Lipid nanoparticles, or LNPs, best known as the delivery vehicle for the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines received by billions of people, are now at the center of a much larger medical revolution. Researchers are racing to use them to ferry therapeutic mRNA into cells for cancer therapies and treatments for inflammatory diseases, as well as delivering … Read more
For years, treating gum disease has meant scraping away plaque, cutting out damaged tissue or turning to antibiotics that kill bacteria indiscriminately. While newer therapies can regenerate lost tissue, doctors still lack a precise way to stop the infection without harming the mouth’s healthy microbiome. New research from the University of Florida College of Dentistry offers … Read more
Gene editing is a numbers game. For any genetic tweaks to have notable impact, a sufficient number of targeted cells need to have the disease-causing gene deleted or replaced. Despite a growing gene-editing arsenal, the tools share a common shortcoming: They only work once in whatever cells they reach. Viruses, in contrast, readily self-replicate by … Read more
Researchers have developed a highly sensitive light-based sensor that can detect extremely low concentrations of cancer biomarkers in the blood. The new technology could one day make it possible to spot early signs of cancer and other conditions using a simple blood test. Biomarkers such as proteins, DNA or other molecules can be used to … Read more
Antibiotic resistance (AR) has steadily accelerated in recent years to become a global health crisis. As deadly bacteria evolve new ways to elude drug treatments for a variety of illnesses, a growing number of “superbugs” have emerged, ramping up estimates of more than 10 million worldwide deaths per year by 2050. Scientists are looking to … Read more
Original story from University of California San Diego (CA, USA). University of California San Diego researchers, led by Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics Professor Neal Devaraj’s lab, have unveiled a new method that greatly increases the efficacy of gene delivery into the nucleus, reducing required doses and minimizing harmful side effects to the cell. … Read more
The rapid evolutionary dynamics of RNA viruses, driven by high mutation rates and the consequent formation of complex quasispecies populations, present a formidable obstacle to conventional molecular diagnostic approaches. Widely used methods such as reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction are highly susceptible to performance degradation when primer or probe binding sites accumulate nucleotide mismatches. … Read more
Microbiologist John van der Oost of Wageningen University & Research (WUR) has received an ERC Proof of Concept grant to further develop a promising CRISPR-based approach to cancer treatment. With funding of €150,000, he and researcher Christian Südfeld will spend the next eighteen months working on a method to kill cancer cells from within, while … Read more
Gene-editing tools like CRISPR have unlocked new treatments for previously uncurable diseases. Now, researchers at the University of British Columbia are extending those possibilities to the skin for the first time. The UBC team, together with researchers from the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité in Germany, has developed the first gene therapy capable of … Read more
KJ with his parents and siblings after first-of-its-kind personalized gene editing therapy –Credit: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia In a historic medical breakthrough, a child diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder has been successfully treated with a customized CRISPR gene editing therapy by a team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn Medicine. The infant, KJ, … Read more