Biologically Inspired Engineering, synbio, synthetic biology, crispr
Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that helps your immune system fight cancer. The immune system helps your body fight infections and other diseases. It is made up of white blood cells and organs and tissues of the lymph system. Cancer immunotherapy is sometimes referred to as immuno-oncology. Immunotherapy is a type of biological therapy. … Read more
Researchers in gynecologic oncology have begun testing a promising surgery for premenopausal women at high genetic risk for ovarian cancer that avoids early menopause and may prevent these malignancies from developing. Studies have shown that most ovarian cancers actually begin to grow from cancer cells that developed in the fallopian tubes. This trial is testing … Read more
Barbara Engelhardt, PhD, builds machine-learning models and statistical tools to make use of data (scientific experiments, longitudinal studies, clinical trials, and hospital records) and find ways to better understand, and even prevent, disease. She is now joining Gladstone Institutes as a senior investigator. Engelhardt is also a full professor at Princeton University, on leave this … Read more
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is providing approximately $185 million over five years to the Impact of Genomic Variation on Function (IGVF) consortium, initiated and funded by NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). NHGRI will fund 25 awards across 30 U.S. research sites. IGVF consortium investigators will work to understand how genomic variation … Read more
Synthetic.com’s publisher and editor, Simons Chase, interviews Matthew McKnight. Matt is the Chief Commercial Officer of Ginkgo Bioworks where he also leads the company’s biosecurity platform, Concentric by Ginkgo. Prior to Ginkgo, Matt spent 7 years as an investor at IndUS Growth Partners and was the President and COO of Decision Resources Group. He has … Read more
BGI Group, a Chinese gene company, is collecting genetic data through prenatal tests from women in more than 50 countries for research on the traits of populations, raising concern that such a large DNA database could give China a technological advantage and the strategic edge to dominate global pharmaceuticals, according to a recent news report. … Read more
Genome Medical, a genomic care delivery company, today announced that it will acquire GeneMatters, a telehealth genetic counseling and software solutions company. The company also announced the closing of a $60 million Series C financing to accelerate commercial traction and advance its mission to advance genomic medicine. “The addition of GeneMatters, along with our … Read more
What is life? For much of the 20th century, this question did not particularly concern biologists. Life is a term for poets, not scientists, argued the synthetic biologist Andrew Ellington in 2008, who began his career studying how life began. Despite Ellington’s reservations, the related fields of origins-of-life research and astrobiology have renewed focus on … Read more
The word “army” typically conjures up images of ground warfare. As the military’s DARPA program proves, some key innovations we enjoy today have emerged from military efforts. Here is an example of the U.S. Army aiming to deliver a way to use gene editing to convert waste materials into something useful. As part of an … Read more
Proteins are the workhorses of the cell. Mapping the precise shapes of the most important of these workhorses helps to unlock their life-supporting functions or, in the case of disease, potential for dysfunction. While the amino acid sequence of a protein provides the basis for its 3D structure, deducing the atom-by-atom map from principles of … Read more