder of Fluree, which makes a blockchain-based data-management platform. The startup, Platz's seventh, is based in the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter, a district of more than 170 companies, built around the old R.J. Reynolds Tobacco manufacturing site. "There is so much more creative energy here," he says. "It allows people to imagine themselves hanging out and living here."

As co-founder of a St. Louis design and management consultancy in 2013, Sean Walsh learned that large companies like Monsanto needed outsourced teams of creative, energetic people for software and A.I. projects. Trouble was, he was located in a nondescript, suburban office park, where creative, energetic people didn't want to be caught dead. "I said to my co-founders, 'We're going to start a new company from scratch in the Cortex, because that's where innovative people want to be,' " Walsh says. In 2016, he launched this new company, 1904Labs, in the innovation district, and now it has 85 employees.

Many innovation districts are developed in conjunction with universities or academic medical centers, which act like a virtuous ozone layer, trapping talent and intellectual property so they can't escape the neighborhood. That means abundant interns, but also chances to expand the workforce through collaboration and recruitment. In the Wake Forest district, Jennifer Byrne helped develop a master's program in clinical research at Wake Forest University that she expects to someday supply employees for Javara Research, her platform for improving patient enrollment in clinical trials.

The new Providence Innovation & Design District, in Rhode Island, boasts an unusual variety of academic institutions, including Brown, Johnson & Wales, and the Rhode Island School of Design. "I can hit all of them from here with a baseball," says Adam Alpert, co-founder and CEO of Pangea.app, a platform for matching companies with college students. "I have a little foldable table, and if I have two hours free, I will walk over there and talk with students and hand out stickers." Alpert recently landed a new head of design this way.

One premise of innovation districts is that startup clusters--particularly specialized ones, like autonomous vehicles in Pittsburgh and agtech in St. Louis--may lure investors to open offices there, or at least to visit. The University City Science Center, a 55-year-old urban research park at the heart of what is now uCity Square in Philadelphia, nurtures many of the district's most promising life-science and technology companies. That includes hosting office hours for regional investors to meet with startups. Nyron Burke, founder and CEO of Lithero, which uses A.I. to ensure the legal compliance of life-science-product marketing, raised $100,000 just by walking into a session with Philadelphia-based investor Ben Franklin Technology Partners. "The Science Center is doing the Lord's work," says Burke. But it's not enough, he adds. "Entrepreneurs leave Philadelphia, because it is hard to raise money here."

The money may come to more innovation districts if they produce large exits.In uCity Square, the big dog leading the pack is Spark Therapeutics, a gene-therapy company that Philly native Jeffrey Marrazzo co-founded in 2013 with support from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Today, Spark employs more than 440 people and occupies 200,000 square feet across five buildings in the district. Currently, Marrazzo is awaiting government approval of a $4.8 billion acquisition by Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Roche. It would be the city's biggest-ever VC-backed exit.

Such exits are "hugely important" for entrepreneurial ecosystems like innovation districts, says Startup Genome's Morelix. He calls them "triggers," because they attract resources and also deepen the pockets of early hires, who often go on to invest locally.

In the past, Marrazzo says, startups based on intellectual property from Philadelphia's academic institutions "inevitably moved outside to the suburbs or, more often, licensed out their IP and re-formed in another city, like Boston or San Francisco." Marrazzo kept Spark in the innovation district to buck that trend. Lately, he says, more VCs have reached out to him about the area.

"San Francisco funds and Boston funds are coming here on a regular, scheduled basis," Marrazzo says. "With further success, maybe they'll want to open offices here, too."

From the Winter 2019/2020 issue of Inc. Magazine

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Aspen Neuro Bags $6.5M to Test Parkinson’s Disease Stem Cell Therapy – Xconomy

Tuesday, December 17th, 2019

XconomySan Diego

Nearly nine years ago Jeanne Loring and her colleagues at Scripps Research debuted a test that leveraged advances in genomics and data science to determine, without testing in animals, whether human stem cells were pluripotent, or able to become any type of cell in the body.

Being able to prove that has become increasingly important as scientists look to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)mature, specialized cells that have been reprogrammed as immature cells, regaining the capability of becoming any type of cellas material for new regenerative medicines.

Now Loring and Andres Bratt-Leal, who joined her lab in 2012 as a post-doctoral researcher, have founded a biotech that combines stem cell biology and genomics know-how to advance a potential cell therapy for Parkinsons disease.

The startup announced Thursday it raised a seed round of $6.5 million to support its work. Aspens lead drug candidate, which is in preclinical testing, is intended to replace neurons in the brains of people with the disease, which causes those cells to become damaged or die.

When people with Parkinsons disease lose neurons, they also lose a chemical messenger the cells produce, called dopamine. Without dopamine, communication between nerve cells falters, which leads to the debilitating motor problems that characterize the disease. Existing Parkinsons drugs aim to alter dopamine levels. Aspen, however, wants to fix the upstream problem that leads to those lowered levels by reconstructing patients damaged neural networks.

The cell therapy would involve harvesting patients own living cells through a skin biopsy, reprogramming them to immature cells, or iPSCs, then further engineering them to become predisposed to mature into neurons. Once enough of those cells have been grown in the lab, those neuron precursor cells would be delivered directly to the brain.

Using a patients own cells avoids the dangerous immune system reactions that can occur when donor cells are used in such therapies, and obviates the need for immunosuppression drugs. Two cell therapies that use genetic engineering have been approved by the FDA, both of which take and tweak patients T cells into treatments for cancer. Stem cell transplants have been used to treat some cancers.

Aspen worked to ensure the company could ably manufacture a so-called autologous replacement cell therapy, or one from a patients one cells, by improving the process of differentiating iPSCs into dopamine neurons, Loring says. And the group developed another predictive genomic-based test, similar to the effort Loring spearheaded nearly a decade ago to determine whether cells were pluripotent, that can detect which iPSCs are destined to become neurons.

(Bratt-Leal) put his biological engineering expertise into coming up with a way that was reproducible, that we would get the same cells no matter who we got the original cells from, she says.

The company plans to test the therapy in patients that they determine, through genomic testing, have the most common form of Parkinsons, which is referred to as sporadic and arises without a clear genetic predisposition. It also has a second treatment in the works that it intends to develop for patients with familial forms of the disease, and uses a gene editing toolyet to be selectedto alter their stem cells during the reprogramming process.

Howard Federoff, who was most recently vice chancellor for health affairs and CEO of the UC Irvine Health system, is Aspens CEO. Federoff says he has come to believe that Parkinsons patients need more than just to stabilize their disease They need to turn the clock back.

Many companies are working on drugs to treat Parkinsons, but most are meant to manage symptoms rather than reverse the disease. Levodopa, which supplants missing dopamine, is used widely, but it can cause side effects, including involuntary movement called dyskinesia; and, as the disease progresses, the drug eventually stops working between doses.

Aspen claims it is the only company working toward an autologous neuron replacement. The company, however, will need to raise a Series A round to move its drug candidates through Phase 2 proof-of-concept trials, Loring says.

The company raised its seed round from a group of investors including Domain Associates, Alexandria Venture Investments, Arch Venture Partners, Axon Ventures, OrbiMed, and Section 32. Initially, it was financed through grants from Summit for Stem Cell, a San Diego-based nonprofit.

Sarah de Crescenzo is an Xconomy editor based in San Diego. You can reach her at sdecrescenzo@xconomy.com.

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Disney’s Bob Iger Was Just Named Time’s Businessperson of the Year and Baby Yoda Is Exactly the Reason Why – Inc.

Tuesday, December 17th, 2019

And speaking of both Disney+ and Star Wars, that combination resulted in the most-watched show of any of the streaming services, The Mandalorian. Oh, and then there's Baby Yoda. Which brings us to the most recent reason Iger is having a good year: he was just named Time's Businessperson of the Year. Make no mistake, Baby Yoda is a perfect example of why that honorwas well-earned.

The Time article tells a brief story of how Iger knew immediately Baby Yoda would be an enormous hit with fans. For Disney, by the way, enormous hits are the standard operating procedure. In fact, the entire strategy looks something like this:

Create a story with adorable characters. Mass market both the story and the characters. Manufacture merchandise featuring adorable characters. Stuff more cash than you can imagine into the bank account.

In the case of Baby Yoda, Iger not only knew that the character would lead to huge sales, but also that the best play was radio silence until after the first episode of The Mandalorian streamed, so as not to spoil the reveal.

He wasright, of course.

Look, regardless of what you think of the mysterious green alien that has become the star of the Disney+ service and the mascot of the internet, there's really no arguing that from a business standpoint, Baby Yoda is brilliant. And it's a great lesson for entrepreneurs.

Here's why: Bob Iger isn't a storyteller--at least not in the classic sense of someonewho writesa scriptor directs a film. That isn't his role.But he has one thing that might be even more important--a sense of how stories connect with audiences. I'm not sure anyone would disagree that Iger knows his audience, and knows how to steward both the Disney brand as a whole, as well as the individual stories within it (Star Wars, Marvel, etc.)to make sure they resonate with that audience.

But Iger didn't create The Mandalorian or its most famous character. He didn't invent streaming video. He didn't dream upthe Star Wars universe. He isn't a comic book illustrator.

The puzzle that makes up Disney has an extraordinary number of pieces, none of which originated with its CEO. Instead, Iger's job is to see how all of those pieces fit together, and sell the resulting picture tothe rest of us.

And, just because you aren't running the world's largest media and entertainment company, doesn't mean that you don't have a story to tell.And, it doesn't mean you can't learn from what made Bob Iger so successful this year.

In most of the areas Disney competes, it is the apex predator. It's the biggest player in theme parks. It's the biggest licensor of toy characters. It's the biggest sports broadcaster. It's the biggest animation studio. It's the biggest family-friendlymovie producer.

It is not the biggeststreaming video service. It isn't the biggest player--Netflix has over 150 million subscribers--a number that dwarfs Disney+. But it made a huge bet that owning its own platform to stream its own library of content would pay off in a big way.

So far it has. And the lesson here is that when you align your story with your audience, you will win.

That's one of the most important qualities in any marketer, but also in every entrepreneur. Your primary job, at least at first,is to figure out how to tell the story of your brand, and then tell it to the right audience.

And you don't even need Baby Yoda for that--but it can'thurt.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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Global Genetic Engineering Drug Market | 2018-2023 Growth Analysis, Business Opportunities, Sales, Revenue, Gross Margin, Advance Technology and…

Tuesday, December 17th, 2019

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8 Ways to Reduce Waste – Inc.

Tuesday, December 17th, 2019

Inspiring coaches go for quantity, not quality, of ideas to build a culture of innovation and ownership. They make ideas-;lots of them-;part of everyones job. They use clarifying questions to determine if and how to best implement the ideas.

Ask your team for the kinds of ideas you need. You may have a focus area for that week, month, or quarter. A good place to start is with the eight areas of waste.

Transport-;Moving people, products, and information

Inventory-;Storing parts, pieces, and documentation ahead of requirements

Motion-;Bending, turning, reaching, lifting

Waiting-;For parts, information, instructions, equipment

Overproduction-;Making more than is immediately required

Over-processing-;Tighter tolerances or higher- grade materials than are needed

Defects-;Rework, scrap, incorrect/incomplete information

Skills-;Underutilizing capabilities, delegating tasks with inadequate training

Involve your team in addressing these areas of waste and other opportunities for improvement to enlist their ownership in the solution.

One of mylong-standing clients, Jeff Jensen, manages a portfolio of successful companies. Jeff has shared a favorite quote from his late father, Ron Jensen, who was an innovative and inspiring leader. He liked to say, The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.

This metaphorical room for improvement can be your business, your teams processes, your teams skills, and most importantly, your own leadership.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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Microbes ‘set to be an integral part of agriculture over the next 20-30 years’: Joyn Bio – FoodNavigator.com

Sunday, November 24th, 2019

The acceptance of the microbiome diet as a means of achieving gut health among consumers could pave a path for a shift in attitude towards GM food, according to Michael Miille CEO at Joyn Bio.

Proponents of GM food contend that genetic engineering can help us find sustainable ways to feed people. One proponent is the US start-up Joyn Bio, a joint ag-tech venture between synthetic biology company Ginkgo Bioworks and pharma giant Bayer, which was formed in 2017 with a $100 million Series A round coming from its two parent companies.

Joyn Bio is attempting to engineer microbes that can provide plants with biological nitrogen fertilizer, thus decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture.

By engineering microbes it can eliminate the need for synthetic fertilizers, which have boosted crop yields over the past century but in the process have harmed soil health and caused environmental ills. Runoff from excess nitrogen fertilizer into rivers and oceans has created a dead zone of toxic algae in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey, for example.

Joyn Bio is headquarted in Boston. Its testing facility in California focuses on the genetic modification of the colonies of bacteria that make up crops microbiomes. It can then engineer those microbes to produce specific proteins as possible alternative to chemical fertilizers and other chemicals.

Any product is unlikely to be ready for market before 2020. Neither will any product be offered in Europe, where regulations do not currently permit engineered microbial products as produced by Joyn Bio (its current focus is on offering its solution to growers in the US, Brazil and India).

It believes nevertheless that it offers a potential global solution to the challenges facing the food industry. Its goal is to engineer microbes to reduce the amount of industrial nitrogen fertilizer needed to grow crops like corn, wheat, or rice, to dramatically decrease the water pollution, fossil fuel used and greenhouse gases produced by agriculture today.

"What we were really launched around was nitrogen fixation and recognising the environmental impact both in production and in application of the synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, which is not sustainable, then at the same time trying to come up with a solution,explained Miille.

Growers, he believes, are in desperate need of innovation and additional solutions given all the things they are confronting.Joyn Bio claims it can help farmers increase yield by promoting stronger plants and better nutrient uptake, ultimately contributing to the transformation of agriculture towards a more sustainable future.

How exactly does it all work? Our product would be a microbe that associates with the plant and is delivered as a seed treatment, said Miille.

Image the microbe as a trillion little FedEx trucks running all over the plant delivering cargo, he says. That cargo then takes nitrogen from the air, converts it into the nitrogen that the plant needs, and then gives it to the plant.

Its very similar to what happens in a soy bean plant naturally via evolution, but the soy and wheat plants never did that.

All this can allow a grower to reduce their fertilizer input by 30-40%, thus saving the grower money and allowing them to benefit from an environmental standpoint.

The process could potentially be used to make food more nutritious too. "You could use the microbes to signal the plant to potentially produce more of its nutritious part - there are number of nutrition enhancements that you can engineer. It's not our initial focus because it's a little more challenging but [improved nutrition] is certainly something people are looking at across the whole food spectrum today.

GM foods have something of a toxic legacy with European consumers, however, of which Miille is well aware. His solution to this challenge is simply to be straight with people. The problems of the past came about because companies such as Monsanto failed to be, he said. "Were trying to learn from that. I think its really critical to be transparent with consumers. Well want them to know we have these engineered microbes and here's what they did.

If crops produced via engineered microbes are used to grow something viable then people will accept it, he believes. Take the papaya industry in Hawaii, he noted, which was saved by GMO technology. "The same thing is going to happen with the US chestnut industry. There are going to be more examples of a pest or diseases that will threaten to wipe something out and the solution is biotechnology. And when you can save something when its that dramatic a benefit and you can communicate that to consumers, they get it.

He continued: For those of us on the science, technology and innovation side, the important thing is to understand how critical it is to engage with consumers and be transparent with them. The other side of the equation is to be able to articulate the benefit. If the benefit is that you either have strawberries or you don't, people will get that.

"Another thing in our favour is that peoples opinions and concerns about chemicals are probably at an all-time high.

The growth in popularity of the microbiome diet among consumers is another potential factor in Joyn Bios favour. If consumers now accept that the microbes in our gut play a critical role in overall health, whats not to stop them accepting the importance microbes could potentially have in agriculture?

More people than ever are taking probiotics because it improves gut health, said Miille. The next step is to say to consumers that microbes are part of the solution and all we've really done is taken this microbe and selectively optimised it for its particular purpose. These kind of discussions, he said, will get people to accept that microbes are going to be an integral part of agriculture over the next 20-30 years.

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Microbes 'set to be an integral part of agriculture over the next 20-30 years': Joyn Bio - FoodNavigator.com

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Almost 27000 persons with HIV in Cuba – OnCubaNews

Sunday, November 24th, 2019

In Cuba there are 26,952 persons infected with the HIV/AIDS virus until the end of November, according to data released this Thursday by the islands National Center for Health Promotion and Education (CNPES).

Among those diagnosed, the most affected are transsexual women, with 19.7%; men who have sex with other men (MSM), 5.6%; and people who practice transactional sex (in exchange for objects, money or privileges), which are 2.8%.

The Cuban provinces that show the highest incidence of contagion are Havana, the central Cienfuegos and the eastern Las Tunas and Guantnamo, said CNPS Deputy Director Otto Pelez, cited by the state-run Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) news agency.

The islands public health authorities highlight the control in maternal-infant transmission in children under 14, in heterosexual people, as well as the early detection of the disease, among the positive results of the Cuban program to prevent the spread of the virus, which is recognized by international organizations.

At the close of 2018, about 25,494 persons with HIV/AIDS had been detected in the Caribbean country, and more than 2,200 of them were new cases.

At that time 80% (20,446) were men and the rest (5,048) women, aged between 15 and 49, 74%, according to data from the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) collected by state media.

Ms de 2,200 nuevos casos de VIH en Cuba en 2018

In 1985, four years after the disease was discovered, the first case of HIV/AIDS was detected in Cuba in a man who had spent two years in Mozambique, Africa. Since then, the number who have contracted the virus is more than 30,000, of which a part died.

In the early days after the onset of the epidemic in the country, the diagnosed persons were admitted to health centers where they received treatment and were kept in isolation, with exceptional outings, in order to avoid the transmission of the virus.

On the island, patients receive a free treatment of five locally produced retrovirals combined with other imported ones. The objective of this therapy is to keep the levels of the AIDS virus low in blood and control its multiplication, which means that the patient has no complications and remains stable, according to the specialists.

Last March, pre-exposure prophylaxis pills (PrEP) started being given out in Cuba to prevent the spread of HIV in healthy people, a relatively new treatment in the Americas that is estimated to reduce the probability of contracting the virus by 90%.

In addition, since 2017 Cuban scientists have been testing the TERAVAC-VIH vaccine, developed at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana and designed to reduce the viral load of patients with the virus and improve the quality of life of the patients.

EFE / OnCuba

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Almost 27000 persons with HIV in Cuba - OnCubaNews

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‘A leap of faith’: FDA just approved the first pig-to-human tissue transplant – The Daily Briefing

Sunday, November 24th, 2019

FDA for the first time has approved an experiment that involves temporarily transplanting pig tissue into humans, a move that experts say could lead to further developments in animal-to-human donations, Emily Mullin reports for Medium's "OneZero."

CRISPRand 7 other technologies that could transform health care

Each year in the United States, the waiting list for organ transplants grows and outpaces the number of available donations. And due to strict donor criteria, skin is also difficult to acquire, Mullin reports.

The new FDA-approved trial will focus on skin transplanted from pigs to humans.

Usually, second and third-degree burns are treated with human skin grafts to protect the wounds and help fight off infection. But researchers at biotech company XenoTherapeutics have genetically engineered miniature pigs to allow for use in humans. The skin, called Xeno-Skin, is made from living pig tissue.

So far, the Xeno-Skin has been transplanted to one patient who received a five-by-five centimeter piece of pig skin as well as human skin grafts. Five days after the transplant, doctors removed both skin grafts and replaced them with permanent grafts from the patient's thigh. The donor pig skin healed as well as the human skin graft, according to doctors involved in the trial. The patient also did not experience any adverse reactions to the graft.

Now, as part of the FDA-approved trial, Xeno-Skin will be transplanted as temporary skin grafts to five more burn victims at Massachusetts General Hospital. The grafts will be removed once the patients' skin grows back.

The experiment is the first of its kind to be approved by FDA, Mullin reports.

XenoTherapeutics is also developing nerves in the genetically engineered pigs that could be transplanted into people with nerve damage from accidents. The clinical trial for the new treatment will likely begin next year, Mullin reports.

In the past, donations from animals to humans, also called xenotransplantation, have almost always failed, Mullin writes, with common issues including patients experiencing an immune response to the donation or the transmission of an animal virus to the human recipient. Surgeon Keith Reemtsmain the 1960s transplanted chimpanzee kidneys into humans, but most of the transplants were rejected or became infected within a few weeks. And in 1984, a baby called "Baby Fae," received a heart transplant from a baboon, but died within a month.

After transplants from apes and monkeys failed, doctors started to consider pigs as potential human donrs, Mullin reports. "The reasons are largely practical," Mullin writes. "For one, pigs take only months to grow to a size suitable for organ donation, unlike monkeys, which require 10 to 15 years. Pig organs are also closer in size to human ones."

When it comes to skin transplants, while dead, processed pig skin is already used for wound dressing, living pig tissue had never been used in humans, Mullin reports. To prevent rejection, scientists used genetic engineering to eliminate molecules found in pigs that would trigger an immune system reaction in humans. Researchers also used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to remove a group of viruses found in pigs that are considered an infection risk for human donation recipients.

While temporary pig skin grafts are much more low risk than transplanting major pig organs into humans permanently, the successful skin graft transplant further demonstrates that "the risk" of xenotransplants "is manageable," according to Megan Sykes, director of the Center for Translational Immunology at Columbia University. "The fact that the FDA allowed this [pig skin] trial reflects that thought as well."

While xenotransplants are often used as bridge transplants, or temporary transplants that are designed to keep patients alive for a period of time before they receive a transplant from a human donor, Muhammad Mohiuddin, director of the cardiac transplantation program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who has led research on pig transplants, believes that organ xenotransplantation might evolve enough to become a longer term solution. "[O]nce we have an ideal pig available and it survives for a longer period of time, there will not be a need to replace that organ," he said.

But convincing the public that pig transplants are safe might prove to be more difficult, he added. "If you tell someone, 'We want to put a pig heart in you,' there would probably be quite an uproar," Mohiuddin said. "If this trial is successful, that will pave the way for other types of transplantations, like kidneys, hearts, lungs, or livers."

While these types of transplants might not happen for another few decades, Ardehali said the field is getting closer. "Are we about to embark on a new chapter? I don't know the answer to that. This requires a significant leap of faith" (Mullin, "OneZero," Medium, 11/11).

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'A leap of faith': FDA just approved the first pig-to-human tissue transplant - The Daily Briefing

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Engineering RNA Binding Proteins to Improve Human Health – Advanced Science News

Sunday, November 24th, 2019

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The central dogma of biology describes the flow of genetic information from DNA to RNA to proteins. While RNA was originally believed to be a carrier of genetic information, subsequent work has shown something completely different: RNA is now known to have function independent of proteins, with a rich layer of regulatory networks. In fact, a large amount of the RNA present in a cell does not actually make proteins. This increased appreciation and understanding has led to many fascinating mechanistic insights into RNA and its role as a central player in cellular regulation and human disease.

Helping to facilitate RNA function are a large number of proteins that can bind to and regulate RNA. These RNA-binding proteins, or RBPs, number in the thousands and are made up of many different independent modular segments similar to a childs set of building blocks. In much a similar fashion, these blocks or domains provide nature with a way of mixing and matching different domains to generate new functions. In recent years, researchers have sought to learn from biology and use these building blocks to engineer new proteins with unique functions that are helpful in research and human health. In a recent study published in WIREs RNA, Professor Andrew Berglund and his colleagues describe recent advances and challenges in engineering RBPs.

Engineering [RBPs] is a powerful tool for researchers to probe the mechanisms of RNA processing pathways says Dr. Andrew Berglund, the newly appointed Director of the RNA Institute at the University at Albany. It is also a promising approach for the development of novel therapeutic molecules.

Potential targets for this approach are abundant as many human diseases have a strong RNA or RBP component, including the most common cause of muscular dystrophy and amylotrophic lateral sclerosis. For therapeutic purposes, engineered RBPs can be designed to replace a defective cellular RBP or bind and destroy toxic RNA. RBPs can also be engineered with new functions and/or targets as well as being marked or tagged so that the researcher can follow their progression within the cell, like a GPS tracker for RNA. The modular nature of RBPs makes it possible to add or mix function to suit the goal of almost any researcher.

In their study published in WIREs RNA, the research team highlights two specific types of RBDs domains, PPR and PUF domains, which are the most straightforward choice for protein engineering. Researchers have studied these domains, understand how to design them to bind specific RNA sequences, and even have websites that can be used to design a domain to target your RNA of choice. Not all RBP engineering is this straightforward, with most researchers having to consider other factors such as the type of linker between domains, where in the tissue or the cell that protein must go, and how to attach other domains to give the engineered protein function.

Ultimately, as more functions of RNA are discovered and more diseases are linked to RNA misregulation, the greater the importance will be for designing, engineering, and testing novel RNA binding proteins. Somewhere in a jumble of RBP building blocks may lie the key to unlocking the next big discovery on RNA and potentially the next generation of therapeutics to improve human health.

Kindly contributed by the authors.

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Engineering RNA Binding Proteins to Improve Human Health - Advanced Science News

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Podcast: From Jurassic Park to woolly mammoths is it right to bring back extinct species? – Genetic Literacy Project

Sunday, November 24th, 2019

Geneticist Kat Arney takes a look at the science of de-extinction, asking whether its feasible or even ethical to bring species back from the past.

In 2003, Spanish researchers used cloning techniques to bring back the recently extinct bucardo (a type of mountain goat), only for the first cloned animal to die within minutes of birth.Other scientists are using genetic engineering techniques to stitch together the genomes of extinct species like passenger pigeons and woolly mammoths with their modern-day relatives.

Could these tools ever be used to bring back the biggest animals of them all, the dinosaurs? And is all this effort really worth it, or should we be focusing on conserving the species we already have on Earth?

Arney also investigates the history of one of the most famous diagrams in biology the Tree Of Life which Charles Darwin famously drew in 1837 to illustrate the evolutionary relationships between species.

Todays trees much more complex, bushy thickets, informed by modern genomics. But all this data brings a new challenge: deciding what counts as a species in the first place.

Full transcript, credits and show notes are available here.

Genetics Unzipped is the podcast from the UK Genetics Society, presented by award-winning science communicator and biologist Kat Arneyand produced byFirst Create the Media.Follow Kat on Twitter@Kat_Arney,Genetics Unzipped@geneticsunzip,and the Genetics Society at@GenSocUK

Listen to Genetics Unzipped onApple Podcasts(iTunes)Google Play,Spotify,orwherever you get your podcasts

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Podcast: From Jurassic Park to woolly mammoths is it right to bring back extinct species? - Genetic Literacy Project

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