Gene-editing technique CRISPR may deliver new treatments for genetic diseases—and it’s already being tested on patients.
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In one of the first clinical applications of the technique, last month researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that CRISPR had stopped a genetic disease called amyloidosis, which occurs when an abnormal protein accumulates in your organs. They’re not the only group moving toward using CRISPR on humans; recently, the FDA approved a human clinical trial that will use the technique to edit genes responsible for sickle cell disease.
The same process that eliminates replication errors also eliminates antiviral agents delivered by the treatments commonly used to fight other RNA viruses, such as HIV, HCV and Ebola virus, which partially explains why SARS-CoV-2 has proven so difficult to treat, Yang said.
The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has demonstrated a stubborn ability to resist most nucleoside antiviral treatments, but a new study led by an Iowa State University scientist could help to overcome the virus’s defenses.
The study, published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Science, details the structure of a critical enzyme present in SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. This enzyme, known as the proofreading exoribonuclease (or ExoN), removes nucleoside antiviral medications from the virus’s RNA, rendering most nucleoside analogs-based antiviral treatments ineffective. The new study presents the atomic structures of the ExoN enzyme, which could lead to the development of new methods for deactivating the enzyme and opening the door to better treatments for patients suffering from COVID-19.
“If we could find a way to inhibit this enzyme, maybe we can achieve better results to kill the virus with existing nucleoside antiviral treatments. Understanding this structure and the molecular details of how ExoN works can help guide further development of antivirals,” said Yang Yang, lead author of the study and assistant professor in the Roy J. Carver Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology at Iowa State University.
A group of medications long prescribed to treat tapeworm has inspired a compound that shows two-pronged effectiveness against COVID-19 in laboratory studies, according to a new publication appearing online in the journal ACS Infectious Disease.
The compound, part of a class of molecules called salicylanilides, was designed in the laboratory of Professor Kim Janda, Ph.D., the Ely R. Callaway, Jr. Professor of Chemistry and director of the Worm Institute for Research and Medicine at Scripps Research, in La Jolla, CA. “It has been known for 10 or 15 years that salicylanilides work against certain viruses,” Janda says. “However, they tend to be gut-restricted and can have toxicity issues.” Janda’s compound overcomes both issues, in mouse and cell-based tests, acting as both an antiviral and an anti-inflammatory drug-like compound, with properties that auger well for its use in pill form.
Three pioneering technologies have forever altered how researchers do their work and promise to revolutionize medicine, from correcting genetic disorders to treating degenerative brain diseases.
International Health Management, Across 17 Countries, 60 Clinics, and 350 Staff — Dr. James Allen, Health Systems Thinkers, LLC.
Dr. James Allen is a primary care internal medicine specialist who developed a fascinating career in international health management and leadership.
Dr. Allen served in the U.S. public health service before moving to Indonesian Borneo in 1994. For the next 22 years he worked in community and occupational health across Asia, managing health teams in 14 countries. As Chevron’s Asia Pacific medical director, he led projects for TB control in Myanmar, primary care in the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh; and emergency medicine in Azerbaijan and rural China.
After moving to California headquarters in late 2015, Dr. Allen created a global strategy on corporate responsibility for health, establishing a data-based approach in alignment with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation of Seattle. As Chevron’s senior consulting health scientist, he advised social investment teams in Australasia, Central Europe, Latin America, North America, and West Africa. Dr. Allen completed his career at Chevron in 2021 by leading the implementation of Covid-19 management practices for a consortium of oil and gas companies in Angola.
In 2012, Dr. Allen became an adjunct faculty member for the Levinson Institute’s Strategic Leadership for Healthcare Executives, previously affiliated with Harvard Medical School, and now with Pariveda Solutions and Rice University. His education includes a BA from Antioch College, MS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and his medical degree from Kirksville, MO. He is certified in internal medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine, and has completed graduate studies in public health, occupational medicine, tropical medicine, toxicology, and healthcare finance and systems management from various institutions – Cornell, the Medical College of Wisconsin, NY Medical College and Singapore Management Institute.
A couple people from TRIM are in TRIM-X to see how it works a second time.
In this video Dr. Fahy discusses what we can do to make the most of our thymus without the growth hormone treatment, what the timing makes sense for rejuvenation of the thymus and whether the thymus is tied to the other hallmarks of aging.
Dr. Greg Fahy is a world renowned cryobiologist and is also the chief science officer, and co-founder, of Intervene Immune, a company which pioneers treatments for thymus regeneration and age-related immune system decline. Dr. Fahy Designed and led the pilot TRIIM trial which first time showing both thymus rejuvenation and reversal of human epigenetic age. He is now running the follow up phase II trial TRIIM-X with the aim of confirming and extending the results.
************************************************************ Health claims Disclosure: Information provided on this video is not a substitute for direct, individual medical treatment or advice. Please consult with your doctor first. Products or services mentioned in this video are not a recommendation.
Stanford is looking to democratize research on artificial intelligence and medicine by releasing the world’s largest free repository of AI-ready annotated medical imaging datasets. This will allow people from all over the world to access specific data that they need for their respective projects, which could lead to potentially life-saving breakthroughs in these fields.
The use of artificial intelligence in medicine is becoming increasingly pervasive. From analyzing tumors to detecting a person’s pumping heart, AI looks like it will have an important role for the near future.
The AI-powered devices, which can rival the accuracy of human doctors in diagnosing diseases and illnesses, have been making strides as well. These systems not only spot a likely tumor or bone fracture but also predict the course of an illness with some reliability for recommendations on what to do next. However, these systems require expensive datasets that are created by humans who annotate images meticulously before handing them over to compute power, so they’re rather costly either way you look at it given their price tags–millions even if your data is purchased from others or millions more if one has created their own dataset painstakingly through careful annotation of images such as CT scans and x-rays along with MRI’s etcetera depending upon how advanced each system needs be.
Driver Clocks And Longevity — Dissecting True Functional “Drivers” Of Aging Phenotypes — Dr. Daniel Ives Ph.D., Founder and CEO — Shift Bioscience Ltd.
Dr. Daniel Ives, Ph.D. is Founder and CEO of Shift Bioscience Ltd. (https://shiftbioscience.com), a biotech company making drugs for cellular rejuvenation in humans through the application of machine-learning ‘driver’ clocks to cellular reprogramming, and is the scientific founder who first discovered the gene shifting targets upon which the Shift drug discovery platform is based.
Dr. Ives graduated from Imperial College with a degree in biochemistry and gained his PhD in 2013 working at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit in Cambridge. He carried out his post-doctoral studies under Ian Holt at the National Institute of Medical Research in Mill Hill, now part of the Crick Institute, pursuing damage-removal strategies for mitochondrial DNA mutations.
In 2016 Dr. Ives left the Crick Institute and founded Shift Bioscience to commercialize mitochondrial targeted drugs for age linked diseases, incorporating novel ageing biomarkers technologies, CRISPR screens, and other tools to dissect true functional ‘drivers’ of ageing phenotypes.
A licensed drug normally used to treat abnormal levels of fatty substances in the blood could reduce infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus by up to 70 percent, reveals a study in the laboratory by an international collaboration of researchers.
The research team, led by the University of Birmingham and Keele University in the UK and the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Italy, has demonstrated that fenofibrate and its active form (fenofibric acid) can significantly reduce SARS-COV-2 infection in human cells in the laboratory. Importantly, reduction of infection was obtained using concentrations of the drug which are safe and achievable using the standard clinical dose of fenofibrate. Fenofibrate, which is approved for use by most countries in the world including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), is an oral drug currently used to treat conditions such as high levels of cholesterol and lipids (fatty substances) in the blood.
The team is now calling for clinical trials to test the drug in hospitalized COVID-19 patients, to be carried out in addition to two clinical trials also currently underway in such patients in research being led by the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in the US and Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
