StemCell Therapy

iNtRON Biotechnology, Inc. (KOSDAQ:048530) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 13% in the last month. But over the last half decade, the stock has not performed well. In fact, the share price is down 34%, which falls well short of the return you could get by buying an index fund.

View our latest analysis for iNtRON Biotechnology

Given that iNtRON Biotechnology didnt make a profit in the last twelve months, well focus on revenue growth to form a quick view of its business development. When a company doesnt make profits, wed generally expect to see good revenue growth. Some companies are willing to postpone profitability to grow revenue faster, but in that case one does expect good top-line growth.

The graphic below depicts how earnings and revenue have changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

Balance sheet strength is crucial. It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on how its financial position has changed over time.

While the broader market lost about 11% in the twelve months, iNtRON Biotechnology shareholders did even worse, losing 33%. However, it could simply be that the share price has been impacted by broader market jitters. It might be worth keeping an eye on the fundamentals, in case theres a good opportunity. Unfortunately, last years performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 8.1% over the last half decade. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should buy when there is blood on the streets, but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality business. Its always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand iNtRON Biotechnology better, we need to consider many other factors. Take risks, for example iNtRON Biotechnology has 2 warning signs we think you should be aware of.

If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on KR exchanges.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.

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Introducing iNtRON Biotechnology (KOSDAQ:048530), The Stock That Dropped 34% In The Last Five Years - Simply Wall St

The renewed debate over embryonic stem cells highlights the advances and complications that have arisen in the field since its controversial beginnings.

The cells are a sort of blank slate, plucked from human embryos just a few days after fertilization. They tantalize scientists because they could in theory turn into any of the bodys 200 mature cell types, from blood to brain to liver to heart. They could be used to study and treat diseases and to study the basic biology of what determines a cells destiny why a heart cell becomes a heart cell, for example, instead of a brain cell.

The problem is their origin human embryos. In order to get stem cells, embryos must be destroyed. It is this fact that led to the court ruling on Monday blocking most federal financing for embryonic stem cell research.

The scientist who isolated human embryonic stem cells in 1998 struggled with this dilemma, consulting ethicists before proceeding. But in the end, the scientist, Dr. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, decided to go ahead because the embryos were from fertility clinics and were going to be destroyed anyway. And, he reasoned, the work could greatly benefit humanity.

Yet despite the high hopes for embryonic stem cells, progress has been slow so far there are no treatments with the cells. The Food and Drug Administration just approved the first clinical study, a dose and safety test, of human embryonic stem cells to treat spinal cord injuries.

All along, though, scientists wondered if they could sidestep the ethical debate by creating embryonic stem cells without the embryos. Every cell has the same DNA. A heart cell is different from a liver cell because it uses different genes. But all the genes to make a liver cell, or any other cell, are there in the cell. The liver genes are masked in a heart cell and vice versa. Why cant scientists find a way to unmask all of a cells genes and turn it directly into a stem cell without using an embryo?

A few years ago, two groups of researchers one led by Dr. Thomson did just that. They discovered that all they had to do was add four genes and a cell would reprogram itself back to its original state when it was a stem cell in an embryo. Like an embryonic stem cell, that reprogrammed cell seemed to be able to then turn into the many kinds of specialized cells in the body, an ability called pluripotent.

What has happened since that discovery, scientists say, is that stem cell biology turned out to be more complicated than they anticipated. Besides the stem cells from embryos, there are so-called adult stem cells found in all tissues but with limited potential because they can only turn into cells from their tissue of origin. And there are these newer cells made by reprogramming mature cells.

Now researchers are trying to figure out whether stem cells made by this reprogramming process really are the same as ones taken from embryos. Some say they found subtle differences between these cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or I.P.S.C.s, and embryonic stem cells. Others are not so sure.

They say they need embryonic stem cells as a basis of comparison, a gold standard to see if the newer reprogrammed cells are as good.

We are not at the stage where you will find many investigators saying, We dont need embryonic stem cells because I.P. cells are the same, said Dr. Timothy Kamp, a stem cell researcher and professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. We dont know that yet.

One complication is that different labs use different methods to obtain the reprogrammed cells and to study them, Dr. Kamp said. As a result, he said, not all I.P. cells are the same.

John Gearhart, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and one of the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells, said some investigators ended up with reprogrammed cells that will have little utility. They are only partly reprogrammed, he explains.

One worries about how safe and effective they are going to be if they are ever used in therapies, Dr. Gearhart said.

Dr. George Q. Daley, a stem cell researcher at Childrens Hospital in Boston, saw subtle differences in a recent study. When he just compared the two types of cells side by side with molecular tests, they looked identical. Then he tried turning them into various types of mature cells and comparing the results.

Dr. Daley published a paper in March, in Nature Biotechnology, reporting that mouse I.P.S.C.s from different tissues remembered, in a sense, where they came from. He has a similar paper under review showing the same effect with human induced pluripotent stem cells.

In the mouse study, it was harder to get pluripotent mouse cells derived from a skin cell, for example, to turn into blood cells than it was to get pluripotent stem cells made from blood cells to turn into blood cells.

They tended to remember their tissue of origin, Dr. Daley said.

Researchers need to find ways to make the cells forget where they came from, he said.

Rudolf Jaenisch, a stem cell researcher and biology professor at M.I.T., said he was not certain there were meaningful differences between human embryonic stem cells and human induced pluripotent cells.

But to answer that question will require the use of embryonic stem cells for comparisons, Dr. Jaenisch said.

Things are very much in flux, he said. We will probably need human embryonic stem cells for a while. And then we probably will not need them anymore.

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Stem Cell Biology and Its Complications - The New York Times

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the question of where to turn for solid information has never been more important.

Many Duke experts are being approached now for their expertise and insight. But where do they turn for guidance and the latest information? In this ongoing series, Duke Today asks Duke experts to share their preferred sources.

Dr. Sallie Permar is a physician scientist who focuses on prevention and treatment of neonatal viral infections. A professor of immunology, pathology, pediatrics, molecular genetics and microbiology and associate dean for physician-scientist development, she recently wrote about the effect of the pandemic on medical research.

To stay abreast of how the infectious diseases field is responding to the novel coronavirus, she consults a mix of websites, podcasts and social media.

This Week in Virology, hosted by Vincent Racaniello and fellow virologists, has featured recent guest hosts who are stars of COVID-19 research, such as Drs. Daniel Griffin, Ralph Baric, Mark Denison, Stanley Perlman and Christian Drosten.

Immune, hosted by immunologists Cindy Leifer, Stephanie Langel, Vincent Racaniello, carried a recent two-part series on COVID-19 immunology with Dr. Brianne Barker that was especially compelling.

I also listen to COVID-19: Commonsense Conversations on the Coronavirus Pandemic, with host Dr. Ted OConnell, a family physician and writer.

For the latest on numbers by region, I check Johns Hopkins Universitys COVID-19 map.

COVID-19 guidelines can be found on the Centers for Disease Control website.

For the latest on viral sequence dynamics, I check gisaid.org.

For recent COVID-19 research reports, I consult bioxiv.org and medrxiv.org. The Twitter sources below provide real-time critical reviews of the newly posted manuscripts.

For the latest on epidemiology and case series reports, I consult: - the CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report and - World Health Organization situation reports.

And for compilations of the latest research I check: - Duke Pharmacist Elizabeth Dodds-Ashleys Daily Digest. - The American Association of Medical Colleges Novel Coronavirus Update by chief scientific officer and former Duke faculty member Dr. Ross McKinney. - Publons compilation of latest research manuscripts, which includes some crowd-sourced reviews.

Finally, great sources to follow on Twitter include:@NIAIDNews; @CEPIvaccines;NIH Vaccine Research Center scientist Kizzmekia Corbett (@KizzyPhD);The laboratory of UNC-Chapel Hills Dr. Ralph Baric (@Baric_Lab);The laboratory of Vanderbilt Universitys Dr. Mark Denison (@Denisonlab);Florian Krammer, an immunologist who is developing antibody assays (@florian_krammer); Virologists Dr. Benhur Lee (@VirusWhisperer) and Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen);COVID-19 drug developer Timothy Sheahan (@timothysheahan);David Martinez, a former Ph.D. student who is now testing vaccine and therapeutic antibodies in the lab of Ralph Baric (@David_RMartinez).

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Sallie Permar: Who Are Your Trusted Sources on COVID-19? - Duke Today

The team's results, posted as a preprint in BioRxiv earlier this month, proposed a handful of ACE2 variants suspected of boosting SARS-CoV-2 binding and, potentially, host susceptibility, along with several variants predicted to dial down ACE2 interactions with the viral spike protein that may be protective.

"What we can conclude is that this new virus has evolved new modality to interact with the ACE2 receptor," Jura noted. "Unfortunately, it seems like there are polymorphisms in the human population that will make some individuals more susceptible to binding this virus because these mutations are enhancing this unique part of the interface."

Seshagiri noted that such insights might make it possible to design potential therapeutic versions of ACE2 that are particularly adept at binding coronavirus spike proteins, thereby preventing the viruses from interacting with an individual's own ACE2 receptors, for example.

In a recent Cell paper, a team from Sweden, Spain, Austria, and Canada proposed its own strategy for engineering soluble, clinical-grade forms of the human ACE2 protein that appeared to dial down early-stage infections by SARS-CoV-2 in otherwise susceptible cell types.

"We are not the first to come up with the idea of saying ACE2 could be a therapeutic," he said, though he suggested that engineering soluble forms of the receptors protein that bind well to SARS-CoV-2 may serve as a strategy for "future proofing" against the emergence of these and other related viruses down the road.

The researchers plan to profile ACE2 polymorphisms in still more human samples for the final version of the study, which will likely be submitted for peer review in the coming weeks, Seshagiri said.

He and MedGenome CEO Rayman Mathoda noted that the diagnostic company, which is active in India and other emerging markets, is also a founding member of a GenomeAsia 100K project.

"We've made a very intentional effort to build on a data-focused set of efforts, where we take our proprietary data as we grow, but build in other data source," Mathoda said.

The investigators are not alone in attempting to establish a baseline understanding of ACE2 variation across and within populations.

At the University of Siena in northern Italy, Alessandra Renieri and her colleagues have been delving into ACE2 genetic variation using available exome sequences for some 7,000 healthy participants in the Network of Italian Genomes project. As they reported in a preprint posted to MedRxiv in early April, the investigators saw significant variation in ACE2 in that retrospective dataset, including both common and rare, missense variants predicted to influence the protein's stability and its interactions with the coronavirus viral spike.

"There is pretty wide genetic variability," Renieri said. "There are both polymorphisms, so variants found in a percentage of the population, and there are also rare variants a lot of rare variants."

It may be possible for the individual centers participating in the Network of Italian Genomes to recontact individuals in the future to try to find out who became infected with SARS-CoV-2 and to assess ACE2 variation alongside clinical outcomes, Renieri noted, though she cautioned that "ACE2 is just one of the many genes that could be involved."

For the reCOVID project, members of the team are seeking funding through the European Commission's Innovative Medicines Initiative IMI2 call for proposals to do functional analyses on ACE2 and other genes, for example, in the hopes of developing candidate therapeutics.

Renieri is also part of a team that been working since mid-March to prospectively collect samples from 2,000 COVID-19 patients at least 21 different hospitals in Italy as part of the GEN-COVID study, part of the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative.

For that project, researchers in Italy will use whole-exome sequencing to assess patient samples collected in conjunction with very detailed clinical information, she explained, while collaborators in Finland will genotype the samples for a related genome-wide association study.

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A gene that could unlock the mysteries of COVID-19 - ModernHealthcare.com

The Future is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries and Our Lives by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2020, 384 pages, $20 (hardcover).

There is little doubt that the decade to come will be filled with radical breakthroughs and world-changing surprises, Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler observe near the beginning of The Future is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries and Our Lives, their exciting new treatise on what lies just around the corner and the impact it will have on everything.

As the chapters ahead make very clear, every major industry on our planet is about to be completely reimagined, they continue. For entrepreneurs, for innovators, for leaders, for anyone sufficiently nimble and adventurous, the opportunities will be incredible. It will be both a future thats faster than you think and arguably the greatest display of imagination rendered visible the world has yet seen. Welcome to an era of extraordinary.

As someone who has read a fair amount on what various thinkers have written about the wonders and pitfalls the future holds, I tend to be somewhat skeptical of these kinds of hyperbolic proclamations. In the present case, however, after making my way through this exquisite manuscript on where we currently find ourselves as a species, I have come to the conclusion their assessment is justified. We are indeed on the cusp of a revolution that will fundamentally change the world and how we function in it.

As might be expected given the nature of the subject matter, the book is exceptionally well-researched, with 76 pages of source notes at the conclusion of the foreword, 14 chapters and afterword that comprise the main text. Structurally, the content is arranged in three major sections: Part One, The Power of Convergence, consists of the first four chapters; Part Two, The Rebirth of Everything, is made up of the next eight chapters; and Part Three, The Faster Future, finishes out the narrative with chapters 13 and 14.

From my vantage point, Part Two constitutes the real meat and potatoes of their phenomenally insightful and intrinsically thought-provoking prose. The entire section is an interconnected description of what lies just over the horizon, as noted by the cascading chapters: The Future of Shopping, The Future of Advertising, The Future of Entertainment, The Future of Education, The Future of Healthcare, The Future of Longevity, The Future of Insurance, Finance, and Real Estate and The Future of Food. Embedded in these themes is an overarching nod to the future of work, something we all have a vested interest in from a more personal perspective.

As is usually the case with this kind of book, I was naturally drawn to how Diamandis and Kotler envision the tremendous technological innovations occurring at a breakneck pace and transforming education at all levels. Although I was a little apprehensive as I made my way through many of their arguments and the evidence they provided to support them, I was nonetheless encouraged by the optimistic tone that was unmistakable throughout their thesis.

Batch processing children is both an industrial hangover and an educational disaster because of basic biology, they explain in The Future of Education, the eighth chapter and one of my personal favorites for reasons previously indicated. Everyone is wired differently. Some of this is nature, some nurture, but the end result is the same: Were individuals, and theres no standard set of engaging experiences that can maximize learning for all.

But converging technology offers a host of new solutions to the challenges of quality and quantity, the authors continue a little later. Every technology thats currently making an impact on entertainment is doing double duty in education, meaning, as well see in a moment, one-size-fits-all is no match for the app store.

Lets just say I was not disappointed by the portrait they painted of the next phase in educations quickly-evolving manifest destiny.

Diamandis is founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE, executive founder of Singularity University and the co-founder of Human Longevity Inc., Celularity and Bold Capital Partners. He has degrees in molecular genetics and aerospace engineering from MIT as well as an MD from Harvard Medical School. The founder of more than 20 high-tech companies, Fortune magazine named him one of the Worlds 50 Greatest Leaders in 2014. Kotler is founder and director of the Flow Research Collective as well as a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. His work has appeared in Time, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Wired and Forbes. His previous books include Stealing Fire, The Rise of Superman, Tomorrowland and Last Tango in Cyberspace.

In the final analysis, Diamandis and Kotler are realistic yet guardedly optimistic about the potential future thats within our grasp. They are not nave to the dangers that lie ahead, but they refuse to be paralyzed by them. In one sense, I interpreted their tome as a call to action an admonition to be more purposeful and rational in how we use the amazing tools we have at our disposal. Keeping the glass half full will take our collective commitment.

To be clear, there will still be terrorism, war and murder, they concede in the afterword. Dictatorship and disease wont go away. But the world will quietly continue to get better. The goal here isnt about creating a life of luxury, but rather a life of possibility. Thanks to the forces of convergence, the technological advances needed for that world of abundance are coming at an ever-increasing pace. Of course, creating that world wont happen automatically. It will still require the largest cooperative effort in history. And this brings us to our final question: What, exactly, are you waiting for?

I see that as a challenge none of us can afford to ignore. This was a very intriguing, sobering, enlightening and ultimately uplifting journey; highly recommended.

Reviewed by Aaron W. Hughey, Department of Counseling and Student Affairs, Western Kentucky University.

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Book review: 'The Future is Faster Than You Think' - Bowling Green Daily News

If you are a foodie and love experimenting with flavours, how does a shrimp and egg salad sound for lunch? Or a tender juicy steak, just out of the oven, topped with a dollop of cheddar or Camembert, to be precise. And did you know mushrooms go smashingly well with nearly every common fruit, from apples to apricots and even coconut?

These food pairings may sound unappealing or at least unusual to most people, but Dr Ganesh Bagler of the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, New Delhi, says otherwise and he has the data and research to show for it.

Can we encode the intelligence of a chef into a computer, or can a computer fool a chef into thinking a recipe is real?

Akshay Malhotra

The computational gastronomy expert has taken the food and drink industry by storm with his ground-breaking work on flavour molecules and its corresponding database, FlavorDB.

His laboratory has also developed DietRX, an archive of nearly 2,000 foods, their chemical and genetic compositions, and their effect on health, which can enable culinary and drug interventions. (Ayurvedic diets are a historically important example of the belief in healing via appropriate foods.)

The power of data and food together is magic, says Bagler.

Already, chefs such as Garima Arora of Restaurant Gaa in Bangkok, are using Baglers research to fuel their own food experiments. What I find amazing about Baglers research is that his approach actually enables us to know exactly what makes up a cuisine the things that make Indian cuisine Indian, Arora, who is the first Indian woman with a Michelin star to her name, tells The National.

Once we have that knowledge, we can truly get to the main taste of a cuisine, which will help us do away with the flavours and ingredients we dont need.

Baglers work is also critical to Aroras Food Forward India, a non-profit initiative that aims to broaden the narrative around Indian food. It fits into the framework by being a forward-thinking initiative, one that serves the purpose of codifying a cuisine, and identifying, quantitatively, its identity, says project manager Matylda Grzelak.

Bagler, who is now considered the pioneer of computational gastronomy in India, credits curiosity for his success. Having studied various subjects from graduation through to postdoctoral studies quantum mechanics, computer science, computational biology, computational neuroscience and molecular genetics Bagler returned to India in 2010 following a stint at Berlins Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics.

He joined the CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology at Palampur as a researcher, and worked on medicinal plants in the western Himalayas, and on diseases such as cancer and asthma. But it was not enough.

I like to explain things; Im a teacher, he says. This led him to the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur and finally IIIT-Delhi.

Bagler's foray into gastronomy happened when he came across a 2011 paper that took off from British chef Heston Blumenthals food-pairing hypothesis: foods that share flavour molecules will taste better together than those that do not.

For example, chocolate and blue cheese taste great together because they share 73 flavours (Blumenthals interest was piqued when he paired white chocolate and caviar, and hit the right notes). This led to companies such as Foodpairing, which present thousands of combinations of ingredients for chefs to experiment with.

Historically speaking, dishes have evolved over millennia from single-ingredient meals to complex ones, says Bagler. Cooking techniques and creative expression aside, why are some ingredients used together and others not? This was one of the critical questions that led Bagler to expand his research. Food science has been around, but it explored aspects such as the shelf life of foods or how to enhance sensory enjoyment. Now, people are looking at food from a data perspective.

What Bagler did differently was focus on Indian food, which he found is different from other cuisines because of the spices. Breaking down a collection of the late, celebrated Indian chef Tarla Dalals recipes, Bagler realised that spices form the basis of food-pairing in Indian cuisine. Having divided various foods into 26 categories vegetables, dairy, lentils, meats, etc he saw that mixing up items across all other sections did not cause too much of a shift in flavour, but when the spices were shuffled, the taste changed entirely.

Spices are the molecular fulcrum of Indian food

Dr Ganesh Bagler

For example, you could replace spinach with fenugreek leaves in palak paneer and there would not be much change in the dish, but if you replaced turmeric with cinnamon, the very essence of the preparation alters. Spices are the molecular fulcrum of Indian food, says Bagler.

In 2015, Bagler and his team of researchers sent this study to international science journals, which uploaded it to an open server where it was picked up by MIT Tech Review. This changed Baglers life. I only understood the academic value of this work, not its futuristic value, he says. It took me a year to understand that this had led to the creation of a new field of study, and now, over the past five years, Ive been developing the foundations of this area.

From 2,543 of Dalals recipes to nearly 158,000 global recipes, Baglers database has expanded exponentially. Not only is the data free to access on various websites and apps, but the information is also provided in excruciating detail, from the scientific names of elements to a comprehensive flavour network, possible pairings and health benefits. Bagler is also due to launch RecipeDB at a conference postponed amid the Covid-19 crisis where a massive collection of structured recipes will be available for everyone from chefs and cooking enthusiasts, to restaurateurs, multinationals and scientific organisations to use freely.

People know food technology, but they do not know about flavour technology, says Deepika Nadiminti, a flavourist at Mane India, which develops flavours for the dairy, confectionery and drinks industries. Baglers database is an all-in-one resource, where we can identify everything from flavour molecules to physical and chemical properties, and experiment easily, she says.

While Bagler consults for institutions such as the Indian Institute of Hotel Management and Symbiosis School of Culinary Arts, as well as a range of multinationals, chefs also swear by his research, which has significantly reduced time spent on developing new dishes, says Akshay Malhotra, a chef, food consultant and former student of the Culinary Institute of America.

FlavorDB will help us to understand the science behind Indian food, and it is only the beginning of how artificial intelligence will influence the food industry, he says.

This aspect is also key to Baglers future experiments. Can we encode the intelligence of a chef into a computer, or can a computer fool a chef into thinking a recipe is real? says Malhotra.

Can human creativity, which is at the heart of cooking, be reproduced using AI? It remains to be seen. For now, Malhotras observations pertain to FlavorDB complementing chefs instincts about pairing ingredients.

As celebrity chefs Manjit Gill and Akshraj Jodha describe Bagler's work, he is successfully quantifying the knowledge that, until now, was only intuitively available to a cook and everyone from chefs and diners to scientists will benefit from it.

Updated: April 25, 2020 04:57 PM

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The Indian academic making the world look at flavours and food in a fresh way - The National

Its difficult for Robin Farias-Eisner, M.D., Ph.D., to condense decades of cancer research into a single conversation. But recent developments call for brevity.

Sitting in his office on the second floor of the Hixson-Lied Science Building, Farias-Eisner, the newest director of Creighton Universitys Hereditary Cancer Center, explains how he and a team of researchers have discovered a new drug with the potential to treat a broad array of illnesses, including ovarian cancer, colon cancer, macular degeneration, heart disease and more.

It would be hard to overstate it, Farias-Eisner says of the potential impact of the find.

The research is one example of how the Hereditary Cancer Center is fulfilling its mission to pursue comprehensive research on all types of cancer. Established in 1984, the center is particularly devoted to cancer prevention through identification of hereditary cancer syndromes.

The center was founded by legendary cancer researcher Henry Lynch, M.D., a Creighton professor and pioneer in the field of cancer genetics. Prior to Lynchs research, prevailing medical thought held that cancer was primarily caused by environmental factors.

Through what doctors today call shoe-leather epidemiology, Lynch tracked down and interviewed cancer patients about their family histories, tracing the inheritance patterns of certain cancers through multiple generations. Researchers now estimate between 5% and 10% of cancers are inherited, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Lynch died at age 94 in June 2019. In July, the University named Farias-Eisner the new head of the Hereditary Cancer Center.

Farias-Eisner came to Creighton from the University of California, Los Angeles. There, as a surgeon-scientist, he earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology and ran his own laboratory specializing in womens cancer research.

My ultimate objective was to take care of women who had cancer, particularly gynecological cancers, because I felt that was an underserved population, Farias-Eisner says.

Through his lab work, Farias-Eisner and co-inventor, UCLAs Srinivasa Reddy, Ph.D., and a team of researchers identified a group of proteins that serve as early identifiers of ovarian cancer. The research led to the development of OVA1, a blood test that is currently being used worldwide to diagnose the disease.

Building on this work, Farias-Eisner, Reddy and a team of researchers developed HM-10/10, an artificial peptide that has been shown to be effective in inhibiting tumor growth in ovarian and colorectal cancers in mice.

In January, a paper detailing the research, Bovine HDL and Dual Doman HDL-Mimetic Peptides Inhibit Tumor Development in Mice was published as the featured article in the Journal of Cancer Research and Therapeutic Oncology. In addition to Farias-Eisner, the paper includes Holly Stessman, Ph.D., assistant professorin the Department of Pharmacology in Creightons School of Medicine.

This is a story of taking discoveries from the research bench and serendipitously arriving at a novel drug for use at the patients bedside, Farias-Eisner says.

The drug, Farias-Eisner says, has the potential to treat other pro-inflammatory diseases, a category which includes macular degeneration, heart disease, Alzheimers disease and endometriosis, among other clinically devastating diseases.

Prior to publishing on its effectiveness as a cancer treatment, Farias-Eisner and the team published another paper in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences showing HM-10/10s potential to treat retinal disease (e.g. macular degeneration).

The reason we wanted to publish in these two areas is to demonstrate the uniqueness of the drug and its clinical applications, Farias-Eisner says. Now that we have these two published papers, we can move toward clinical trials.

Creighton University offers a top-ranked education in the Jesuit, Catholic tradition and a welcoming, supportive environment to a diverse community of educators, professionals and support staff.Read moreabout the university, and connect with Creighton onFacebook,TwitterandInstagram.

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Creighton's Hereditary Cancer Center makes groundbreaking discoveries in cancer research - Omaha World-Herald

SOMERSET When the Westborough based Integrated Genetics asked if any of its employees wanted to relocate to New Jersey for six weeks to do COVID-19 testing, Andrew Lanneville volunteered to go. He said it is a small contribution he can make to help during the coronavirus pandemic, but if he is needed, he is happy he can help.

"I wanted to do it," Lanneville said. "My family and friends and girlfriend have been very supportive of it. My employer has been gracious, always checking in on me, and the people down here are very grateful."

Integrated Genetics is a subsidiary of LabCorp Specialty Training Group. Lanneville, a 2008 graduate of Somerset High School, is a molecular biologist for Integrated Genetics. He is testing DNA samples from the sickest people in hospitals to determine whether they have COVID-19 or not. Lanneville said there are a lot of talented people from different places in the country who are working in the lab.

"People are here because they want to do their part, do what they can," Lanneville said in a telephone interview with The Spectator last Monday. "If they want to run molecular assays and DNA testing, I'm happy to do it and other people are happy to do it, as well."

Lanneville said 10,000 tests per day for COVID-19 were being done in the district in New Jersey where he was working. Last week, he said they were beginning a second method of testing that will take some of the burden off the instrumentation they are using so that they could double the amount of tests they were doing. He said the DNA samples don't just come from New Jersey, but also from New York and other places in the country.

In an article in The New York Times on April 13, the paper reported that the backlog for coronavirus testing in New Jersey was getting worse. At that time, the Times reported that New Jersey had conducted 115,000 tests, about one for every 75 residents. The newspaper article reported that the tests are a critical tool in measuring the disease's spread and a requirement for certain forms of treatment, yet they remain hard to get, and many people are actively discouraged from trying to get the tests. The article said that initially, the backlog was happening because there was not enough test kits, but said now there are not enough swabs and nurses. New Jersey has the second highest caseload of coronavirus cases in the country.

Another article in The New York Times on April 15 reported that, "The American Clinical Laboratory Association, a trade group representing large diagnostic companies like LabCorp and Quest, has recently reported a dip in the daily testing volumes of its members. On Monday, its members processed 43,000 tests, the lowest number since March 20. At one point in early April, members were processing more than 100,000 a day."

Lanneville said the people in the lab do not see the people who the samples come from. He said they don't even know their names. Each sample has a bar code to identify it to protect the identity of the person.

Lanneville said there are two types of testing done to determine if people have COVID-19. One is an antibodies test, which his company does not do. He said that test attempts to detect changes in immnune cells that are preparing to fight the virus. Lanneville said the problem with antibodies testing is that someone may be infected with the virus, but their body may not have changed to fight it yet, so it is possible to get false negatives. The other test, which his company uses, is a DNA test that directly detects the virus. It is called Polymerase Chain Reaction testing, which has been around since 1985. Lanneville said the test is based on a preliminary chain reaction that involves the COVID-19 being copied millions of times, if it is present in the sample from someone's body. He said the test takes a few hours to do.

"It's a little more involved," Lanneville said of the PCR test. "It's a little more technical. It takes a little more time."

Lanneville said sometimes the instrumentation being used to run the tests breaks down because it is being used so much to run samples.

Lanneville said the DNA test is more accurate than the antibodies test. He said reagants, that are like the on ramps and off ramps, are added to the DNA highway. The enzyme polymerase is the car that goes on and off the highway that replicates the viral DNA millions of times to confirm it's present. Lanneville said a process is gone through that can replicate viral DNA many times over if it is in the sample from the person's body. He said if there was COVID-19 in the person's body, there will be millions of copies of it. If the person did not have COVID-19, he said no copies are produced.

"It' very robust," Lanneville said of the PCR test. "It is very obvious who is positive for this virus and who is negative for it."

When Lanneville was interviewed by The Spectator over the phone last Monday, he had been at the lab in New Jersey for three weeks. He said when he first got to the lab, 30 to 32 percent of samples were testing positive for COVID-19, but those numbers rose to 35 to 36 percent. Lanneville said he does not think the increase is alarming because he says physicians are getting a better eye for who has symptoms of COVID-19, the flu or allergies.

Lanneville has worked in clinical laboratories for the last six years. He runs experiments that involve many people. Lanneville has a lot of experience running genetics based tests to see if there is a risk of passing on cystic fibrosis or other types of conditions to family members. He said his clients want more information about how that could affect the health of a child that is going to be born.

Lanneville said the COVID-10 DNA-based testing is a little different than what he usually does in terms of the setting and the patients, but he said the technology, equipment and theories behind the test are the same. He has been working 70 hours a week in the lab in New Jersey.

At Somerset High School, where he took Advanced Placement classes, Lanneville was involved in tennis, soccer, cross country and Model United Nations. After graduating from Somerset High School, Lanneville studied biology and economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. While he is working, he is attending Boston College part-time to study business.

Asked about the risk of being infected with COVID-19 during the testing, Lanneville said, "At this point we are wearing surgical masks and protective face shields, along with gloves and labcoats. In addition, all COVID-19 samples (potentially positive or negative) are manipulated in a fume hood which has a negative pressure to essentially 'pull' the air out of the hood and also has a protective glass shield. There are some times when the samples are briefly exposed to the open air, when loading onto laboratory equipment, and there is no solution other than to minimize that time as much as possible."

"We have heard that another company performing testing in the area now has three technologists with COVID. There is some speculation that it may be due to the fact that the lab in question was manipulating samples in an open air environment. With all of the PPE needed at our disposal, I feel confident that risk of transmission is quite low. Honestly, I may have a higher likelihood of getting it from someone in the public areas of this building, outside of the lab, or the doorways of the hotel I'm staying at."

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SHS grad involved in COVID-19 testing - SouthCoastToday.com

Edited by: JV Staff

Several days ago, the Mount Sinai Laboratory (MSL), Center for Clinical Laboratories received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an antibody test that was developed, validated, and launched at Mount Sinai by a team of internationally renowned researchers and clinicians of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. This test detects the presence or absence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and importantly, may also be used to identify positive specimens with an antibody titer (level) up to a dilution of 1:2880 for the identification of individuals with higher antibody titers.

This important regulatory authorization reflects the success of a truly translational medical effort by our basic scientists, pathologists, and clinicians who have risen to the occasion and combined their unparalleled expertise in a way that will help the community at large as we fight this terrible disease, said Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs of the Mount Sinai Health System.

A research team led by Florian Krammer, PhD, Professor of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, began working on the serologic test in January 2020, before COVID-19 had been seen in the United States. To make the test, the researchers used animal cells to produce copies of the telltale spike protein that is present on the surface of SARS-CoV-2. That protein is highly immunogenic, meaning that peoples immune cells see it and start making antibodies that can lock onto it. The test involves exposing a sample of blood to bits of the spike protein. If the test lights up, it means that person has the antibodies. Similar to the most commonly used tests for other viruses, such as hepatitis B, this test shows whether a persons immune system has come into contact with SARS-CoV-2.

Our test can pick up the bodys response to infection, in some cases as early as three days post-symptom onset, and is highly specific and sensitive, says Dr. Krammer. We have shared the toolkit needed to set up the test with more than 200 research laboratories worldwide to help mitigate this global crisis.

Once the research test had been developed in Dr. Krammers microbiology lab, Mount Sinais pathology and laboratory medicine experts were able to quickly transfer the technology to The Mount Sinai Hospitals Clinical Laboratories, which are certified by the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments and accredited by the College of American Pathologists, signifying that the laboratory meets or exceeds industry standards for clinical laboratory testing. In this regulated laboratory environment, under the guidance of Carlos Cordon-Cardo, MD, PhD, Irene Heinz Given and John LaPorte Given Professor and Chair of Pathology, Molecular and Cell-Based Medicine, the test was validated.

Our microbiology colleagues generated great science and tools that were brought from the research lab into the clinical space to implement robust and compliant diagnostic tests with great specificity and sensitivity so that we can better care for our patients, says Dr. Cordon-Cardo. We are grateful to the FDA for granting this expanded authorization so that we can deploy this vital test to the community at large.

Under the leadership of David L. Reich, MD, President of The Mount Sinai Hospital, and Judith A. Aberg, MD, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology in the Department of Medicine, The Mount Sinai Hospital became among the very first in the United States to initiate a convalescent plasma program on Saturday, March 28.

The exchange of ideas between clinicians and scientists and our intense drive to innovate is the catalyst that led to this achievement, says Dr. Reich. Mount Sinai will continue to advance the science and medicine in the fight against COVID-19.

Serologic testing for COVID-19 is a critical tool for helping us to understand the nature of the disease within our communities., says Erik Lium, PhD, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Innovation Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System. We continue to broadly partner this technology with industry, recognizing the need to scale serologic testing effectively.

Mount Sinais rich history and leadership in the fields of pathology, microbiology, and immunology helped to make this discovery and clinical application possible. From its beginnings in 1893, the Mount Sinai Department of Pathology, Molecular and Cell-Based Medicine has been a leader in the field. In addition to delivering more personalized pathology services to patients, Mount Sinai was the first major medical center to establish a fully integrated pathology department combining the various arms of testinganatomical, clinical, molecular/genetic, and cytologicalunder a single umbrella and now has the second largest department of its type in the nation.

The Department of Microbiology is led by internationally renowned microbiologist Peter Palese, PhD, who pioneered the field of reverse genetics for negative-strand RNA viruses, a revolutionary technique that is crucial for the study of the structure/function relationships of viral genes, for the investigation of viral pathogenicity, and for the development and manufacture of novel vaccines. It also has significant implications in understanding and preparing for infectious disease pandemics. Dr. Palese has recruited some of the top microbiologists in the world to study viruses and emerging pathogens. And the Division of Infectious Diseases is at the forefront of research, treatment, and prevention of infectious diseases with investigations focused on improving patient outcomes and rapidly translating research findings into patient care.

For inquiries related to commercial licensing of the test, please contact Cynthia Cleto from Mount Sinai Innovation Partners at: [emailprotected]

If you have recently recovered from COVID-19,see if you qualify for convalescent plasma transfusion.

To support COVID-19 research and response efforts, visit https://www.mountsinai.org/covid19research.

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Mt. Sinai Hospital's Blood Test to Detect Antibodies to COVID-19 Receives Emergency Use Authorization From FDA - The Jewish Voice

London: We may all be drinking more coffee to help us survive the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown, and now researchers have revealed that filtered brew is the safest and healthiest one.

The study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, examined links between coffee brewing methods and risks of heart attacks and death and found that coffee drinking was not a dangerous habit. In fact, drinking filtered coffee was safer than no coffee at all. The lowest mortality was among consumers of 1 to 4 cups of filtered coffee per day."Unfiltered coffee contains substances which increase blood cholesterol. Using a filter removes these and makes heart attacks and premature death less likely," said study author Professor Dag S Thelle from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

According to the researchers, experiments identified the culprit substances in coffee and found that they could be removed using a filter. A cup of unfiltered coffee contains about 30 times the concentration of the lipid-raising substances compared to filtered coffee.

Between 1985 and 2003, the study enrolled a representative sample of the Norwegian population: 508,747 healthy men and women aged 20 to 79. Participants completed a questionnaire on the amount and type of coffee consumed.

Data was also collected on variables that could influence both coffee consumption and heart diseases, so that these could be accounted for in the analysis. For example, smoking, education, physical activity, height, weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol.

Participants were followed for an average of 20 years. A total of 46,341 participants died. Of those, 12,621 deaths were due to cardiovascular disease. Of the cardiovascular deaths, 6,202 were caused by a heart attack.Compared to no coffee, the filtered brew was linked with a 15 per cent reduced risk of death from any cause during follow up.

For death from cardiovascular disease, the filtered brew was associated with a 12 per cent decreased risk of death in men and a 20 per cent lowered risk of death in women compared to no coffee. "The finding that those drinking the filtered beverage did a little better than those not drinking coffee at all could not be explained by any other variable such as age, gender, or lifestyle habits. So we think this observation is true," Thelle said.

The filtered brew was also less risky than the unfiltered beverage for death from any cause, death due to cardiovascular disease and deaths from heart attacks. "Our analysis shows that this was partly because of the cholesterol-increasing effect of unfiltered coffee," Thelle explained.

The researchers noted that unfiltered coffee did not raise the risk of death compared to abstaining from coffee - except in men aged 60 and above, where unfiltered brew was linked with elevated cardiovascular mortality.

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Drinking filtered brew coffee is the healthiest, says study - Free Press Journal

Middlefield Dr. Heng Wang, a board certified pediatrician and the Medical Director of the DDC Clinic located in Middlefield, OH, announced today that their Amish Genetic Disease Panel will now test for 160 rare conditions. This important tool allows faster diagnosis of unidentified genetic conditions at a reduced cost. DDC Clinic delivers personalized and life-changing medical care to special needs children affected by rare genetic disorders.

Were very excited to be able to now screen for an additional 40 conditions as part of this panel, said Dr. Wang. Early diagnosis leads to early treatments, and those effective treatments can be lifesaving.

Dr. Wang credited the hard work of his staff with bringing this project to fruition months ahead of schedule. This project was partially funded by the Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Foundation and the Fowler Family Foundation. Their support allows us to keep the cost of the new panel the same as the previous panel.

The improved Amish Genetic Disease Panel will be used in DDC Clinics collaboration with the Care Center in Middlefield. Parents of newborn infants at the birthing center can have a sample of their babys cord blood sent to DDC Clinic for analysis. Parents would then know if their child is affected by any of these 160 rare conditions. If a condition is identified, no additional testing would be needed and support services could be initiated early in the babys life. Thanks to our generous donors and the United Way of Geauga County, parents are asked to pay only $25.00 for this testing as part of their birthing fee.

The Amish Genetic Disease Panel has proven to be an important tool and is a great example of personalized medicine in action. It is a resource for doctors serving Amish and Mennonite patients in both Geauga County and neighboring communities.

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Amish Genetic Disease Panel created by DDC Clinic can now test for 160 rare conditions - The Weekly Villager

While researchers are working to advance drugs to treat COVID-19 and vaccines to give people immunity against the virus, the mental health impact of the pandemic will also have to be managed. This is where PGx testing may be most useful, experts in the field said.

"It is worthwhile to consider not just the utility of PGx in preventing hospitalization or changing the course of COVID-19 care," but also the impact it could have on managing "the burden on the patients that do survive a COVID-19 infection [and] those that are suffering from the isolation of social distancing, as well as the financial hardships," said David Thacker, a clinical pharmacogenetics content specialist at Translational Software.

According to a recent JAMA editorial, during the SARS outbreak in 2003, there was a greater incidence of post-traumatic stress syndrome and psychological distress among patients and doctors. In communities impacted by Hurricane Ike in 2008, around 5% of individuals met the criteria for major depressive disorder, while one in 10 adults in New York City had symptoms of the disorder after 9/11.

"In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it appears likely that there will be substantial increases in anxiety and depression, substance use, loneliness, and domestic violence; and with schools closed, there is a very real possibility of an epidemic of child abuse," wrote Sandro Galea from Boston University School of Public Health, Raina Merchant from the Perelman School of Medicine, and Nicole Lurie from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations in Norway.

A survey in March by the American Psychiatric Association found that more than a third of polled individuals said that the pandemic was seriously impacting their mental health, nearly half said they were scared about getting the virus, and 62% said they feared a loved one would get it. Meanwhile, calls to substance abuse and mental health help lines increased eightfold from February to March.

As the pandemic continues, people may increasingly turn to medications to deal with the psychological wounds left by the pandemic. Drugs to treat mental health conditions, including major depressive disorder, are some of the most widely prescribed drugs in the U.S., but they're also highly variable and associated with unwanted side effects.

As such, one of the main areas where PGx testing has seen uptake is for personalizing psychiatry drugs. Myriad Genetics recently published a meta-analysis involving more than 1,500 patients with major depressive disorder who were enrolled in four studies, which showed that patients who received treatment based on PGx information had significantly better outcomes than those who did not.

Although PGx testing in psychiatry is not without its naysayers, doctors may reach for such testing if the use of mental health drugs increases during or after the pandemic. Genomind, a mental health-focused PGx testing company, recently took a number of steps to make it easier for physicians to deliver psychiatric care during the pandemic. Doctors can order Genomind's PGx test and send a saliva collection kit to patient's homes, which can then be mailed to the lab for analysis. Through Genomind, doctors also have access to Sharecare's HIPAA-compliant telemedicine platform for free until September, which they can use to remotely see patients and discuss PGx test results, if ordered.

"The utility of PGx during the COVID-19 crisis is more important than ever," a spokesperson for the company said. "This service is helping enable critical mental health treatment during the pandemic and Genomind is doing its best to enable as many mental health professionals as possible."

This story first appeared in our sister publication, Genomeweb.

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Drug-gene testing could give experts insight into COVID-19 treatment - ModernHealthcare.com

For a few years now, scientists at Washington University have been working on techniques to turn stem cells into pancreatic beta cells as a way of addressing insulin shortages in diabetics. After some promising recent strides, the team is now reporting another exciting breakthrough, combining this technique with the CRISPR gene-editing tool to reverse the disease in mice.

The pancreas contains what are known as beta cells, which secrete insulin as a way of tempering spikes in blood-sugar levels. But in those with diabetes, these beta cells either die off or dont function as they should, which means sufferers have to rely on diet and or regular insulin injections to manage their blood-sugar levels instead.

One of the ways scientists are working to replenish these stocks of pancreatic beta cells is by making them out of human stem cells, which are versatile, blank slate-like cells that can mature into almost any type of cell in the human body. The Washington University team has operated at the vanguard of this technology with a number of key breakthroughs, most recently with a cell implantation technique that functionally cured mice with diabetes.

The researchers are continuing to press ahead in search of new and improved methods, and this led them to the CRISPR gene-editing system, which itself has shown real promise as a tool to treat diabetes. The hope was that CRISPR could be used to correct genetic defects leading to diabetes, combining with the stem cell therapy to produce even more effective results.

As a proof of concept, the scientists took skin cells from a patient with a rare genetic type of diabetes called Wolfram syndrome, which develops during childhood and typically involves multiple insulin injections each day. These skin cells were converted into induced pluripotent stem cells, which were in turn converted into insulin-secreting beta cells. But as an additional step, CRISPR was used to correct a genetic mutation that causes Wolfram syndrome.

These edited beta cells were then pitted against non-edited beta cells from the same batch in test tube experiments and in mice with a severe type of diabetes. The edited cells proved more efficient at secreting insulin and when implanted under the skin in mice, reportedly caused the diabetes to quickly disappear. The rodents that received the unedited beta cells remained diabetic.

This is the first time CRISPR has been used to fix a patients diabetes-causing genetic defect and successfully reverse diabetes, said co-senior investigator Jeffrey R. Millman. For this study, we used cells from a patient with Wolfram syndrome because, conceptually, we knew it would be easier to correct a defect caused by a single gene. But we see this as a stepping stone toward applying gene therapy to a broader population of patients with diabetes.

The researchers are now continuing to work on improving the beta cell production technique, which in the future could involve cells taken form the blood or even urine, rather than the skin. They believe that further down the track this therapy could prove useful in treating both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, by correcting mutations that arise from genetic and environmental factors, and possibly be used to treat other conditions, as well.

We basically were able to use these cells to cure the problem, making normal beta cells by correcting this mutation, said co-senior investigator Fumihiko Urano. Its a proof of concept demonstrating that correcting gene defects that cause or contribute to diabetes in this case, in the Wolfram syndrome gene we can make beta cells that more effectively control blood sugar. Its also possible that by correcting the genetic defects in these cells, we may correct other problems Wolfram syndrome patients experience, such as visual impairment and neurodegeneration.

The research was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Source: Washington University

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CRISPR combines with stem cell therapy to reverse diabetes in mice - New Atlas

TBTAK has invested TL 2.3 billion ($ 300 million) for the development of 16 vaccine and other medicine projects over the past five years in Turkey, the president of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TBTAK) said Saturday.

A platform consisting of 41 Turkish institutions has mobilized to develop medicines and vaccines against COVID-19 pandemic, professor Hasan Mandal noted, adding that efforts to develop anti-coronavirus drugs and vaccines were launched late December in coordination with the Ministry of Industry and Technology and proposals to be carried out within a 9 to 12 month period were taken into account and evaluated.

There are 16 projects working in synergy both in medicine and vaccine groups thanks to the COVID-19 Turkey Platform, which includes 225 researchers from 25 universities, eight public research bodies and eight private firms, Mandal added.

For medicine in pre-clinical phases, we'll be in the production phase this summer, probably much earlier. For vaccine, pre-clinical phase will be completed within a nine-month period, Mandal said. He added that it is now time for institutions cooperating with the science body to prove their valor.

The modeling of molecules in the medicine group began with the identification of over 10,026 molecules that could provide a solution for this virus, Mandal explained, adding synthesis works regarding this and its production are now underway.

In order to fight with a virus that you recently came across, you have to know it and define it correctly. All proceeding phases are tied to this. For that, it should be isolated from all external conditions and genetic characterization of the virus should be carried out. We will have genetic characterization of this virus determined next week. This situation shows the competence of this country. We now know this virus and this will be among the most important indicators how we will fight it both on the medicine side and vaccine side, Mandal said.

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Turkey's top scientific body invests TL 2.3 billion on 16 vaccine projects over 5 years | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

Researchers identify molecular markers that can help in developing better varieties of black pepper

Dubbed as the 'king of spices', black pepper has a lot to offerwhether as a flavouring agent or as a traditional medicine to relieve common cold, chest congestion or sore throat. A vital ingredient in many cuisines, it is the only spice that finds its way on nearly everything on the dining table. Piperine, a chemical in the black pepper, gives it a sharp taste. It is a native plant of the Western Ghats, and the crop is of immense agronomic value in today's world trade. However, insufficient genomic resources pose as main barriers in cultivating disease-resistant varieties of this master spice.

In a recent study, researchers from ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi, have identified a type of DNA sequence, called Simple Sequence Repeats (SSRs), which aims to ease and promote the genetic analysis of black pepper. The findings of the study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, could lead to enhanced productivity with better traits of the plant.

Simple Sequence Repeats, also called microsatellites, are repeating stretches of DNA that contain one to six nucleotide bases, and are randomly present throughout the genome. These can be passed from one generation to the next. Hence, they are used as a 'signpost' to keep track of a gene of interest. They play critical roles in genetic studies and plant breeding. The location of these SSRs in the genome remain the same in related species, thus enabling cost-effectiveness of similar studies on them.

Unlike other commercial crops like watermelon, cotton or finger millets, very few genetic studies have been done on black pepper, due to lack of resources. Although the Western Ghats harbours the maximum genetic diversity of black pepper, it remained "largely untouched from genomic interventions," say the researchers. The identification of cross-species SSRs will save time, effort and resources in the development of SSRs in these species, and aid future genetic and evolutionary studies.

The researchers first sequenced the entire genome isolated from the leaf samples of black pepper (Piper nigrum) and then scanned it for the presence of SSRs. The genome was then amplified with a method called Polymerase Chain Reaction, using short nucleic acid sequences called primers, designed to identify the right SSRs. The researchers compared the results of their analysis in thirty different types of black pepper. The researchers also explored ten species of Piper (including P. nigrum) for the presence of these SSRs by looking at an online database of the genetic sequence.

In all, 69,126 SSRs were identified in the study, with the majority of SSRs composed of two nucleotide repeatsthymine and adenosine (TA). Out of 85 primers, 74 produced the required results of appropriate-sized SSRs. Genetic diversity study of the thirty cultivars reported four distinct groups. A few SSRs were found in closely-related species, implying that they could be used in studying other species of black pepper with limited genomic knowledge.

The current study seeks to fill the void in genomic knowledge of black pepper species by identifying easy-to-detect molecular markers to enable its genetic and breeding studies. The SSRs, which indicate the location of a gene related to the desired trait, can help in choosing the right plants for breeding experiments, which is otherwise a difficult activity.

"The genomic microsatellite markers identified in black pepper in this study would form valuable and long-awaited resources for researchers and plant breeders", say the researchers.

The findings can also be used for diversity studies, linkage mapping, evolutionally biology, DNA fingerprinting and trait association shortly.

Originally posted here:
Paparazzi on the black pepper - Research Matters

As many people yearn to return to some form of normalcy, states are beginning to consider what the reopening of nonessential businesses should look like. In his daily press briefing Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) said a crucial first step for reopening is widespread COVID-19 testing which New York State currently lacks.

On that same day, Dr. Augustine M.K. Choi, Weill Cornell Dean, announced a new initiative to begin antibody testing employees of Weill Cornell.

Current testing efforts across the state are focused on detecting those with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but in order to begin reopening businesses people must be tested for previous exposure to the virus.

The current diagnostic used to test patients suspected of having COVID-19 at WCM is a real time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, an effective and relatively fast method to detect genetic material. It can be used to detect the RNA present in the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

PCR is the gold standard because its such a highly sensitive and specific test and can deliver reliable and accurate diagnosis in as fast as 2-5 hours. Compared to other available platforms its much faster and more accurate, said Dr. Melissa Cushing, pathology, in Chois update.

However, as institutions begin to test for people who were exposed to the virus and recovered, another method is required antibody testing. Instead of testing for the genetic material of the virus itself, antibody tests search for the antibodies that the body creates in response to COVID-19. These antibodies are formed between three and 15 days after experiencing symptoms, according to Cushing.

As of April 17, testing was made available for New York Presbyterian staff that tested positive for COVID-19 or had a COVID-19-like illness and returned to work.

WCM plans to make more testing available to its staff, as it works to increase its testing capabilities. Cushing predicted that this public testing is at least several weeks away. Experiencing the brunt of statewide shortages of certain materials, WCM also requires access to reagents and more high output platforms to increase its testing capabilities.

We need to really scale up with the amount of reagents we have with our current tests. Then we are really looking to some of the commercial labs to provide the large, high frequency platforms that we already use in our labs so that the process can be much more automated, Cushing said. That is our goal to be testing as many people that need to be tested in our city.

In order to address the testing insufficiencies on a statewide level, the governor issued an executive order on April 17 that directs all public and private labs capable of conducting virology testing to coordinate with the State Department of Health to prioritize coronavirus testing.

The testing and tracing is the guideposts through this. As we are working our way through the next several months the testing, which is informing us as to who can go back to work helping us isolate people, its about testing, Cuomo said in his daily briefing on April 17. Testing is a totally new challenge. Nobody has done this and what we need to do on testing.

According to Cuomo, the lack of infrastructure to facilitate widespread testing mirrors the earlier lack of coordination between hospitals, which the Surge and Flex initiative addressed the initiative coordinated the distribution of scarce medical supplies between public and private hospitals across the state.

Besides the lack of infrastructure, another impasse to wide scale testing is the availability of the materials specifically chemical reagents necessary to run the tests.

Currently, this order will not affect the labs on Cornells Ithaca campus.

Cornell University is not offering any human testing for COVID-19 on campus at this point. We will always follow all state/federal government regulations as appropriate, John Carberry, a University spokesperson, wrote in a statement to The Sun.

Cornell is affiliated with two of the 301 laboratories and hospitals capable of performing viral testing the Allyn B Ley Clinical Laboratory housed in Cornell Health and the Hospital for Special Surgery Dept of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in New York City.

Initially, 28 laboratories with clinical laboratory permits from the state health department and experience in molecular-based virology could conduct testing. However, this system is unable to meet the demand for the widespread testing needed to reopen New York State.

We dont have a testing system that can do this volume, or that can be ramped up to do this volume. We dont have a public health testing system, its de minimis if you look at what our government department of health have, Cuomo said.

The state has begun its efforts to perform antibody tests on 3,000 individuals to better understand what percentage of the population is currently immune to the virus. The plan is being supported financially by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who pledged more than $10 million to create a test and trace program.

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As Cuomo Issues New Executive Order, Weill Cornell Medicine Ramps Up COVID-19 Testing - Cornell University The Cornell Daily Sun

Many people dislike drug companies. Drug companies often charge a lot of money for their products. Sometimes their drugs dont work. Sometimes they have side effects. Sometimes they are addictive. Even the best drugs wont keep us alive forever.

But, during the coronavirus pandemic, we are relying on drug companies and other healthcare companies to save our lives and the lives of our loved ones.

While government plays a vital role in managing the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, its the private sector that will provide the solutions to identify and fight the disease. Who would you rather depend on profit-making private companies or bureaucratic government agencies?

The CDC response

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control, a federal agency, was initially tasked with providing tests for COVID-19. Its test kits could not detect the difference between COVID-19 and lab-grade water.

The CDC also limited testing to patients who had recently traveled to China and were symptomatic. Whoops!

The lack of reliable test kits enabled the disease to spread throughout the United States. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration determined on Feb. 29 that certified labs, including commercial lab testing companies, could develop and distribute COVID-19 test kits.

Private companies and clinics stepped up quickly. Some examples:

The Cleveland Clinic developed an eight-hour test kit.

Hackensack Meridian Health developed a rapid response test kit that can provide results within a few hours.

On March 23, Everlywell became the first company to offer a test kit that consumers can use at home.

Roche shipped 400,000 test kits to labs across the United States beginning March 13, and an additional 400,000 the following week.

Thermo Fisher Scientific developed a test kit that can detect COVID-19 within four hours.

Drug companies in the United States and throughout the world are also working to develop a vaccine to fight COVID-19.

Cambridge-based Moderna Inc. has already begun Phase 1 testing of its mRNA-1273 vaccine that is based on the genetic sequence of COVID-19. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals of Tarrytown, New York, is working on an antibody treatment that uses the virus to build up antibodies that fight COVID-19. Inovio Pharmaceuticals of Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania., is developing INO-4800, a vaccine similar to Modernas that is made from optimized DNA plasmids.

But thats just a sample. At least 16 U.S. pharmaceutical companies are working on vaccines for COVID-19.

The government has been doing its part. President Trump declared a national emergency and Congress has been negotiating a massive spending bill, while the Federal Reserve Board dropped interest rates back to zero, resumed bond buying and provided liquidity to the banking system. None of these actions reassured investors and stopped the stock market from tanking. Recall that during the financial crisis, the Obama Administration invested more than $800 billion in a stimulus that stimulated the federal debt, but not the economy.

Communism vs. capitalism

While the government and private sector have both been working hard to battle the coronavirus, the Chinese government has been working hard to preserve the Communist Party by blaming the United States for the pandemic.

When Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang warned his colleagues in late December about a possible coronavirus that resembled SARS, local police reprimanded him for spreading rumors and he was called before a disciplinary council of the local Communist Party and forced to repent and confess, in writing, that he had spread rumors harmful to the glory of the Party, according to City Journal.

In early January, news of the virus started circulating on Chinese social media accounts. The government responded by shutting them down. By silencing news about the outbreak of COVID-19, Communist leaders allowed it to spread, resulting in the pandemic and thousands of deaths that could have been avoided.

Xu Zhiyong, an activist who criticized Chinese President Xi Jinpings response to the coronavirus, was jailed for subversion. Journalists Li Xehua, Fang Bin and Chen Qiushi, who tried to inform the public about the coronavirus outbreak, are all missing. And Western journalists who brought these stories to the worlds attention have been expelled from China.

Wuhan activists, professors and lawyers who had asked for President Xis resignation have all virtually disappeared. In addition to stifling the news at home, Chinas leaders failed to inform other countries about the severity of the coronavirus or to prevent its spread outside of China.

Should China be paying reparations to the rest of the world? Should it at least admit its guilt and apologize? According to an editorial in state-run media agency Xinhua, We should say righteously that the U.S. owes China an apology, the world owes China a thank you.

In addition, while the United States has shipped medical supplies to China to help fight the outbreak, China is threatening to impose export controls on pharmaceuticals needed by the U.S. to fight COVID-19.

In an article in Xinhua, Beijing bragged about its handling of COVID-19, according to Fox News. The article also claimed that China could impose pharmaceutical export controls which would plunge America into the mighty sea of coronavirus.

Without disclosing which drug or drugs are in short supply, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a shortage of raw materials made in China that are needed to produce the drug.

While the United States is the world leader in medical research, China supplies 80% to 90% of antibiotics used in the United States, 70% of acetaminophen and about 40% of heparin, according to Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Government vs. private sector

In other countries where health care is socialized, such as Italy and the United Kingdom, government responses have been underwhelming and politically charged.

Some 4,032 have died in Italy, more than in China, with 627 Italian deaths reported Friday (March 20) the highest daily toll for any country so far, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Which brings us back to the United States, where many Americans believe we would be better off with a socialized healthcare system. After all, many other countries have socialized medicine.

Some believe we should have price controls on drugs. Others believe that drug companies should not make profits and should make life-saving drugs available at no cost.

That belief would lead to no more life-savings drugs being developed, because there would be no incentive for companies to do so. Even if companies wanted to be able to give away free drugs, doing so would quickly put them out of business. Jobs would be eliminated and their stock would become worthless.

The average cost to develop a new drug is $2.6 billion. Post-approval research and development costs, such as the cost of monitoring effectiveness and safety, average $312 million and boost the total cost for each approved drug to almost $3 billion.

Most drugs never make it to market. Only about 12% of drugs that enter clinical testing are eventually approved for public use.

Some drug companies have made a great deal of money. Some have taken advantage of the drug-approval process and charged outrageous prices for their products.

Weve all heard about companies like Theranos, which achieved a valuation of $9 billion based on fraudulent blood-testing technology, or Mylans price gouging for its EpiPen. Companies in any industry that take advantage of their customers usually pay in the end, but in such cases, government involvement is necessary.

Regardless, even with no vaccine yet available, special interest groups that pretend that their interest is our interest are calling for President Trump to prohibit profiteering by Big Pharma during the coronavirus pandemic.

If Big Pharma develops a vaccine that works, the company that does so should make a significant profit. Is there a sector more deserving of a profit than one that saves lives? While small businesses are suffering most during the pandemic, large companies have also had to deal with major losses, a huge drop in their stock price and mounting expenses in an attempt to staunch the bleeding.

In 1900, 37% of all American deaths were from infectious diseases, George Will wrote. Today the figure is 2%.

Id rather the drug companies get a cut of my hard-earned money than the more than 70 groups that are trying to stop them from earning a profit. To my knowledge, none of the 70 groups has criticized President Xi.

Brenda P. Wenning of Newton is president of Wenning Investments LLC in Newton. She can be reached at Brenda@WenningInvestments.com or 617-965-0680. For additional information, visit her blog at http://www.WenningAdvice.com.

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Drug companies are the good guys - MetroWest Daily News

CLAIM

"this coronavirus genome contained sequences of another virus [] the HIV virus (AIDS virus)"

DETAILS

Inaccurate: Genomic analyses indicate that the virus has a natural origin, and was not engineered. The so-called unique protein sequence insertions found in the 2019 novel coronavirus can be found in many other organisms, not just HIV.

KEY TAKE AWAY

Genomic analyses of the novel coronavirus show that it was not engineered. In addition, the claim that its genome contains inserted HIV sequences is based on a now-withdrawn preprint of a study that contained significant flaws in design and execution. The so-called HIV insertions identified by the authors are in fact gene sequences that can also be found in many other organisms besides HIV.

REVIEW Numerous articles published in April 2020 report that Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier claimed that SARS-CoV-2 is a manipulated virus that was accidentally released from a laboratory in Wuhan, China and that Indian researchers have already tried to publish the results of the analyses that showed that this coronavirus genome contained sequences of another virus [] the HIV virus (AIDS virus). The claim that SARS-CoV-2 contains HIV insertions began circulating in January 2020, and was propagated by outlets such as Zero Hedge and Infowars. Health Feedback covered this claim in early February 2020, and found it to be inaccurate.

Firstly, genomic analysis of the novel coronavirus, published in Nature Medicine, has demonstrated that the virus is not the product of bioengineering, but is rather of natural origin[1]. The current most likely theory, based on what scientists know about viral evolution, is that the virus first emerged in pangolins or bats (or both) and later developed the ability to infect humans. This ability to infect human cells is conferred by the so-called spike (S) protein, which is located on the surface of the enveloping membrane of SARS-CoV-2.

After the 2003-2005 SARS outbreak, researchers identified a set of key amino acids within the S protein which give SARS-CoV-1 a super-affinity for the ACE2 target receptor located on the surface of human cells[2,3]. Surprisingly, the S protein of the current SARS-CoV-2 does not contain this optimal set of amino acids[1], yet is nonetheless able to bind ACE2 with a greater affinity than SARS-CoV-1[4]. This finding suggests that SARS-CoV-2 evolved independently and undermines the claim that it was manmade[1]. Indeed, the best engineering strategy would have been to harness the known and efficient amino acid sequences already described in SARS-CoV-1 order to produce a more optimal molecular design for SARS-CoV-2. The authors of the Nature Medicine study[1] concluded that Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.

Secondly, the claim that SARS-CoV-2 contains HIV insertions is based on a preprint of a research study uploaded to bioRxiv on 2 February 2020. A preprint is a study in progress that has not been peer-reviewed by other scientists. The authors of the preprint, titled Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag, claimed to have found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. The authors further asserted that all of [these inserts] have identity/similarity to amino acids residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 [which] is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature.

The work was swiftly criticized by experts. In this Forbes article, Arinjay Banerjee, a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University who has studied coronaviruses, said that:

The authors compared very short regions of proteins in the novel coronavirus and concluded that the small segments of proteins were similar to segments in HIV proteins. Comparing very short segments can often generate false positives and it is difficult to make these conclusions using small protein segments.

Researchers also took to Twitter to demonstrate this problem first-hand. Trevor Bedford, a faculty member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who studies viral evolution, re-analyzed the gene and protein sequences used by the authors and found that the so-called unique inserts appeared in many other organisms, including Cryptosporidium and Plasmodium malariae, which cause cryptosporidiosis and malaria, respectively.

Assistant professor at Stanford University Silvana Konermann also checked the authors findings and came to the same conclusion, calling the similarity spurious.

This has also been independently confirmed in another published analysis[5]. In other words, these sequences are not insertions, but are rather common sequences found in numerous other organisms such as bacteria and parasites. Therefore, the existence of these sequences in SARS-CoV-2 does not provide evidence of a link to HIV, nor that scientists purposely inserted HIV sequences into the SARS-CoV-2 genome.

In summary, genomic analysis of the virus indicates that it does not contain so-called HIV insertions and that it was not engineered in a lab. Evidence points to the virus having a natural origin.

The only thing accurate about these articles is that Nobel Prize winner and virologist Luc Montagnier did in fact make these claims. Although he holds impressive scientific credentials, his claims run contrary to credible scientific evidence. And despite having won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2008 for his co-discovery of the link between HIV and AIDS, Montagnier now promotes widely discredited theories such as the pseudoscience of homeopathy and that autism is caused by bacteria that emit electromagnetic waves. Articles which repeat Montagniers claims without critically evaluating their veracity exhibit the common appeal to authority fallacy, in which something is assumed to be true simply because the person saying it is considered to be an expert, thereby misleading readers into believing that this theory is scientifically credible. This demonstrates the importance of verifying scientific claims with other experts in the same field, rather than simply taking such claims from a single expert at face value.

SCIENTISTS FEEDBACK [These comments come from an evaluation of a related claim.] Aaron T. Irving, Senior Research Fellow, Duke-NUS Medical School:Its easier to believe misinformation when it is mixed with truth. The region highlighted in the pre-print is indeed an insertion in nCoV-2019 relative to its bat ancestors and indeed it has high identity to the HIV gp120/gag. However, the authors chose to align only this small region and not do a basic check on whether there were other sequences which were also homologous (showing high degree of similarity/identity). As it turned out, the region is also homologous to many unrelated sequences. As such, the conclusions drawn from the data are no longer valid and there are many open-ended questions regarding this region highlighted. I see the authors themselves agree with this criticism by other scientists and have voluntarily withdrawn their preprint pending a much deeper investigation.

The author of this article by European Scientist also compared the genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2 and HIV using the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST), developed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and found no significant similarity, explaining that In plain English, SARS-CoV-2 is not made of the bat coronavirus and small bits of the HIV virus. Readers who wish to verify the level of sequence identity between the two viruses for themselves are welcome to follow the steps listed in the article.

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Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier inaccurately claims that the novel coronavirus is man-made and contains genetic material from HIV - Health Feedback

So when does the world get back to normal? It is a question that is on the mind of half of the worlds 7.8 billion people who have been asked to stay put at home to avoid a virus that has made millions sick. Not until a good vaccine is developed, Dr Anthony Fauci, Americas top infectious diseases expert, told reporters recently at a White House press briefing.

In normal times, experts say developing an effective vaccine would take anywhere between five and 10 years. But these are unprecedented times, and even scientists are being compelled to find newer ways to develop and test vaccines. Best-case scenarios for vaccine development have already shrunk the time frame to 12 to 18 months; globally, more than 100 vaccine candidates are at different stages of development. Five of these have reached the Phase 1 trials, and 18 are in pre-clinical stage, said Dr Shahid Jameel, virologist and CEO, Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance.

Closer home, Indian scientists, researchers and vaccine manufacturers are racing ahead, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his speech on April 14, asked Indias young scientists and researchers to come forward to work on a vaccine against Covid-19.

For those working on vaccines, what has helped, said Premas Biotech cofounder and managing director Prabuddha Kundu, is that regulatory pathways are being fast-tracked and regulators are now willing to consider new scientific processes, and collaborations are happening.

Bharat Biotech is collaborating with virologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and vaccine company FluGen on a unique intranasal vaccine called CoroFlu.

For a country that is a leading manufacturer and supplier of vaccines, India definitely has some advantages in building one. According to the department of biotechnology, the government body that is leading the hunt for the vaccine development, four major companiesSerum Institute of India, Zydus Cadila, Bharat Biotech, Biological E Ltdhave a candidate each, besides academic research groups from the Indian Institute of Science, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, National Institute of Immunology, and Translational Health Science and Technology Institute.

Vaccines are built by taking different approaches, said Jameel. They can either use inactivated viruses (for instance, the injectable polio vaccine); or live attenuated or weakened virus (the oral polio vaccine built in the 1950s) that is weakened to the point that it infects and multiplies, but does not cause disease; or subunit vaccines, where you take a part of the virus (protein), produce en masse and purify it and use it as a vaccine. The idea is to choose the antigens that best stimulate the immune system. One method of production involves isolating the specific protein from the virus or producing it using recombinant DNA technology and then administering it on its own. This reduces the likelihood of adverse reactions to the vaccine. The hepatitis-B vaccine is one example of that approach, said Jameel. Besides, vaccines being developed are also either based on DNA, RNA, or vector vaccine-based approaches.

The selection of an antigen and the antigenic design of the potential candidate will have a profound effect in generating an effective immune response. Since spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 is a potential target, one will need to decide whether full-length spike glycoprotein or part of the protein that binds with the receptor needs to be selected, said Professor Sunit K. Singh, head, molecular biology unit, faculty of medicine, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University.

For now, Premas Biotech seems to have worked around some of those issues. The Gurugram-based company, in collaboration with US-based Akers Biosciences, is working on its vaccine candidate using a mixture of three antigens produced in bakers yeast. Its cofounder and managing director, Prabuddha Kundu, said that traditionally vaccines were made by injecting heat-killed or attenuated whole viruses or bacteria, but since that had side effects, the approach of late has been to take a part of surface proteins, purify and produce it recombinantly (by rearranging genetic material) to elicit an antibody response.

In the case of SARS-CoV-2, one of the top targets is the spike protein present on the outer surface of the virus, and is understood to be the weapon with which it binds to the human cells (receptors) and gains entry. But since there were concerns about mutations in spike proteins, Kundu said that his team had created a mixture of the spike protein and two other proteins found on the outer membrane of the virus. These, said Kundu, would be replicated on its genetically engineered platform of bakers yeast (D-CryptTM). The platform has worked in the past, tooit has been successful in expressing 30 proteins similar to those in the structure of the selected Covid-19 antigens. It is also safer, and cost-effective, said Kundu, adding that the company has applied for animal trials with the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation.

In Hyderabad, Bharat Biotech is collaborating with virologists at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison and vaccine company FluGen on a unique intranasal vaccine called CoroFlu. The new vaccine is being built on the backbone of the trios flu vaccine candidate known as M2SR, developed a couple of years ago. M2SR is a self-limiting version of the influenza virus that induces an immune response against the flu, said Dr Krishna Ella, chairman and managing director, Bharat Biotech. [FluGen cofounder Yoshihiro] Kawaokas lab will insert gene sequences from SARS-CoV-2 into M2SR so that the new vaccine will also induce immunity against the novel coronavirus.

CoroFlus safety and efficacy in animal models is being assessed at the UW-Madisons influenza research institute, said Ella, which could take four to six months. Post the results of animal trials, which is crucial, Bharat Biotech will begin production scale-up for safety and efficacy testing in humans. CoroFlu could be in human clinical trials by the fall of 2020, he said.

Bharat Biotech is also working on a second candidate that will utilise the inactivated rabies vector platform, for which funding has been approved by the department of biotechnology. The department has also recommended funding support to Ahmedabad-based Zydus Cadila for advancing the development of a DNA vaccine candidate, as well as Phase 3 human clinical trials for recombinant BCG vaccine (VPM1002) planned in high-risk population by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII). SII is also testing its vaccine candidate (in collaboration with US-based biotech company Codagenix) on the animal models and hopes to have a vaccine by 2021, its CEO Adar Poonawalla has said.

Despite the urgency, there are challenges in making a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, said Kundu. The tools that are normally available to us otherwise are not available here, he said. For instance, they did not have specific antibodies to test antigens. Despite that we have been able to work through this by developing surrogate models, he said.

The amount of time that the immunity lasts in the body is also something that is still not known. In the case of SARS-CoV and MERS infections, the natural immunity does not last long, said Singh. Based on that knowledge, one has to also decide the doses of vaccination to be given in order to have immunity for a long time. The challenge to produce in huge quantities to cover the population under a mass vaccination programme will also need to be taken on. That will require a global coalition, and not just a few companies.

For those working on vaccines, what has helped, said Kundu, is that regulatory pathways are being fast-tracked and regulators are now willing to consider new scientific processes, and collaborations are happening. For instance, two global vaccine manufacturersSanofi and GSKhave come together to develop an adjuvant vaccine for Covid-19. Sanofi is providing the antigen that will be produced on its Baculovirus Expression Vector System platform, said its spokesperson. The recombinant technology produces an exact genetic match to proteins found on the surface of the virus, the spokesperson told THE WEEK. GSK will provide its novel adjuvant technologyAS03.

An adjuvant is a substance that is combined with a vaccine antigen to help stimulate a stronger and more targeted immune response. This can help provide better protection or in some instances, like a pandemic, could reduce the amount of antigen required per dose, allowing more vaccine doses to be produced and supplied, said the spokesperson. This is a critical advantage in a pandemic setting. The AS03 adjuvant will help improve the immune response to the antigen and may also be antigen sparing. Due to the critical need for a vaccine to address Covid-19, Sanofi will be testing its own adjuvant as well.

According to Jameel, the challenge in building a vaccine against Covid-19 may not be any different from making a vaccine for other diseases. The power of technology available today is evident from the fact that since the pandemic began in January, we already have more than 100 candidates, he said. For India, the opportunity will be in manufacturing the vaccines that are developed eventually and making them affordable for all.

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Team spirit - THE WEEK

In test with mice, the sterosome activated bone regeneration was activated without needing additional drugs

Microscopic image showing the interaction between nanoparticles (green) loaded with therapeutic drugs (red), and cells (blue) on a tissue engineering scaffold.

A team of biomaterials scientists and dentists at the UCLA School of Dentistry has developed a nanoparticle that, based on initial experiments in animals, could improve treatment for bone defects.

A paper describing the advance is published today in the journal Science Advances.

Bone defects, which can be caused by traumatic injury, infection, osteoporosis or the removal of tumors, are difficult for orthopedic surgeons to treat. And the need for bone grafts are becoming more common thanks in part to our aging population: Bone injuries are particularly prevalent among the elderly.

Today, the standard treatment for bone defects is a bone graft, which involves transplanting healthy bone from another part of the body to repair the damaged area. However, the procedure can cause complications, including infections where the transplanted bone is taken from, bleeding and nerve damage.

So the researchers turned their attention to liposomes, tiny spherical sacs that are derived from naturally existing lipids. Liposomes have been used since the 1990s to treat cancer and infectious diseases, and more recently they are being explored for their possible use in bone tissue engineering. They can be used to administer nutrients and pharmaceutical drugs in the body and can easily enter cells to administer their valuable cargo, but they do have some drawbacks: They are physically unstable and it can be difficult to control how and when they release drugs.

To help improve their stability and enhance their ability to form bone in the body, the UCLA researchers developed a new type of liposome called a sterosome. (The name is inspired by the fact that they contain a high concentration of steroids.)

To produce the sterosomes, the scientists replaced cholesterol, an important component of liposomes, with oxysterol, a type of cholesterol that has a key role in skeletal development and bone healing. In tests using mice with bone defects, the researchers found that the sterosomes successfully activated bone regeneration on their own, without needing therapeutic drugs.

Liposomes are generally made from pharmacologically inactive substances, said Min Lee, the papers corresponding author and a professor of biomaterials science at the dental school. Including oxysterol into our liposomal formulation not only increased nanoparticle stability but also stimulated cells to develop into bone-forming cells.

In a second phase of the study, the researchers wanted to see how they could make the sterosome even more effective.

They added their sterosome nanoparticle to a tissue engineering scaffold a structure often used to move and grow naturally occurring stem cells, which is matched to the site of the defect and is used during bone graft procedures. They loaded the sterosomes with a bone-building drug called purmorphamine. Next, they immobilized the drug-loaded sterosome onto a scaffold to ensure that the sterosomes stayed concentrated in the defective areas and released the drugs where they were most needed for as long as possible.

In a six-week study using mice with bone defects in their skulls, the researchers saw an average reduction of roughly 50% in the size of the defects after the drug-loaded scaffold was implanted.

By using our nanoparticle, which we found has intrinsic bone-forming capabilities, along with the addition of therapeutic drugs, we were able to speed up the bone regeneration process, Lee said. Our nanoparticle-packaged drugs will be useful in many clinical situations where bone grafting is required to treat non-healing skeletal defects and related bone pathologies.

Dr. Paul H. Krebsbach, professor of periodontics and dean of the dental school, said,The research led by Min Lee and his team demonstrates that UCLA Dentistrys research endeavors go well beyond treating the diseases of the oral cavity, and their findings have wider implications for treating bone defects throughout the entire body.

The studys other authors are Chung-Sung Lee, Soyon Kim, Jiabing Fan, Hee Sook Hwang and Dr. Tara Aghaloo, all of UCLA.

The study was funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, the U.S. Department of Defense and Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation Biologics. The authors report no conflicts of interest.

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UCLA scientists invent nanoparticle that could improve treatment for bone defects - UCLA Newsroom