NEWS

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

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

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarding Genomic Innovator Awards to nine institutions to support the research of 12 early career scientists in the field of genomics. The awards total up to $27 million over five years, subject to the availability of funds. The Genomic Innovator … Read more

An international commission of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.K.’s Royal Society has published a report suggesting human embryos whose genomes have been edited should not be used to create a pregnancy until it is established that precise genomic changes can be made reliably without introducing undesired … Read more

The Department of Defense’s (DOD) Defense Innovation Unit is bringing together the best of commercially available artificial intelligence (AI) technology and the DOD’s vast cache of archived medical data to teach computers how to identify cancers and other medical irregularities. The result will be new tools medical professionals can use to more accurately and more … Read more

Genome editing, also called gene editing, is a cluster of technologies allowing scientists the ability to change an organism’s DNA. The technologies around gene editing allow genetic material to be added, removed, or altered at particular locations in the genome. Several approaches to genome editing have been developed. A recent one is known as CRISPR-Cas9, … Read more

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has a keen interest in developments in the field of synthetic biology. Defense Applications & Opportunities The DoD started focusing on synthetic biology in 2013. Since then, its capabilities have grown substantially. The following represents the foundational plans DoD developed in 2013 when the field was just emerging, as … Read more

Gene therapy is the administration of genetic material to modify or manipulate the expression of a gene product or to alter the biological properties of living cells for therapeutic use. Gene therapies offer the potential to treat diseases or conditions for which no or few treatments exist. They are being studied to treat cancer as … Read more

Intrexon offered its common equity shares to the public in 2013 making it the first pure synthetic biology company to IPO. I wrote about the company in 2014. In its IPO disclosures, Intrexon said, “We believe we are the first company focused exclusively on applying synthetic biology across a broad spectrum of end markets and … Read more