StemCell Therapy

Americas universities have been taken over by the Left, but the way they are reacting to the fake covid-19 crisis gives us a chance to reconstitute higher education on sound free market principles.

In the name of diversity, academic standards have been gutted. Here are some examples. Emily Walton, a sociology professor at Dartmouth, teaches her students about

white blindnessEveryone learns, but I find that the small handful of white students in the class usually learn the most. Thats because for the first time in their lives, they begin to look at themselves as members of a racial group. They understand that being a good person does not make them innocent but rather they, too, are implicated in a system of racial dominance.

After spending their young lives in a condition of white blindness,that is, the inability to see their own racial privilege, they begin to awaken to the notion that racism has systematically kept others down while benefiting them and other white people.

As Karen Kwiatkowski sums upthe situation: Imprisonment of speech and expression weve observed and lived this for decades as political correctness, maturing into blanking, canceling, me-tooing and doxxing the other. Strait-jacketing critical thought and destruction of the tools of debate, complete. Instead of looking forward we look at the fearful horde beside us and wonder what it is thinking and what direction it will take in order to inform our decisions which will be to conform with it, lest we become oblivion.

The brilliant young engineering student Atilla Mert Sulker points outthat the diversity poison has spread to the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)disciplines:

The effort to close the gender gapin STEM represents a preference for minority status over merit that deems a students performance less important than her female-ness. Yet it only hurts individuals to put them in a field in which they will be unhappy or perform poorly, regardless of gender. If an individual, no matter how gifted, is averse to the risk of possibly burning out and forgoing a good grade, then maybe STEM isnt the right field.

STEM curricula are deliberately rigorous, as their subjects are not easy, and bridges tend to collapse when things go wrong. This is why there are weed-out classes to discourage students from pursuing them lightly.

As if this werent bad enough, many universities are imposing draconian restrictions on students to cope with covid-19. Jordan Schachtelhas written an important article about this. At Baylor University,

The university has announced that there will be weekly mandatory tests.If any student refuses to take the COVID-19 test, they are subject to suspension or expulsion. Students are not making friends with their classmates.No one can recognize whos who with a mask on, so there has been a significant increase of phone usage on campus and a significant decrease of socialization. Students show up for their in-person class, sit there, and head back to their apartment as soon as they are finished with classes. Everyone expects to move online before the semester is over. We all suspect that the university is postponing the move so that they can get the full tuition without much grounds for a lawsuit.

At the University of Iowa, They have isolation dorms for COVID kids, but they are horrid. Guys in hazmat suits come.2 week isolation, no visitors. Nurse on call but up to 3 hour wait if you need something.kids at school now are not getting tested so they dont get sentenced to the isolation prisons.

At St. Lawrence University, 1 positive case out of 2k tests. Kids limited to family groups and no more than four in dorm room. Masks when outside dorm and wrist band indicates you can go outdoors. Very limited social interaction.

At Creighton University,

11 days to get the required COVID test back. Isolated the whole time. No in person eating at the dorms as a norm. Training in the heat with masks for hours. Masks 24/7 on campus inside and out. Social isolation. 2 classes a week in person, everything else virtual. Cant come home until end of fall semester as you cant travel more than 100 miles from Omaha. Arent allowed to go anywhere or do anything except local restaurant pick ups and run to the store. If you are mildly exposed to a person with COVID, 14 day mandatory quarantine.

The universities will tell you that they need to impose these restrictions to cope with a raging pandemic, but they are lying. University students have almost no risk of dying from covid-19. Bill Sardi says, In the first 8 months of 2020 there were only ~1200 excess deaths per month or 40 extra deaths per day exclusively due to COVID-19 coronavirus infections, with 80% of those among Americans age 65 and older. By extrapolation, there were only ~8 excess COVID-19 only deaths per day among working-age adults and school-age children.

In order to understand what is happening to universities, we need to bear in mind something essential. The crisis did not begin with the diversity movement. After World War II, the government began a long-term effort to take over higher education. As Tom DiLorenzo has pointed out,

The damage caused by the program was much more than fiscal. It made the centralization of education possible for the first time in American history. That in turn opened the door to the ruinous politicization of higher education that has marked the past half century.

The tool used by government was the college accrediting agency.After the Second World War, the federal government used various college accrediting agencies to ostensibly guarantee a quality education for veterans. Only accredited schools could receive G.I. Bill funds, so the accrediting agencies quickly transformed themselves. They became the gatekeepers of the tax money and virtual adjuncts of federal power. This gatekeeper role expanded as federal funding of higher education escalated.This new world arrived almost immediately, as virtually every college and university in the country clamored for money and students, and willingly threw out traditional standards. This infusion of tax dollars created, notes Robert Nisbet, the single most powerful agent of change that we can find in the universitys long history.Had anyone objected at the time, he would have been put down as selfish and undemocratic.

Today, accreditation agencies, private in name only, have tremendous power over colleges and universities, and they are slavish to governments agenda. Today, these agencies are the major source of political correctness and big-government ideology on college campuses.

What can we do about this disaster? Karen Kwiatkowski is right. With the covid-19 restrictions, universities have gone too far. Students are fed up, and lawsuits for failing to fulfill contractual obligations may ruin many universities. She says,

One of the worst things that can happen to a state is to appear ridiculous.

Especially in the eyes of the young, who have had their expectations disappointed, their plans disrupted by mandate, their elders shown to be idiotic and frightened, their government greedy, avaricious, sadistic.

The state itself has assisted the liberty movement, with its lumbering broad-brush sadism. It far prefers physical destruction, marches and riots, police brutality and the outright rage of its citizens to the cuts of a thousand poems and 40 million awakening children who suddenly become aware that the King is buck naked, ugly, angry, vile, and simultaneously weak and wasted.

There is an additional reason we should view todays universities with skepticism, even if the leftists get tired of covid-19 and move on to some other craze. Tuition costs are enormous, and most students have to assume crippling loan burdens to get by. Today, roughly 70% of American students end up taking out loans to go to college. The average graduate leaves school with around $30,000 in debt and all told, some 45 million Americans owe $1.6 trillion in student loans and counting. Most of these loans cant be discharged through bankruptcy, and students may have to work decades to pay them off. What makes this even worse is that most of the tuition money goes into building lavish and unneeded buildings, perks for administrators, and diversity programs that undermine our culture. Die-versity is a better name for these programs.

The university was one of the foremost institutions of the High Middle Ages, and it is sad that the contemporary American university has sunk so low from the heights of medieval Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, and Salamanca. But we must face facts. What, then, can students and their parents who are fed up do? Private education and homeschooling are blossoming, creating a wide variety of choices for families and students.

I confess that one such alternative institution is foremost in my mind. A long-held vision of both Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard is now a reality. Their vision? A graduate school of Austrian economics.

Throughout its nearly forty-year history, the Mises Institute has been focused on providing support to students of other educational institutions. Helping students discover the economics of freedom and inspiring them to go on to teach at the university level is and has been a priority for the Institute. Excellent service that is personal, responsive, and geared towardassisting students in reaching their individual educational and career goals has been emblematic of all Mises Institute programs.

At the Mises Institute, we aim to continue the tradition of education so eloquently expressed by Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, whowere among the highest exemplars of the values of Western civilization, and this is what we endeavor to transmit to our students.

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The Collapsing Universitiesand What We Can Do About It - The Shepherd of the Hills Gazette

Only 10 when his father died, Dr Hollows recalled being asked if he wanted to be an eye doctor like his dad. "I'd reply, 'I think I am going to finish school first'."

Dr Hollows initially avoided studying medicine, and became a marine biologist instead. But after he caught malaria in Papua New Guinea and saw how it ravaged young children, he retrained as a doctor.

Now 38, people still ask when he will become an ophthalmologist. "It is difficult, trying to keep up with a dead legend. I am a GP, but people still ask me if I want to be a eye doctor, and I can't think of anything more boring."

Like his older and younger sisters, Dr Hollows is also involved with the Fred Hollows Foundation to restore sight and prevent infectious diseases like trachoma that cause blindness. During the pandemic, its staff in Bangladesh and Pakistan used their knowledge of infection control to prevent the spread of COVID.

When Fred died, he received a state funeral and was buried in the bush in Bourke where he had worked every year. His wife Gabi went on to raise their five children under 10, and establish the non-profit that the couple envisaged before the ophthalmologist died.

Cam Hollows as a boy with his father Fred. Credit:Oliver Strewe

"They didn't see barriers, they saw a vision. They walked towards that, and sometimes it wasn't pretty," said the younger Dr Hollows.

Unlike most children who lose a parent and barely have a shoebox full of memories, Cam - who, like his sisters, was named by Fred in honour of left-wing revolutionaries - said he was lucky to have many photos and videos. "We have Fred's voice on tape, we also have the ongoing work of dad's that has kept the story alive, and kept the family together."

There are other reminders. Only last Thursday, a 90 year-old man walked into Dr Hollows' surgery with a photo he had taken at Fred's grave site in Bourke. Others tell him they travel to Bourke to have a whisky with Fred.

"My dad's grave is a tourist attraction," said Dr Hollows.

Now working in general practice in the Northern Rivers, Dr Hollows said he tries to live by his father's words: "I believe the basic attribute of mankind is to look after one another".

He works with a diverse range of people, from dairy farmers, who refused to seek help for broken bones, to the local Indigenous community.

Dr Hollows remembers Fred as the kind of father who took his kids camping, who thrashed him at chess, who stopped the car to force his children to climb boulders and read historical plaques, and took them out of school to travel with him.

"Fred was a carpenter, " said Dr Hollows. "He used to come home after a day of curing global blindness and would turn cedar furniture that would bring tears to your eyes."

Fred made his children a tree house that is only falling down now 30 years later. That's inspired the young Dr Hollows to make one for his two daughters, Matilda and Tabitha, with monkey bars, a swing and platform that would make any child happy.

He used to come home after a day of curing global blindness and would turn cedar furniture that would bring tears to your eyes.

Being a father is the most important thing most men can do, yet fathers - and those who fill these roles - can be torn in different directions, Dr Hollows said.

"It's tricky. In trying to look after and provide for our families, we don't necessarily get to spend as much time with our family doing the important stuff that we'd like because there's always another bill or another project.

"When dad married mum, he was quite a bit older and already had two older children, so he was able to write his own rules and spend time with us kids, get us to Nepal, get us to Bourke, build a tree house and get us down to Snowy Mountains. He was super active and engaged dad in the way many of us can't be," Cam said.

Most dads don't have the luxury of time or money to do that. Neither does Dr Hollows jnr, who is still paying off his HECS debts.

Julie Power is a senior reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.

Original post:
Fred Hollows' son Cam on fatherhood: 'It's not about blood. It's about family' - Sydney Morning Herald

Vice President to address Virtually Valedictory of National Eye Donation Fortnight-2020

Make Netradhan a movement as strong as Pulse Polio

80lakh die every year, but, just 30,000 donate yes. Rest of the eyes are buried or burnt.

Hyderabad, September 07, 2020Vice President, Shri Venkaiah Naidu to address at the Valedictory Function Camba, a project of Saksham on National Eye Donation Fortnight-2020 on 8th September Virtually on Facebook, Instagram on other social media platforms ofsakshamseva.org. It will be held from 4.45 pm to 6 pm. It is an initiative of CAMBA. CAMBA is a project of SAKSHAM.

This idea behind this function is to Make NETRADAAN a movement as strong as Pulse Polio. India has more than twenty lakh cornea blind in India. The number is going upto to 35,000 to 40,000 every year. The burden of the disease is constantly on the rise.

80 lakh people die every year yet just 30,000 donate eyes, which is less than 1%. Not all the cornea collected can be used. Rest of the eyes are either buried or burnt. The collection must go up. If all those who die donates eyes, we can eradicate blindness from this country in just 5 years.

CAMBA stands for Cornea Andhatv Mukta Bharat Abhiyan (in Hindi). It means Corneal Blindness Free Bharat Movement (in English).

Another biggest challenge is the number of surgeons who are interested in the Cornea is not very high. Though there are 10,000 Opthalmologists in India, only 300 are practicing Cornea surgery. With the country with so much population, just 300 surgeons is very inadequate and the number must go up.

Cornea Andhatv Mukt Bharat Abhiyan (CAMBA) is a pan India movement of Saksham to bring down the incidence of Corneal Blindness in India and to motivate millions of Indians to pledge their eyes for this noble cause. Samadrishti, Kshamata Vikas Evam Anusandhan Mandal (SAKSHAM) is a charitable national organization with a major presence in Hyderabad.

CAMBA is a National Movement ignited by SAKSHAM, appeals to all the Ophthalmologists, Doctors Fraternity, Post Graduates, Medical Graduates, Eye Hospitals and all the Volunteers and People associated with eye care to join this momentous occasion and make NETRADAAN a movement as strong as Pulse Polio.

Every year more than 80 lakh people die in India but only 30 thousand people donate. That is less than 1%. We need at least 2 lakh pairs of the cornea to be donated every year to make Bharat Cornea blindness free in the next 5 years. Please join us to build New India as His Excellency, Honourable Vice President of India; Shri Venkaiah Naidu Ji joins the 35th National Eye Donation Fortnight Celebrations. Lets make India Corneal Blindness Free Donate Eyes, Live Twice.

What CAMBA does is the prevention of Corneal Blindness, Creates Awareness on Eye Donation. It educates government machinery about the gravity of the problem. It maintains a registry of Corneal Recipients; It encourages Eye Banks and Eye Collection Centres. It networks with good hearts.

Giving Light to the dark is gods mission said Dr. Abdul Kalam.

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Vice President to address Virtually Valedictory of National Eye Donation Fortnight-2020 - IBG NEWS

Recent technological advances in the field of ophthalmology and the availability of new biomaterials have substantially expanded the range of potential application areas of contact lenses and enabled the development of novel prosthetic products

Roots Analysis is pleased to announce the publication of its recent study, titled, Next Generation Contact Lenses and Visual Prostheses Market, 2019-2030.

The report features an extensive study of the current market landscape of therapeutic contact lenses, drug-eluting contact lenses, diagnostic / monitoring contact lenses and visual prostheses. The study lays emphasis on the novel products and technologies that are being developed for the treatment of ocular disorders, which generally cause severe visual impairment or blindness. In addition to other elements, the study includes:

A detailed market forecast, featuring analysis of the current and projected future opportunity across key market segments (listed below)

Type of Product

Type of Lenses

Target Indication

Key Geographical Region

Target Therapeutic Area

Transcripts of interviews held with the following senior level representatives of stakeholder companies:

Key companies covered in the report

For more information, please click on the following link:

https://www.rootsanalysis.com/reports/view_document/next-generation-contact-lenses-and-visual-prostheses-market-2019-2030/244.html

About Roots Analysis

Roots Analysis is one of the fastest growing market research companies, sharing fresh and independent perspectives in the bio-pharmaceutical industry. The in-depth research, analysis and insights are driven by an experienced leadership team which has gained many years of significant experience in this sector. If youd like help with your growing business needs, get in touch at [emailprotected]

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The Next Generation Contact Lenses and Visual Prostheses Market is estimated to be worth USD 3.7 billion in 2030, predicts Roots Analysis - Scientect

ISLAMABAD: The federal government is mulling to take immediate measures to promote coastal tourism in the country, as the development of Pakistans coastal areas could help the government earn $5 billion per annum.

According to the Maritime Study Forum, the government intends to develop coastal areas of Sindh and Balochistan and a study has already been conducted in this regard.

Pakistan hardly generates around $50,000 from this industry.

The forum recently conducted a survey wherein it was revealed that around 70pc of Pakistanis have either never experienced coastal tourism or had not seen Pakistans coastline beyond Karachi.

It suggested the federal and provincial governments of Sindh and Balochistan take immediate and concrete steps to promote coastal tourism and avert sea blindness.

As per Air Vice-Marshal (r) Ijaz Malik, Pakistan needs to learn from coastal tourism development models of countries that are exploiting the sectors potential. In this regard, he suggested the UAE model could help Pakistan develop its coast into a thriving tourism industry.

Meanwhile, senior journalist and anchorperson Nadia Naqi explained how Pakistans coastal tourism has remained stagnant through decades.

In order to promote coastal tourism, we not only need to develop infrastructure on coasts but also bring about sustainable development that protects the coastal ecosystem, she stated.

Naghmana Zafar, Senior Research Associate at NIMA, stressed the need to promote maritime domain awareness among institutions and organizations within the country. In order to address sea blindness in the country, the common public, as well as investors and institutions, need to be sensitised.

Moreover, Al-Noor Cruise Shipping CEO Shoaib Ahmed emphasized the importance of developing local coastal communities. He said the local culture of coastal communities can act as a great incentive to attract tourists towards this part of the country.

Maritime Study Forum President Dr Syed Mohammed Anwer also stressed the need for promoting maritime awareness in the country.

It will not only help to promote coastal development and tourism but will also highlight the importance of the overall maritime sector in the national economy.

He suggested the establishment of a coastal tourism authority to manage and promote coastal tourism in the country.

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Govt mulls investing in coastal tourism to earn $5bn revenue per annum - Profit by Pakistan Today

8/24, StemoniX Inc.-Cancer Genetics Inc." Cancer Genetics and StemoniX have launched a joint proof-of-concept program to assess central nervous system (CNS) safety and toxicity of novel compounds.

8/25, Altivon LP-ConvergeOne: ConvergeOne, an IT-services provider of collaboration and digital infrastructure solutions, has acquired Altivon, a contact center solutions provider.

8/25, Emerson Resources Inc.-Pace Analytical Services: Pace Analytical Services has acquired Emerson Resources, a pharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organization specializing in dosage form development and clinical trial material manufacturing.

8/26, Reardon Office Equipment-Loffler Cos. Inc.: Loffler Cos. has acquired Reardon Office Equipment to expand its market in North Dakota and northern Minnesota.

8/27, Collagen Solutions PLC-Rosens Diversified Inc.: Rosens Diversified, a food-production, agrochemical and distribution company, will acquire Collagen Solutions, a developer of medical-grade collagen, tissues and related devices and components for use in regenerative medicine, tissue engineering and research.

8/27, Open Systems International-Emerson Electric Co.: Emerson Electric will acquire Open Systems International, an operations technology software provider, for $1.6 billion.

8/28, Bluestem Brands Inc.-BLST Operating Co. LLC: BLST Operating Co., a privately held multibrand e-retailer, has acquired multibrand e-retailer Bluestem Brands.

Continued here:
Minnesota mergers and acquisitions - Minneapolis Star Tribune

VALENCIA, Calif. & MELBOURNE, Australia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AVITA Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: RCEL, ASX:AVH), a regenerative medicine company that is developing and commercializing a technology platform that enables point-of-care autologous skin restoration for multiple unmet needs, announced today that management will participate in the following upcoming investor conferences.

Authorized for release by the Chief Executive Officer of AVITA Therapeutics, Inc.

ABOUT AVITA THERAPEUTICS, INC.

AVITA Therapeutics is a regenerative medicine company with a technology platform positioned to address unmet medical needs in burns, chronic wounds, and aesthetics indications. AVITA Therapeutics patented and proprietary collection and application technology provides innovative treatment solutions derived from the regenerative properties of a patients own skin. The medical devices work by preparing a RES REGENERATIVE EPIDERMAL SUSPENSION, an autologous suspension comprised of the patients skin cells necessary to regenerate natural healthy epidermis. This autologous suspension is then sprayed onto the areas of the patient requiring treatment.

AVITA Therapeutics first U.S. product, the RECELL System, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September 2018. The RECELL System is indicated for use in the treatment of acute thermal burns in patients 18 years and older. The RECELL System is used to prepare Spray-On Skin Cells using a small amount of a patients own skin, providing a new way to treat severe burns, while significantly reducing the amount of donor skin required. The RECELL System is designed to be used at the point of care alone or in combination with autografts depending on the depth of the burn injury. Compelling data from randomized, controlled clinical trials conducted at major U.S. burn centers and real-world use in more than 8,000 patients globally, reinforce that the RECELL System is a significant advancement over the current standard of care for burn patients and offers benefits in clinical outcomes and cost savings. Healthcare professionals should read the INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE - RECELL Autologous Cell Harvesting Device (https://recellsystem.com/) for a full description of indications for use and important safety information including contraindications, warnings and precautions.

In international markets, our products are marketed under the RECELL System brand to promote skin healing in a wide range of applications including burns, chronic wounds and aesthetics. The RECELL System is TGA-registered in Australia and received CE-mark approval in Europe.

To learn more, visit http://www.avitamedical.com.

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This letter includes forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of words such as anticipate, expect, intend, could, may, will, believe, estimate, look forward, forecast, goal, target, project, continue, outlook, guidance, future, other words of similar meaning and the use of future dates. Forward-looking statements in this letter include, but are not limited to, statements concerning, among other things, our ongoing clinical trials and product development activities, regulatory approval of our products, the potential for future growth in our business, and our ability to achieve our key strategic, operational and financial goal. Forward-looking statements by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain. Each forward- looking statement contained in this letter is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statement. Applicable risks and uncertainties include, among others, the timing of regulatory approvals of our products; physician acceptance, endorsement, and use of our products; failure to achieve the anticipated benefits from approval of our products; the effect of regulatory actions; product liability claims; risks associated with international operations and expansion; and other business effects, including the effects of industry, economic or political conditions outside of the companys control. Investors should not place considerable reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this letter. Investors are encouraged to read our publicly available filings for a discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements in this letter speak only as of the date of this release, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these statements.

Continued here:
AVITA Therapeutics to Participate in Upcoming Investor Conferences - Business Wire

Rheumatoid Arthritis Stem Cell Therapy Market: Outlook

Regenerative medicine has made extensive advancements over the years to cure the populace of certain disorders or diseases. Stem cell therapy is a category of regenerative medicine that has gained considerable traction over the years as an efficient treatment option for a plethora of disorders including rheumatoid arthritis. Therefore, the global rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy market will bank on the efficacy of bringing rheumatoid arthritis in control across the forecast period of 2020-2030.

Based on treatment type, the global rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy market can be classified into bone marrow transplant, Allogeneic Mesenchymal stem cells, and adipose tissue stem cells. On the basis of the distribution channel, the rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy market can be segmented into ambulatory surgical centers, specialty clinics, and hospitals.

Request a sampleto get extensive insights into the Rheumatoid Arthritis Stem Cell Therapy Market

This upcoming research report by Transparency Market Research on the rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy market enlightens the stakeholder about numerous aspects such as competitive landscape, geographical analysis, current and upcoming trends, and others. The report also sheds light on the pain points and helps the stakeholder in preparing efficient business strategies to overcome them.

The report also covers the changing dynamics of growth across the rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy market due to the novel coronavirus outbreak. The researchers have analyzed every small aspect of the COVID-19 impact and then added them in the report.

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Rheumatoid Arthritis Stem Cell Therapy Market: Competitive Landscape

The rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy market can be categorized as highly fragmented due to the presence of numerous players competing for the top position. Research and development activities form an important part to discover novel insights across varied rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy mechanisms.

Some well-established participants in the rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy market are International Stem Cell Corporation, Mesoblast Ltd., Regeneus Ltd, International Stem Cell Corporation, ReNeuron Group plc, and TiGenix.

Request for Analysis of COVID19 Impact on Rheumatoid Arthritis Stem Cell Therapy Market https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=covid19&rep_id=78655

Rheumatoid Arthritis Stem Cell Therapy Market: Growth-Inducing Advantages

Many advantages are attached to the rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy market that helps in bringing extensive growth opportunities. Although rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy is not a full-proof treatment for curing arthritis, it can reduce inflammation and also aid in the stabilization of the immune system. In addition, the rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy has also shown long-term efficacy in overcoming inflammation caused due to arthritis. Government support is also proving to be a major growth factor for the rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy market.

Furthermore, research has also highlighted the improvement in sleep, diet, and physical strength among the patients after cell therapy.

Pre-Book Rheumatoid Arthritis Stem Cell Therapy Market Report https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=78655&ltype=S

Rheumatoid Arthritis Stem Cell Therapy Market: Key Findings

The research and development activities in the rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy market are always in full swing and are involved in exploring novel findings that help in increasing the graph of growth. For instance, scientists recently discovered a new cell, known as PRIME cell that appears in the bloodstream of rheumatoid arthritis patients just before the inflammation begins. Such findings may help the players in the rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy market to discover novel mechanisms of rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy.

Rheumatoid Arthritis Stem Cell Therapy Market: Geographical Analysis

The rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy market can be geographically segmented into North America, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, and Europe. North America may emerge as a champion growth contributor for the rheumatoid arthritis stem cell therapy market during the forecast period of 2020-2030. The presence of numerous key players in the region can serve as a major growth factor.

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Rheumatoid Arthritis Stem Cell Therapy Market Business Opportunities and Growth Challenges Report - The Daily Chronicle

The paper

C. Tipton et al., Patient genetics is linked to chronic wound microbiome composition and healing, PLOS Pathog, 16:e1008511, 2020.

How quickly scrapes, cuts, and gashes in the skin heal can vary greatly depending on a persons body mass, age, and whether the individual suffers from certain chronic conditions such as diabetes. Genetics, a new study suggests, may also play a role, with variations in two specific genes lowering the diversity of a wounds microbiome and lengthening healing time.

Through a partnership with Southwest Regional Wound Care Center in Lubbock, Texas, geneticist Caleb Phillips at Texas Tech University and colleagues gained access to 85 patients DNA samples. Analyzing each persons sample and comparing it to the diversity of bacteria in the patients infected wound, the team found that individuals with specific single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in TLN2, a gene involved in actin assembly, and ZNF521, which encodes a transcription factor, had lower overall microbial diversity in their wounds and were much more likely to suffer from Pseudomonas and Staphylococcus infections. Those patients skin injuries were also much slower to heal, suggesting that individuals with these specific TLN2 and ZNF521 mutations may be at higher risk of developing chronic wounds.

Despite the modest sample size, Phillips says, the study offers a better understanding of what makes a patient vulnerable to chronic wounds. The SNPs the team described in TLN2 and ZNF521 could serve as biomarkers to identify patients at risk for slow wound recovery, he notes.

The extent of the microbiomes role in chronic wounds is a really big question in the field of healing and repair, notes Lindsay Kalan, a medical microbiologist and immunologist at the University of WisconsinMadison who was not involved in the study. While the papers results are not immediately translatable for patient care, she says, it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Link:
Long-Lasting Wound Infections Linked to Microbes and Genetics - The Scientist

A Boston consumer genetics company that has batted away former employees accusations of shoddy practices since at least 2019 is now under investigation by the state Department of Public Health for logging hundreds of false positive coronavirus test results, including some in Fall River and Taunton.

The company, Orig3n, has halted COVID-19 testing in the state. A company spokesman said the false positives were due to human error in processing the tests.

In August, after learning about the Massachusetts investigation, North Carolina issued a stop order for its coronavirus testing contract with the company, Orig3n.

The consumer genetics start-up, which claims it can tell customers what kind of foods they should eat and whether theyre predisposed to intelligence based on their DNA, has secured some of the biggest coronavirus testing contracts in the country.

According to an Orig3n spokesman, the company continues to offer COVID-19 testing elsewhere in the U.S.

So far, the Massachusetts DPH has found Orig3n sent out more than 300 COVID-19 tests wrongly classified as positive in Massachusetts, a number that could increase as DPH staff continue investigating. Orig3n claims the company isnt aware of any additional false positives. According to a Harvard epidemiologist and lab director, false negatives are far more difficult to discover, because most tests come back as negative.

Ted Owens, CEO at North Hills Pines Edge skilled nursing facility in Needham, one of roughly 60 long-term care facilities that used Orig3n test services, said in an Aug. 11 bulletin to residents and staff that Orig3n returned a total of 19 false positives to the nursing home.

The numbers didnt seem credible to Owens, but Pines Edge began immediately to take actions based on the working assumption that we needed to treat these results as correct.

It turned out that several other skilled nursing facilities also showed an unusual spike in positive cases last week, and oddly enough, all these facilities had used the same testing vendor, Owens continued. This caught the attention of the epidemiologists at Mass DPH, who intervened and instructed the vendor to re-test the samples.

Upon retesting, all of the positive tests were found to be negative.

The spike in cases -- which turned out to be false positives -- caused a panic in Needham. They came as the school district made plans to return to in-person learning, and a public health nurse for the town was asked to appear before its Select Board.

Needham Public Health Nurse Tiffany Zike told the Board on Aug. 18 that a number of coronavirus cases reported in July were considered false cases that were revoked due to the lab having an issue.

A $25,000 wire transfer

In early May, nursing homes across Massachusetts were looking for a miracle.

The Massachusetts DPH had ordered long-term care facilities coping with severe coronavirus outbreaks to test 90% of residents and staff for COVID-19 by May 25 in order to qualify for a portion of the $130 million in relief funding offered by the state.

Many nursing homes struggled to meet the deadline because of a shortage of COVID-19 tests. The National Guard was testing nursing home residents and staff on behalf of the state, but demand was high.

When Ron Doty got a memo from the Massachusetts Senior Care Association on May 6 offering Orig3n as a turnkey mobile testing option, he immediately reached out to the company.

Doty, administrator at Marlborough Hills Rehabilitation & Health Care Center in Marlborough, wired $25,000 to Orig3n. The next day, he received 250 COVID-19 test kits from the company.

Two months later, Orig3n was asked to suspend COVID-19 testing in Massachusetts, which it did on Aug. 8. Staff at the Massachusetts DPH noticed the lab was reporting an unusually high rate of positive tests, prompting the agency to investigate, according to a DPH spokesperson.

The state DPH declined to identify which nursing homes used Orig3ns testing services, citing the ongoing investigation.

Tony Plohoros, Orig3ns spokesman, said the lab is now working with state health officials to correct problems in its Boston lab, which has ceased processing coronavirus samples but continues to process consumer genetic profiles.

While it remains unclear if the federal government has taken action to halt use of Orig3ns COVID-19 testing services in other parts of the country, as North Carolina did, concerns about Orig3n hadnt yet reached a health care supply company in Ohio as of this week. That company, Link-age Solutions, is still working with Orig3n to provide coronavirus tests to long-term care facilities nationwide.

Patrick Schwartz, a spokesman for Link-age Solutions, said Thursday the company was unaware Orig3n was asked to cease coronavirus testing in Massachusetts.

One of the highest accuracy ratings in the market

Orig3n received an emergency authorization to conduct COVID-19 testing from the Food & Drug Administration in April.

The same month, the company received a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan valued between $350,000 and $1 million from Silicon Valley Bank, according to U.S. Treasury data.

Since getting the FDA approval, Orig3n has provided testing services to The New England Power Generators Association, Bostons homeless population, a boarding school in Virginia, and other public and private entities.

In late June, Link-age Solutions, a Mason, Ohio-based company that helps long-term care facilities nationwide obtain supplies ranging from pharmaceuticals to office supplies issued a press release touting Orig3ns breakthrough testing method as having one of the highest accuracy ratings in the market.

In partnering with Orig3n, Link-age could offer in-demand coronavirus tests to its members at a reduced cost, according to the press release. Results would be returned less than 36 hours after specimens arrived at the lab, the release said.

The lab boasts output capabilities of 6,000 and up to 12,000 tests per day, and will offer billing to Medicare where appropriate, the press release stated. Reporters questions to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have gone unanswered.

Schwartz, the Link-age spokeman, said Thursday his company continues to offer COVID-19 testing services performed by Orig3n, and that feedback about Orig3ns tests from its customers has been positive.

Company flagged in the past

Orig3n lists its office location as the third floor of 27 Drydock Ave. in the heart of Bostons Seaport. Until August, thats where the company processed its coronavirus tests.

Before it got into the coronavirus business, Orig3n billed itself as a consumer genetics pioneer, carving a path toward a future of wellness and health through the use of diagnostics, genetics and biotechnology.

The company, founded in 2014, offers tests ranging in cost from $29 to $298 that are supposed to help people learn what kinds of food, exercise and beauty products would work best for their genetic profiles, and even whether they are genetically predisposed to so-called superhero traits including intelligence and strength, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

A former Orig3n employee who spoke to Gannett New England reporters on the condition of anonymity because of a nondisclosure agreement with the company said the number one complaint received by customer service was genetic profile tests not being returned to customers. The employee, who left the company pre-pandemic, didnt think the company could handle both genetic profile testing and coronavirus testing.

Unless things drastically changed since I have left, not even testing, just bandwidth-wise, they were already kind of drowning when I left, the employee said.

Despite its start-up status, Orig3n quickly gained prominence partly through securing big-name partnerships, including one with the NFLs Baltimore Ravens.

In September 2017, the Ravens linked up with Orig3n for an event called DNA Day. Roughly 70,000 Ravens fans were set to pour into the teams stadium, where they could have picked up a free genetic testing kit.

The event never happened. The Ravens postponed it days before federal health officials told The Baltimore Sun they were, working to determine whether any of the testing being offered by Orig3n is subject to the requirements of the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988.

The federal regulatory standards apply to labs testing human samples in the United States, and are intended to ensure accuracy, effectiveness and reliability.

About a year after DNA Day was scrapped, 17 former Orig3n employees criticized the company in Bloomberg Businessweek, alleging it, habitually cut corners, tampered with or fabricated results, and failed to meet basic scientific standards.

Marketing, not science, the employees said, was the companys priority.

Press releases put out by Orig3n throughout the pandemic show the company was eager to publicize contracts with respected institutions, both public and private.

On May 12, the company announced what it called a comprehensive solution to enable COVID-19 testing for Massachusetts nursing home residents.

In the press release, the company said it sought to become the partner of choice for coordinating and providing COVID-19 testing for defined populations beyond long-term care residents and employees, including private employers, schools, government agencies, and cities and states.

The nursing home program is one of many applications for Orig3ns fully-integrated solution, the press release said.

What went wrong?

Doty, the Marlborough nursing home administrator, would not have known about Orig3n if not for the May 6 memo from Massachusetts Senior Care Association, an organization many nursing homes relied on during the viruss spring surge in the state to interpret complex and shifting guidance from the DPH.

Massachusetts Senior Care Association President Tara Gregorio said in a statement that her organization essentially serves as a messenger for its members, and that it relies on governmental agencies to vet labs like Orig3n.

Throughout the pandemic, MSCA has passed along lists of government approved COVID-19 PCR testing labs options available to our members, Gregorio wrote. We must rely, as all providers do, on the licensing process to ensure legitimacy and accuracy of these labs.

The FDA, which gave Orig3n emergency authorization to conduct coronavirus testing last spring, has not yet responded to Gannett New England reporters seeking comment.

According to a Massachusetts DPH spokesman, Orig3n told the agency after it was contacted by DPH that errors in testing occurred because of a broken vial or contaminated plate during final processing, an explanation DPH investigators are now trying to confirm.

In an email to Gannett New England reporters on Friday, Plohoros, Orig3ns spokesman, said, human error at the beginning of the laboratory testing process caused a pre-extraction reagent that was used in the affected batch tests to become contaminated.

In an Aug. 18 press conference, Massachusetts Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders said erroneous results from Orig3n affected the number of COVID-19 cases reported in Fall River and Taunton.

The positive test rates for that three-day period for that one lab just seemed high, and so (we) went back, and the lab stopped processing, theyre still not processing any tests, Sudders said, adding that DPH staff was analyzing tests processed prior to the discovery to make sure the issue was, as Orig3n told the DPH, a one-time problem rather than a more structural issue.

Dr. Michael Mina is an assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health who has experience running laboratories that perform PCR testing.

Mina says a lab that processes 6,000 to 12,000 PCR coronavirus tests a day as Orig3n has said it does would need to be run with what he called extreme quality control measures.

It requires an amazing amount of concentration and care to really ensure youre not getting contamination or any number of other problems that can happen, he said. If this was an easy (test), I would have said, sure, any lab can do it but this particular (test) ... it really is a finicky test. You have to be extremely careful about how youre doing it, and that means you need a lot of quality controls. You need to be a really diligent lab.

Mina, who stressed he has no knowledge of Orig3n other than circulating allegations that the company had previously been investigated, said when a mistake like the kind Orig3n described occurs, staff should immediately stop processing, sterilize the area and alert any affected patients and health departments.

The fact that the Massachusetts DPH noticed the problem and not Orig3n is a problem, Mina said.

That shows in general that the quality control wasnt being maintained, he said, adding that performing intense quality control checks multiple times daily is a core tenet of running any lab, especially a high-complexity clinical lab. And if were giving them the benefit of the doubt, they didnt know that there was a problem because otherwise its just nefarious.

Mina said that a professionally run lab would likely have caught the mistake, and alerted the state DPH immediately.

Part of the reason for that is simply a motive to care for the patient, who will likely make important decisions about their own behavior based on the test result they receive, which in turn affect other people.

At Brigham, for example, where I was one of the medical directors, of course people feel embarrassed (about making a mistake), but theres this strong culture where people recognize that their embarrassment is not worth a patients hardship, Mina said. Thats one thing that really, I think, lacks a little bit when we move into industry laboratories running clinical tests. That same spirit of honesty ... might not exist everywhere.

While mistakes at labs are common, Mina said, theyre also commonly fixed and they dont usually require an investigation.

Mina said that the U.S. did need to increase its capacity to process coronavirus tests this spring, but labs, especially ones new to the medical diagnostics space, as Orig3n is, need to be monitored closely.

Its just important to keep all these things in check, Mina said. The frenzy to do coronavirus testing has been so extreme. I dont think labs should be immediately shut down for mistakes, but we have to remain vigilant to ensure that all the testing that is being done is up to the highest standards.

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Genetics start-up continues COVID-19 testing as DPH probes testing errors, including some in Fall River, Taunton - Taunton Daily Gazette

TEMPLE CITY, Calif., Sept. 02, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fulgent Genetics (Nasdaq: FLGT) and New York City Health and Hospitals have announced they will provide COVID-19 testing to hundreds of thousands of students across approximately 1600 locations as they return to school in September and over the next several months. Fulgent will provide its FDA EUA-approved at-home test, Picture by Fulgent, a RT-PCR test that provides the highest level of sensitivity and specificity, utilizing a self-collected nasal swab sample. Fulgent will provide results within 24-48 hours from the time when Fulgent receives and accepts a specimen for the test.

Fulgent is very happy to partner with the City of New York on such an important and novel testing protocol. Its an ambitious goal to test so many students in such a rapid fashion, but the combination of the Fulgent technology platform and lab capacity along with the strong testing infrastructure of New York City makes this possible, commented Brandon Perthuis, Chief Commercial Officer of Fulgent Genetics. In just a few short days, we were able to get the first shipment of hundreds of thousands of Picture kits to New York City. We will now be working closely with the city on the distribution, return and replenishment of the kits, added Perthuis.

This is one of the first large-scale testing programs for COVID-19 to utilize an at-home test kit. Fulgents Picture Genetics at-home test was chosen due to its convenient self-administration, which can be used on-site at schools as well as at home. The companys industry-leading turnaround time of 24-48 hours also makes this a powerful tool for back-to-school testing.

About NYC Test & Trace Corps

The NYC Test & Trace Corps is a public health initiative to fight COVID-19 so that New Yorkers can get back to school, work and help New York City reopen safely. The Corps is a group of doctors, public health professionals and community advocates working to reverse the COVID-19 outbreak and protect our city. The public health program is led by NYC Health + Hospitals in close collaboration with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and other city agencies. Through its robust and citywide partnerships, The Corps helps New Yorkers receive free, safe and confidential testing for COVID-19 and for the antibody test. It ensures that anyone with the virus receives care and can safely isolate to prevent the spread. For more information, visit https://www.nychealthandhospitals.org/test-and-trace/.

About Fulgent Genetics

Fulgent Genetics proprietary technology platform has created a broad, flexible test menu and the ability to continually expand and improve its proprietary genetic reference library while maintaining accessible pricing, high accuracy and competitive turnaround times. Combining next generation sequencing (NGS) with its technology platform, the Company performs full-gene sequencing with deletion/duplication analysis in an array of panels that can be tailored to meet specific customer needs. In 2019, the Company launched its first patient-initiated product, Picture Genetics, a new line of at-home screening tests that combines the Companys advanced NGS solutions with actionable results and genetic counseling options for individuals. Since March 2020, the Company has commercially launched several tests for the detection of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), including NGS and reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) - based tests. The Company has received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the RT-PCR-based tests for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 using upper respiratory specimens (nasal, nasopharyngeal, and oropharyngeal swabs) and for the at-home testing service through Picture Genetics. A cornerstone of the Companys business is its ability to provide expansive options and flexibility for all clients unique testing needs through a comprehensive technology offering including cloud computing, pipeline services, record management, web portal services, clinical workflow, sequencing as a service and automated lab services.

About Picture Genetics

Through its Picture Genetics platform launched in 2019, Fulgent Genetics offers consumers direct access to its advanced genetic testing and analytics capabilities from the ease and comfort of home, at an affordable price point. The Picture Genetics platform provides a holistic approach to at-home genetic screening by including oversight from independent physicians as well as genetic counseling options to complement Fulgent Genetics comprehensive genetic testing analysis. The Picture Genetics platform currently offers multiple tests, providing medically actionable, clinical-level results with professional medical follow-up in one easy process. Visit http://www.picturegenetics.comfor more information.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Examples of forward-looking statements in this press release include statements about, among other things: the companys identification and evaluation of opportunities and its ability to capitalize on opportunities to grow its business; expected future lab capacity and turnaround times; expectations or guidance regarding future revenues and managements judgements and evaluations of the companys platform and technology.

Forward-looking statements are statements other than historical facts and relate to future events or circumstances or the companys future performance, and they are based on managements current assumptions, expectations and beliefs concerning future developments and their potential effect on the companys business. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, which may cause the forward-looking events and circumstances described in this press release to not occur, and actual results to differ materially and adversely from those described in or implied by the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, among others: the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the preventive public health measures that may continue to impact demand for its tests and the pandemics effects on the global supply chain; the market potential for, and the rate and degree of market adoption of, the companys tests, including its newly-developed tests for COVID-19 and genetic testing generally; the companys ability to capture a sizable share of the developing market for genetic and COVID-19 testing and to compete successfully in these markets, including its ability to continue to develop new tests that are attractive to its various customer markets, its ability to maintain turnaround times and otherwise keep pace with rapidly changing technology; the companys ability to maintain the low internal costs of its business model, particularly as the company makes investments across its business; the companys ability to maintain an acceptable margin on sales of its tests, particularly in light of increasing competitive pressures and other factors that may continue to reduce the companys sale prices for and margins on its tests; risks related to volatility in the companys results, which can fluctuate significantly from period to period; risks associated with the composition of the companys customer base, which can fluctuate from period to period and can be comprised of a small number of customers that account for a significant portion of the companys revenue; the companys ability to grow and diversify its customer base and increase demand from existing and new customers; the companys investments in its infrastructure, including its sales organization and operational capabilities, and the extent to which these investments impact the companys business and performance and enable it to manage any growth it may experience in future periods; the companys level of success in obtaining coverage and adequate reimbursement and collectability levels from third-party payors for its tests; the companys level of success in establishing and obtaining the intended benefits from partnerships, joint ventures or other relationships; the companys compliance with the various evolving and complex laws and regulations applicable to its business and its industry; risks associated with the companys international operations; the companys ability to protect its proprietary technology platform; and general industry, economic, political and market conditions. As a result of these risks and uncertainties, forward-looking statements should not be relied on or viewed as predictions of future events.

The forward-looking statements made in this press release speak only as of the date of this press release, and the company assumes no obligation to update publicly any such forward-looking statements to reflect actual results or to changes in expectations, except as otherwise required by law.

The companys reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including its annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019 filed with the SEC on March 13, 2020 and the other reports it files from time to time, including subsequently filed quarterly and current reports, are made available on the companys website upon their filing with the SEC. These reports contain more information about the company, its business and the risks affecting its business.

Investor Relations Contact:The Blueshirt GroupMelanie Solomon, 415-217-4964, melanie@blueshirtgroup.com

Media Contact:The Blueshirt GroupJeff Fox, 415-828-8298, jeff@blueshirtgroup.com

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Fulgent Genetics, New York City Health and Hospitals Partner on Large-Scale Back-to-School COVID-19 Testing - GlobeNewswire

Lung cancer cells invade surrounding tissues and start to spread.Image courtesy of the National Cancer Institute

A malignant tumor is a bustling metropolis populated by many different kinds of cancer cells. This cellular diversity, however, is what makes cancer so difficult to treat, as each type of cell in a tumor responds differently and sometimes not at all to cancer therapies. This is especially true for lung cancer, which often responds to an initial course of treatment, only to remerge after becoming drug-resistant, making it the deadliest form of cancer worldwide.

A better understanding of the diversity that exists within a lung tumor would likely lead to more effective treatments. Today, clinicians generally rely on tests that generate genetic profiles of biopsied tumors in bulk rather than one cell at a time. Unfortunately, this usually fails to capture the full extent of cellular diversity within tumors and ends up obscuring clinically significant information. This has led scientists to search for ways to assemble a census of the many types of cells that comprise a malignant tumor. Even better would be a more complete picture of how these cell populations evolve during the course of treatment. However, figuring out exactly how to conduct this survey has proven to be a major technical barrier for scientists.

But this hurdle, once thought to be nearly insurmountable, was recently cleared by a research team led by UC San Francisco and Chan Zuckerberg Biohub scientists. The researchers figured out how to assemble genetic profiles of individual lung cancer cells obtained from patients at different times during the course of their treatment. In doing so, they revealed a vast cornucopia of cellular diversity in both lung tumors and the tissue surrounding the tumor as they evolved during the course of treatment clinically significant information that had previously eluded scientists. The findings are detailed in a paper published Aug. 20 in the journal Cell.

This study is among the first of its kind, said Trever Bivona, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and senior author of the study. We observed features of lung cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment that no one had seen before. This gave us a window into the evolution of individual cells within the tumors ecosystem.

Starting with 49 biopsies obtained from 30 lung cancer patients, the researchers used single-cell sequencing to map the landscape of gene activity in over 23,000 individual lung cancer cells at three time points: before treatment, after the tumors stabilized or went into remission during treatment, and after the cancer, despite continuous treatment, had fully re-grown and become treatment resistant.

These single-cell profiles revealed the presence of tumor cells that harbored cancer-driving genetic mutations distinct from those that were identified by the various clinical tests that the patients received during the course of their treatment. Though these mutations were present in only a fraction of cells in each tumor, they had a significant effect on patient outcomes. Patients whose tumors carried two or more of these mutations had significantly lower overall survival rates than patients with fewer than two.

The researchers also found that when lung tumors stabilized or went into remission in response to treatment, some malignant cells were able to cling to life by switching on genes associated with injury repair and survival that are normally only active in healthy lung cells. When these genes are active, the cancer cells enter a repair and survival state that, according to Bivona, puts the cells into hibernation mode so that the cell death machinery doesnt get activated.

But these survival genes have an Achilles heel. They rely on whats known as the Wnt/beta-catenin signaling pathway, which can be targeted with existing drugs. In fact, laboratory tests demonstrated that when administered at the appropriate time, drugs targeting the Wnt/beta-catenin pathway, combined with a common lung cancer therapy, reduced the number of cancer cells that survived.

Our results suggest that we could target specific cell states in lung tumors and improve patient survival by constraining tumor evolution and preventing drug resistance and tumor survival and re-growth, Bivona said.

The study also provides key insights into how the cells and tissue that surround a lung malignancy the tumor microenvironment create conditions that prevent the immune system from taking up arms against the tumor.

Single-cell profiling revealed that the tumor microenvironment was hostile to immune activity both before treatment and after a tumor had evolved drug resistance. However, during treatment, when the cancer is in the hibernation mode revealed in the study, the researchers found that immune cells were able to infiltrate the tumor microenvironment and appeared to be switched on, suggesting there may be a limited window of opportunity during which conventional cancer therapies can be combined with immunotherapies a class of cancer treatments that has proven effective against some cancers, but has largely failed against the types of lung tumors profiled in this study to produce better overall survival rates.

Putting tumor heterogeneity front and center would better equip clinicians with information that allows for a high-resolution window into the evolution of tumors during therapy, and help us use such a roadmap to intervene more proactively to better control tumors and help patients, said Bivona. The single-cell analysis that we proved is feasible in real-life clinical tumors may help usher in a new era in the clinical management of tumors during therapy by strengthening our molecular diagnostic toolkit.

Authors: Additional authors include Caroline E. McCoach, Franziska Haderk, D. Lucas Kerr, Elizabeth A. Yu, Philippe Gui, Tasha Lea, Wei Wu, Anatoly Urisman, Kirk Jones, Pallav K. Kolli, Eric Seeley, Yaron Gesthalter, Sourav Bandyopadhyay, Khyati Shah, Lauren Cech, Nicholas J. Thomas, Anshal Gupta, Mayra Gonzalez, Hien Do, Lisa Tan, Bianca Bacaltos, Matthew Gubens, Thierry Jahan, Johannes R. Kratz, David Jablons, Jonathan Weissman, and Collin M. Blakely of UCSF; Ashley Maynard, Lincoln Harris, Weilun Tan, Alexander Zee, Michelle Tan, Rene Sit, Daniel D. Le, Kevin A. Yamauchi, Rafael Gomez-Sjoberg, Norma Neff, and Spyros Darmanis of Chan Zuckerberg Biohub; Julia K. Rotow of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; and Erin L. Schenk, David M. Naeger and Robert C. Doebele of the University of Colorado.

Funding: This research was supported by NIH awards U54CA224081, R01CA204302, R01CA211052, R01CA231300, R01CA169338, U01CA217882, R01CA227807, T32 HL007185, and K12 CA086913; the Van Auken Foundation; Novartis Pharmaceuticals; Pfizer; the University of California Cancer League; AstraZeneca; The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation award P0528804; Doris Duke Charitable Foundation award P2018110; V Foundation award P0530519l; and the Mildred Scheel postdoctoral fellowship from the German Cancer Aid.

Disclosures: See manuscript for a full list of disclosures.

Link:
Mapping Genetic Diversity of Lung Tumors Over Time May Lead to More Effective Therapies - UCSF News Services

In the last days of the most recent legislative session, the California State Legislature was busy passing several privacy bills set to impact businesses. The most recent, the Genetic Information Privacy Act, would require companies that sell and market consumer-focused genetic testing products directly to consumers (including COVID-19 testing companies) to comply with certain privacy requirements.

If signed by Governor Newsom, the Genetic Information Privacy Act will require the following:

The responsibilities set upon businesses and the rights afforded to consumers reflect a pattern emerging in consumer privacy legislation, most notably, the California Consumer Privacy Act, which went into effect on January 1, 2020, and into full enforcement on August 14, 2020.

The Act goes further to ensure that consumers genetic data will not be disclosed to health insurers, insurance providers, or employers who may make decisions regarding provision of coverage or employment to an individual consumer.

With the adaptation and growth of testing companies that have emerged in the wake of COVID-19, established businesses and startups alike must heed this new regulation.

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Genetic and COVID-19 Testing Companies Set To Be Regulated in California - JD Supra

A teenager with autism who was told he was unlikely to ever sit a state exam has been offered a college place to study genetics.

He is determined to find out why his parents - who don't have autism - had four children on the spectrum.

Tristan Lennon from Mornington, Co Meath is getting ready to take his place at University College Dublin (UCD) after securing the extra points he needed through a post leaving certificate course (PLC). The 18-year-old student is encouraging people to take a PLC course, even if they receive the points they need for their preferred course, as he said it gives you the grounding you need for college life.

Tristan's mum Carol was told before his Junior Certificate that it was unlikely that he would ever sit a state exam. She fought to get the additional resources he needed to have the same chance as any other pupil.

"He needed one-on-one help in a lot of subjects so we were told he wasn't expected to sit any state exams due to his needs but I insisted and persisted and, just two days before the Junior Certificate, he was given all he needed as emergency measures," she said.

"And he did really well.

"Again, before the Leaving Certificate, we were told there was no resource accommodation available and again I pulled out all the stops to get it for him."

Tristan, now 18, missed out on the points he needed to get straight into his course but did a PLC, receiving ten distinctions and enough extra merits to get his place in the genetics course in UCD through the CAO round zero.

Tristan was one of 4,411 applicants to receive 5,432 offers for third-level places through the CAO round zero in early August.

Those who fall into the round zero category include graduate entry medicine applicants, additional mature applicants, deferred and access applicants, as well as those presenting QQI FET/FETAC qualifications for courses with a quota for such applicants.

"He has come a long way. We didn't think he would get on the train independently to go to his work experience in Dublin as part of the course but he did and he even stood up to a gang who assaulted him on his first journey," his proud mum said.

Four of Carol's five children have been diagnosed with autism. She has fought hard for extra services for her children over the years.

I've learned that you have to fight and fight hard to be heard when you have a child with autism in Ireland.

"And I'm very proud of where my children are today because of any supports and resources that I've fought for to help them to get the chance they deserve in life."

Tristan has encouraged everyone to consider a PLC course, even if they get the points they need for their preferred couse.

"The PLC gave me a grounding of how college worked and taught me how to commute independently and how to start independently learning," he said.

"Now I'm ready to concentrate solely on my course. My current interest is in genetics and I would like to research if there is a concrete link between the make-up of genes and disabilities.

"I'd love to find out why my parents, who don't have autism, had four out of five children with autism."

More here:
Teen who was told he would never sit an exam prepares to start genetics course at UCD - Irish Examiner

Bronze Age skull in situ in the Tollense Valley. Credit: Stefan Sauer / Tollense Valley Project

The ability for humans to digest milk as adults has altered our dietary habits and societies for centuries. But when and how that ability known as lactase persistence or lactose tolerance occurred and became established is up for debate. By testing the genetic material from the bones of people who died during a Bronze Age battle around 1,200 BC, an international team of scientists including Krishna Veeramah, PhD, of Stony Brook University, suggest that lactase persistence spread throughout Central Europe in only a few thousand years, an extremely fast transformation compared to most evolutionary changes seen in humans. Their findings are published today (September 3, 2020) in Current Biology.

Various bones at a Bronze Age battle excavation site, some of which were genetically tested to determine the presence of the lactase-persistent gene. Credit: Stefan Sauer / Tollense Valley Project

Despite the prominence of milk drinking in Europe and North American today, approximately two-thirds of the worlds population remains lactose intolerant. Generally, no mammal digests milk as an adult, which is why for example people should not give adult cat or dog pets milk. However, a subset of humans have a genetic mutation that enables the enzyme lactase to digest the lactose sugar found in milk throughout an individuals lifetime. Many of these people are from Central or Northern Europe.

The battle occurred on the banks of the Tollense, a river in present-day Germany, and is the most significant that we know about from Bronze Age Europe, probably consisting of about 4,000 warriors, almost a quarter of which died during the fighting. Despite being more than three thousand years old, the researchers were able to sequence DNA from some of the bone fragments recovered from the battle site.

Veeramah, Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution in the College of Arts and Sciences, led part of the research that involved analyzing how the overall genetic ancestry of the battlefield population compared to other modern and ancient populations, and then compared the frequency of the lactase-persistent allele to other modern and ancient populations, particularly medieval European populations.

Archaeologists have been systematically searching a section along the Tollense river for more than 10 years. Credit: Stefan Sauer / Tollense Valley Project

The research team, led by Joachim Burger and colleagues at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), found that despite the battle occurring more than 4,000 years after the introduction of agriculture in Europe which in part would have involved the consumption of dairy from early cattle, goats and sheep domesticates only one in eight of the warriors had a genetic variant that enabled them to break down lactose.

When we look at other European genetic data from the early Medieval period less than 2,000 years later, we find that more than 60 percent of individuals had the ability to drink milk as adults, close to what we observe in modern Central European countries, which ranges from 70 to 90 percent said Veeramah. This is actually an incredibly fast rate of change for the gene that controls milk digestion. It appears that by simply possessing this one genetic change, past European individuals with the ability to digest lactose had a six percent greater chance of producing children than those who could not. This is the strongest evidence we have for positive natural selection in humans.

Joachim Burger of JGU, lead author on the study, added that there still is not definitive answer to the question: Why did being able to digest the sugar in milk after infancy provide such a big evolutionary advantage?

With milk being a high-energy, relatively uncontaminated drink, its ingestion may have provided greater chances of survival during food shortages or when supplies of drinking water may have been contaminated, explained Burger.

Reference: Low Prevalence of Lactase Persistence in Bronze Age Europe Indicates Ongoing Strong Selection over the Last 3,000 Years by Joachim Burger, Vivian Link, Jens Blcher, Anna Schulz, Christian Sell, Zo Pochon, Yoan Diekmann, Aleksandra egarac, Zuzana Hofmanov, Laura Winkelbach, Carlos S. Reyna-Blanco, Vanessa Bieker, Jrg Orschiedt, Ute Brinker, Amelie Scheu, Christoph Leuenberger, Thomas S. Bertino, Ruth Bollongino, Gundula Lidke, Sofija Stefanovi, Detlef Jantzen, Elke Kaiser, Thomas Terberger, Mark G. Thomas, Krishna R. Veeramah and Daniel Wegmann, 3 September 2020, Current Biology.DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.033

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Genetic Analysis of Bones From a Bronze Age Battle Reveal Lactose Tolerance Quickly Spread Throughout Europe - SciTechDaily

The University Hospital Heidelberg is one of the major healthcare centers in Germany. Our objective is the development of innovative diagnostics and therapies as well as their quick implementation for the patient. With about 10,700 employees in more than 50 specialized clinical departments with almost 2,000 beds, about 80,000 patients in part-time and full-time inpatient treatment as well as 1,000,000 patients in ambulant treatment are medicated each year.

JobID: P0025V280

Location: Institut of Human Genetics, INF 366, 69120 HeidelbergContract: 2 years with extension possibilities, begin as soon as possibleSalary: Competitive, subject to skills and experience

The newly created Nephrogenetics unit headed by Matias Simons is looking for an enthusiastic postdoc to join our research group at the Institute of Human Genetics of the University Hospital Heidelberg. The general interest of the lab is in the molecular mechanisms underlying hereditary kidney and metabolic diseases. Most of these diseases are caused by single-gene defects and thereby offer unique opportunities to decipher fundamental regulatory pathways of human physiology and to develop targeted diagnostic and therapeutic options. Recent publications include Marchesin et al, Cell Rep 2020; Bedin et al, J Clin Invest 2019; Goncalves et al, PloS Genetics 2018; Simons, JASN 2018; Rujano et al, J Exp Med 2017; Trepiccione et al, JASN 2016; Gleixner et al, Cell Rep 2014. We combine human genetics with several experimental approaches, including fly and mouse genetics, cell culture, microscopy and biochemistry. For more info on the lab see http://www.simons-lab.de.

We offer an exciting project aimed at exploring the role of random monoallelic expression in renal development and homeostasis. For this project, we invite applications from individuals with a solid background in molecular cell biology. Prior experience with stem cells (e.g. mouse ESCs), organoids, single cell RNA-seq, epigenetics and kidney research is an advantage but not a prerequisite. The projects will be carried out in a stimulating work environment with scientific collaborations within the institute, across the Heidelberg life science community (e.g. EMBL, DKFZ) and worldwide.

The successful applicant will have good communication and organisational skills and a PhD in a relevant area (or be in the final stages of completion). We also invite applications from research-oriented MDs. Candidates are expected to be highly motivated and to work independently with a strong work ethic. As we are an international lab, profictiency in English language is a requirement. Applications including a cover letter, a detailed CV including a publication list and contacts of up to three referees should be sent as soon as possible to matias.simons@med.uni-heidelberg.de

The University Hospital Heidelberg offers:

http://www.klinikum.uni-heidelberg.de/karriere

We stand for equal opportunities. People with disabilities are given priority with the same suitability. The university hospital aims at a general increase in the proportion of women in all areas and positions where women are underrepresented. Qualified women are therefore particularly encouraged to apply.

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ERC-funded postdoctoral position at the Institut of Human Genetics, - Nature.com

The Alliance Review

(NAPSI)Social isolation during the pandemic may pose a mental health threat for those already at risk for COVID-19people over age 65.

As doctors treat more senior patients for depression, an increasingly popular genetic test may inform their treatment decisions. The GeneSight test (www.genesight.com) provides information about how your genes may impact how you metabolize and respond to certain depression medications.

Innovative solutions for mental health conditions are important. As the pandemic and its resulting isolation wears on, many are struggling with their mental health. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, loneliness can be associated with higher rates of depression.

When I first experienced depression, it happened all of a sudden, shared Doreen, a wife, mother of three grown children, and retiree. It was like a cloud happened in my head.

Symptoms of depression can include changes in sleep or eating patterns, decreased energy, difficulty concentrating or a lack of motivation.

Doreen saw her doctor, who prescribed a depression medication but it didnt alleviate her symptoms.

I began to see one doctor, then another, to help deal with my depression, said Doreen. Her doctors tried many, many different medications and none seemed to work. Finally, my heart doctor said, Doreen, Ive heard about this gene test, I think it might help you.

Her doctor was referring to the GeneSight test.

The test is a simple cheek swab, ordered by a healthcare provider who can prescribe medications. A patient can take the test at home or in the doctors office.

Using a patients unique DNA, the GeneSight test informs doctors about potential gene-drug interactions. The report provides information about which depression medications may require dose adjustments, may be less likely to work, or may have an increased risk of side effects based on a patients genetic makeup.

The GeneSight test helped Doreens doctor to make an informed treatment decision; she was prescribed a new medication.

Thats when my life started to change. I got back to smiling, being happy and laughing again. I got back to being me, Doreen said.

Post-pandemic life will likely never be the same. If depression is one of the unanticipated consequences, treatment is important.

People struggling with depression can ask their doctor about the GeneSight test. To learn more, visit http://www.GeneSight.com.

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Pandemic Depression: Genetic Insight May Help Treatment - The-review

The consumer genetics startup, which claims it can tell customers what kind of foods they should eat and whether theyre predisposed to intelligence based on their DNA, has secured some of the biggest coronavirus testing contracts in the country.

A Boston consumer genetics company that has batted away former employees accusations of shoddy practices since at least 2019 is now under investigation by the state Department of Public Health for logging hundreds of false positive coronavirus test results.

The company, Orig3n, has halted COVID-19 testing in the state. A company spokesman said the false positives were due to "human error" in processing the tests.

In August, after learning about the Massachusetts investigation, North Carolina issued a stop order for its coronavirus testing contract with Orig3n.

The consumer genetics startup, which claims it can tell customers what kind of foods they should eat and whether theyre predisposed to intelligence based on their DNA, has secured some of the biggest coronavirus testing contracts in the country.

According to an Orig3n spokesman, the company continues to offer COVID-19 testing elsewhere in the U.S.

So far, the Massachusetts DPH has found Orig3n sent out more than 300 COVID-19 tests wrongly classified as positive in Massachusetts, a number that could increase as DPH staff continue investigating. Orig3n claims the company isnt aware of any additional false positives. According to a Harvard epidemiologist and lab director, false negatives are far more difficult to discover, because most tests come back as negative.

Ted Owens, CEO at North Hills Pines Edge skilled nursing facility in Needham, one of roughly 60 long-term care facilities that used Orig3n test services, said in an Aug. 11 bulletin to residents and staff that Orig3n returned a total of 19 false positives to the nursing home.

The numbers didnt seem credible to Owens, but Pines Edge began immediately to take actions based on the working assumption that we needed to treat these results as correct.

It turned out that several other skilled nursing facilities also showed an unusual spike in positive cases last week, and oddly enough, all these facilities had used the same testing vendor, Owens continued. This caught the attention of the epidemiologists at Mass DPH, who intervened and instructed the vendor to re-test the samples."

Upon retesting, all of the positive tests were found to be negative.

The spike in cases which turned out to be false positives caused panic in Needham. They came as the school district made plans to return to in-person learning, and a public health nurse for the town was asked to appear before the Select Board.

Needham public health nurse Tiffany Zike told the board on Aug. 18 that a number of coronavirus cases reported in July were considered false cases that were revoked due to the lab having an issue.

$25,000 wire transfer

In early May, nursing homes throughout Massachusetts were looking for a miracle.

The DPH had ordered long-term care facilities coping with severe coronavirus outbreaks to test 90% of residents and staff for COVID-19 by May 25 in order to qualify for a portion of $130 million in relief funding offered by the state.

Many nursing homes struggled to meet the deadline because of a shortage of COVID-19 tests. The National Guard was testing nursing home residents and staff on behalf of the state, but demand was high.

When Ron Doty got a memo from the Massachusetts Senior Care Association on May 6 offering Orig3n as a turnkey mobile testing option, he immediately reached out to the company.

Doty, administrator at Marlborough Hills Rehabilitation & Health Care Center in Marlborough, wired $25,000 to Orig3n. The next day, he received 250 COVID-19 test kits from the company.

Two months later, Orig3n was asked to suspend COVID-19 testing in Massachusetts, which it did on Aug. 8. Staff at the DPH noticed the lab was reporting an unusually high rate of positive tests, prompting the agency to investigate, according to a DPH spokesperson.

The state DPH declined to identify which nursing homes used Orig3ns testing services, citing the ongoing investigation.

Tony Plohoros, Orig3ns spokesman, said the lab is now working with state health officials to correct problems in its Boston lab, which has ceased processing coronavirus samples but continues to process consumer genetic profiles.

While it remains unclear if the federal government has taken action to halt use of Orig3ns COVID-19 testing services in other parts of the country, as North Carolina did, concerns about Orig3n hadnt yet reached a health care supply company in Ohio as of this week. That company, Mason, Ohio-based Link-age Solutions, is still working with Orig3n to provide coronavirus tests to long-term care facilities nationwide.

Patrick Schwartz, a spokesman for Link-age Solutions, said Thursday that the company was unaware Orig3n was asked to cease coronavirus testing in Massachusetts.

One of the highest accuracy ratings in the market

Orig3n received an emergency authorization to conduct COVID-19 testing from the Food and Drug Administration in April.

The same month, the company received a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan valued between $350,000 and $1 million from Silicon Valley Bank, according to U.S. Treasury data.

Since getting the FDA approval, Orig3n has provided testing services to The New England Power Generators Association, Bostons homeless population, a boarding school in Virginia and other public and private entities.

In late June, Link-age Solutions, which helps long-term care facilities nationwide obtain supplies ranging from pharmaceuticals to office supplies, issued a press release touting Orig3ns breakthrough testing method as having one of the highest accuracy ratings in the market.

In partnering with Orig3n, Link-age could offer in-demand coronavirus tests to its members at a reduced cost, according to the press release. Results would be returned less than 36 hours after specimens arrived at the lab, the release said.

The lab boasts output capabilities of 6,000 and up to 12,000 tests per day, and will offer billing to Medicare where appropriate, the press release stated. Reporters questions to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have gone unanswered.

Schwartz, the Link-age spokeman, said Thursday his company continues to offer COVID-19 testing services performed by Orig3n, and that feedback about Orig3ns tests from its customers has been positive.

Company flagged in the past

Orig3n lists its office location as the third floor of 27 Drydock Ave. in the heart of Bostons Seaport neighborhood. Until August, thats where the company processed its coronavirus tests.

Before it got into the coronavirus business, Orig3n billed itself as a consumer genetics pioneer, carving a path toward a future of wellness and health through the use of diagnostics, genetics and biotechnology.

The company, founded in 2014, offers tests ranging in cost from $29 to $298 that are supposed to help people learn what kinds of food, exercise and beauty products would work best for their genetic profiles, and even whether they are genetically predisposed to so-called superhero traits including intelligence and strength, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

A former Orig3n employee who spoke to Gannett New England reporters on the condition of anonymity because of a nondisclosure agreement with the company said the number one complaint received by customer service was genetic profile tests not being returned to customers. The employee, who left the company pre-pandemic, didnt think the company could handle both genetic profile testing and coronavirus testing.

Unless things drastically changed since I have left, not even testing, just bandwidth-wise, they were already kind of drowning when I left, the employee said.

Despite its startup status, Orig3n quickly gained prominence partly through securing big-name partnerships, including one with the NFLs Baltimore Ravens.

In September 2017, the Ravens linked up with Orig3n for an event called DNA Day. Roughly 70,000 Ravens fans were set to pour into the teams stadium, where they could have picked up a free genetic testing kit.

The event never happened. The Ravens postponed it days before federal health officials told The Baltimore Sun they were working to determine whether any of the testing being offered by Orig3n is subject to the requirements of the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988.

The federal regulatory standards apply to labs testing human samples in the United States, and are intended to ensure accuracy, effectiveness and reliability.

About a year after DNA Day was scrapped, 17 former Orig3n employees criticized the company in Bloomberg Businessweek, alleging it habitually cut corners, tampered with or fabricated results, and failed to meet basic scientific standards.

Marketing, not science, the employees said, was the companys priority.

Press releases put out by Orig3n throughout the pandemic show the company was eager to publicize contracts with respected institutions, both public and private.

On May 12, the company announced what it called a comprehensive solution to enable COVID-19 testing for Massachusetts nursing home residents.

In the press release, the company said it sought to become the partner of choice for coordinating and providing COVID-19 testing for defined populations beyond long-term care residents and employees, including private employers, schools, government agencies, and cities and states.

The nursing home program is one of many applications for Orig3ns fully-integrated solution, the press release said.

What went wrong?

Doty, the Marlborough nursing home administrator, would not have known about Orig3n if not for the May 6 memo from Massachusetts Senior Care Association, an organization many nursing homes relied on during the viruss spring surge in the state to interpret complex and shifting guidance from the DPH.

Massachusetts Senior Care Association President Tara Gregorio said in a statement that her organization essentially serves as a messenger for its members, and that it relies on governmental agencies to vet labs like Orig3n.

"Throughout the pandemic, MSCA has passed along lists of government approved COVID-19 PCR testing labs options available to our members, Gregorio wrote. We must rely, as all providers do, on the licensing process to ensure legitimacy and accuracy of these labs."

The FDA, which gave Orig3n emergency authorization to conduct coronavirus testing last spring, has not yet responded to Gannett New England reporters seeking comment.

According to a Massachusetts DPH spokesman, Orig3n told the agency after it was contacted by DPH that errors in testing occurred because of a broken vial or contaminated plate during final processing, an explanation DPH investigators are now trying to confirm.

In an email to Gannett New England reporters on Friday, Plohoros, Orig3ns spokesman, said human error at the beginning of the laboratory testing process caused a pre-extraction reagent that was used in the affected batch tests to become contaminated.

In an Aug. 18 press conference, Massachusetts Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders said erroneous results from Orig3n affected the number of COVID-19 cases reported in Fall River and Taunton.

The positive test rates for that three-day period for that one lab just seemed high, and so (we) went back, and the lab stopped processing, they're still not processing any tests, Sudders said, adding that DPH staff was analyzing tests processed prior to the discovery to make sure the issue was, as Orig3n told the DPH, a one-time problem rather than a more structural issue.

Dr. Michael Mina is an assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health who has experience running laboratories that perform PCR testing.

Mina says a lab that processes 6,000 to 12,000 PCR coronavirus tests a day as Orig3n has said it does would need to be run with what he called extreme quality control measures.

It requires an amazing amount of concentration and care to really ensure you're not getting contamination or any number of other problems that can happen, he said. If this was an easy (test), I would have said, sure, any lab can do it but this particular (test) ... it really is a finicky test. You have to be extremely careful about how you're doing it, and that means you need a lot of quality controls. You need to be a really diligent lab.

Mina, who stressed he has no knowledge of Orig3n other than circulating allegations that the company had previously been investigated, said when a mistake like the kind Orig3n described occurs, staff should immediately stop processing, sterilize the area and alert any affected patients and health departments.

The fact that the Massachusetts DPH noticed the problem and not Orig3n is a problem, Mina said.

That shows in general that the quality control wasn't being maintained, he said, adding that performing intense quality control checks multiple times daily is a core tenet of running any lab, especially a high-complexity clinical lab. And if we're giving them the benefit of the doubt, they didn't know that there was a problem because otherwise it's just nefarious.

Mina said that a professionally run lab would likely have caught the mistake, and alerted the state DPH immediately.

Part of the reason for that is simply a motive to care for the patient, who will likely make important decisions about their own behavior based on the test result they receive, which in turn affect other people.

At Brigham, for example, where I was one of the medical directors, of course people feel embarrassed (about making a mistake), but there's this strong culture where people recognize that their embarrassment is not worth a patient's hardship, Mina said. That's one thing that really, I think, lacks a little bit when we move into industry laboratories running clinical tests. That same spirit of honesty ... might not exist everywhere.

While mistakes at labs are common, Mina said, they're also commonly fixed and they don't usually require an investigation.

Mina said that the U.S. did need to increase its capacity to process coronavirus tests this spring, but labs, especially ones new to the medical diagnostics space, as Orig3n is, need to be monitored closely.

It's just important to keep all these things in check, Mina said. The frenzy to do coronavirus testing has been so extreme. I don't think labs should be immediately shut down for mistakes, but we have to remain vigilant to ensure that all the testing that is being done is up to the highest standards.

Trevor Ballantyne and Jeannette Hinkle are reporters for Gannett New England.

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Massachusetts startups COVID-19 testing halted as hundreds of false results probed - Enterprise News

Global Genetic Ancestry Testing Market Report from AMA Research highlights deep analysis on market characteristics, sizing, estimates and growth by segmentation, regional breakdowns& country along with competitive landscape, players market shares, and strategies that are key in the market. The exploration provides a 360 view and insights, highlighting major outcomes of the industry. These insights help the business decision-makers to formulate better business plans and make informed decisions to improved profitability. In addition, the study helps venture or private players in understanding the companies in more detail to make better informed decisions.

Major Players in This Report Include,

MyHeritage (Israel), Laboratory Corporation (United States), Myriad Genetics, Inc. (United States), Ancestry.com LLC (United States), Quest Diagnostics (United States), Gene By Gene (United States), DNA Diagnostics Center, Inc. (United States), Invitae (United States), IntelliGenetics (United States) and Ambry Genetics Corp. (United States)

Free Sample Report + All Related Graphs & Charts @: https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/sample-report/125027-global-genetic-ancestry-testing-market

Definition

Genetic ancestry testing is a way for people interested in family history to go beyond what they can learn from relatives or from historical documentation. It gives clues about where a persons ancestors might have come from and about relationships between families.

Global Genetic Ancestry Testing Market Report offers a detailed overview of this market and discusses the dominant factors affecting the growth of the market. The impact of Porters five armies on the market over the next few years has been discussed for a long time in this study. We will also forecast global market size and market outlook over the next few years.

Types of Products, Applications and Global Genetic Ancestry Testing Market Report Geographical Scope taken as the Main Parameter for Market Analysis. This Research Report Conducts an assessment of the industry chain supporting this market. It also provides accurate information on various aspects of this market, such as production capacity, available production capacity utilization, industrial policies affecting the manufacturing chain and market growth.

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Market Drivers

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In this research study, the prime factors that are impelling the growth of the Global Genetic Ancestry Testing market report have been studied thoroughly in a bid to estimate the overall value and the size of this market by the end of the forecast period. The impact of the driving forces, limitations, challenges, and opportunities has been examined extensively. The key trends that manage the interest of the customers have also been interpreted accurately for the benefit of the readers.

The Genetic Ancestry Testing market study is being classified by Type, Applicationsand major geographies with country level break-up that includes South America (Brazil, Argentina, Rest of South America), Asia Pacific (China, Japan, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Rest of Asia-Pacific), Europe (Germany, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Rest of Europe), MEA (Middle East, Africa), North America (United States, Canada, Mexico).

The Global Genetic Ancestry Testing is segmented by following Product Types:

by Type (Y Chromosome Testing, Mitochondrial DNA Testing, Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Testing), Service (Online Testing, Offline Testing)

.

The report concludes with in-depth details on the business operations and financial structure of leading vendors in the Global Genetic Ancestry Testing market report, Overview of Key trends in the past and present are in reports that are reported to be beneficial for companies looking for venture businesses in this market. Information about the various marketing channels and well-known distributors in this market was also provided here. This study serves as a rich guide for established players and new players in this market.

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Current Scenario Analysis for Decision Framework

Key Strategic Developments in Genetic Ancestry Testing Market:

The research includes the key strategic activities such as Research & Development (R&D) initiatives, Merger & Acquisition (M&A) completed, agreements, new launches, collaborations, partnerships & (JV) Joint ventures, and regional growth of the key competitors operating in the market at global and regional scale to overcome current slowdown due to COVID-19.

Key Market Features in Global Genetic Ancestry Testing Market

The report highlights Genetic Ancestry Testing market features, including revenue size, weighted average regional price, capacity utilization rate, production rate, gross margins, consumption, import & export, demand & supply, cost bench-marking in Genetic Ancestry Testing market share and annualized growth rate (Y-o-Y) and Periodic CAGR.

Extracts from Table of Contents

Global Genetic Ancestry Testing Market Research Report

Chapter 1 Global Genetic Ancestry Testing Market Overview

Chapter 2 Global Economic Impact on Industry

Chapter 3 Global Market Competition by Manufacturers

Chapter 4 Global Revenue (Value, Volume*) by Region

Chapter 5 Global Supplies (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions

Chapter 6 Global Revenue (Value, Volume*), Price* Trend by Type

Chapter 7 Global Market Analysis by Application

.continued

This report also analyzes the regulatory framework of the Global Markets Genetic Ancestry Testing Market Report to inform stakeholders about the various norms, regulations, this can have an impact. It also collects in-depth information from the detailed primary and secondary research techniques analyzed using the most efficient analysis tools. Based on the statistics gained from this systematic study, market research provides estimates for market participants and readers.

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Genetic Ancestry Testing Market is expected to double its Market Size in Upcoming Years - Scientect

Written by Parthasarathi Biswas | Pune | September 3, 2020 11:14:01 pmTo encourage farmers, the programme marketed the produce under the brand, Farming Monk, in urban areas for a premium. (Representational)

SIX YEARS after they took up the work of conserving local or traditional (better known as landrace) varieties of rice, sorghum and vegetables, Pune-headquartered BAIF Development and Research Foundation (BDRF) now has plans to take their work to a molecular level. Along with National Institute for Abiotic Stress Management in Baramati, BDRF will try to identify genetic traits that allow these varieties to develop better climate resilience than more commonly grown commercial varieties.

Since January 2014, BDRF has started Maharashtra Gene Bank Programme for Conservation, Management and Revival of Local Resources.

Under the sponsorship of Rajiv Gandhi Science & Technology Commission of the state government, this project has been involved in preserving landrace varieties of crops like rice, millet, sorghum, maize, hyacinth bean, cowpea as well as indigenous livestock varieties for the past six years.

Vitthal Kauthale, thematic programme executive, BDRF, said the project saw both in situ (on spot) and ex situ conservation of landrace varieties. The project, which is to end by September 30, has so far seen conservation of 350 varieties of different crops in 25 in situ conservation at six clusters.

Kauthale said landraces, at present, are under threat with farmers opting for more commonly available commercial varieties. In fact, some of the rice varieties that the programme managed to salvage from near extinction, were now found only in tribal regions of Maharashtra, he said.

He also said these land varieties had better climate resilience than commercial varieties and could withstand heavy rainfall and other extreme climatic events.

During the last six years of the project, BDRF partnered with the local community for preserving local varieties. The process involves purification, trait identification, and then propagation of the variety at the farmer level. Last year, the project recorded production of 13.2 tonnes of worthy landraces of six focused races and availability of quality seeds through village-level community seed banks at six clusters and one central seed bank.

The project has involved self-help groups conserve and propagate crops. To encourage farmers, the programme marketed the produce under the brand, Farming Monk, in urban areas for a premium.

As the project comes to an end, BDRF has plans to upscale the project in a more scientific manner. To date, we were protecting and preserving landraces on field. Now, we wish to go to the molecular level and try to identify genetics that provide resilience to these varieties, Kauthale said.

He added that the collaboration with the Baramati institute aimed at doing the same, and once this was identified, the genes could be used to impart the same characteristic to commercial crops.

One of the major problems faced in conservation of landraces is the lack of any legal identity. The Seed Act, which governs the business of seeds, does not mention landraces and, thus, such seeds cannot be sold commercially. The BDRF has plans to take up policy-level intervention to allow the seeds to be traded.

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BDRF, Baramati institute to identify genetic traits of landrace varieties of crops - The Indian Express