Biologically Inspired Engineering, synbio, synthetic biology, crispr
Staff 
The approval in 2018 of a new drug to treat polyneuropathy caused by a rare and frequently fatal disease called hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis (hATTR) marks the arrival of a new class of therapeutics. The new drug, called patisiran (Onpattro), is a small interfering RNA (siRNA) that is part of a class of therapeutics that can … Read more
In many cases, health insurance plans will cover the costs of genetic testing when it is recommended by a doctor. Health insurance providers have different policies about which tests are covered, however. Some people may choose not to use their insurance to pay for testing because the results of a genetic test can affect a … Read more
On August 7, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first liquid biopsy companion diagnostic that also uses next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology to identify patients with specific types of mutations of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene in a deadly form of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This is the … Read more
Codiak Biosciences is developing exosome-based therapeutics to treat diseases. Exosomes are naturally-occurring extracellular vesicles that carry proteins, genetic material, and other substances in and out of cells. Exosomes are like tiny bubbles that were originally believed to be a cellular waste product. Instead, exosomes can also be engineered for selective targeting of particular cells (ie. … Read more
Can scientists synthesize an organism’s entire genome? The answer to this question is yes, and it has already been done. Some history. In 2002, scientists synthesized a viral genome for the first time. Viral genomes are much smaller compared to the genomes of most bacteria and microorganisms. Scientists showed that it was possible to create the polio … Read more
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 to: Emmanuelle CharpentierMax Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germany Jennifer A. DoudnaUniversity of California, Berkeley, USA Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna have discovered one of gene technology’s sharpest tools: the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors. Using these, … Read more
Eugene Koonin’s dabbling with Streptococcus thermophilus eventually led him to discover CRISPR before CRISPR was a thing. An evolutionary biologist and senior investigator in the National Library of Medicine’s National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), Koonin hypothesized in 2005 that “spacer DNA” in the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) loci of bacteria and … Read more
Taimei Technology of Shanghai completed a $176 million financing to support its AI cloud-based suite of programs for clinical trials and drug safety. The company’s SAAS platform enables clinical research collaboration between sponsors, sites, CROs, patients, regulatory agencies and third-party providers. Its latest funding was co-led by Tencent Holdings, GL Ventures (a Hillhouse subsidiary), and YF Capital, … Read more
The nation’s first CRISPR-based cancer therapy was launched in 2019 at the University of Pennsylvania. The study, funded in part by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), is testing a type of immunotherapy by using a patients’ own immune cells that have been genetically modified to better “see” and kill their cancer. In the laboratory, … Read more
In 2015, Yaniv Erlich outlined a concept of an “Internet of Living Things” made possible by a future of ubiquitous genomics. Erlich noted that, “multiple appliances could benefit from integration with sequencing sensors, including air conditioning or the main water supply to monitor harmful pathogens. However, of all possible options, toilets may offer the best … Read more