The effort to create a treatment for glioblastoma has so far been unsuccessful, but a new study points to a potential step forward — the common vitamin, niacin.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,457
Alista IPN fármaco para hacer frente a Covid-19
Transferón ha demostrado su eficacia como regulador del sistema inmune en otros padecimientos, entre ellos enfermedades respiratorias; esperan autorización.
D-Wave Opens Quantum-Computing Resources to Coronavirus Research
Quantum-computing vendor D-Wave Systems Inc. said Tuesday it is giving researchers and companies studying the novel coronavirus free access to its early-stage, experimental machines over the cloud.
Canadian firm D-Wave is among several technology companies providing free advanced computing resources to researchers working to combat the global pandemic. International Business Machines Corp., for example, in March started offering free remote access to two of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
D-Wave has assembled a team of experts from about a dozen universities and companies including Volkswagen AG, Denso Corp. and startup Menten AI who are familiar with its quantum-computing services to help interested researchers program the computers.
‘Liquid biopsy’ blood test accurately predicts cancer
A new blood test that can detect methylation of DNA can accurately predict whether a person has any one of 50 cancers and where the tumour is growing.
The California-based healthcare company Grail, which developed the test, owns a large database of methylation patterns in cancerous and non-cancerous cell-free DNA. From that repository, a machine learning program was developed to analyse blood samples. The algorithm identified methylation changes that are classified as cancerous or non-cancerous, and it could even pinpoint the tissue of origin before the onset of symptoms.
Validation of the test was carried out by researchers from the US at the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and Harvard medical school, working with colleagues at the Francis Crick Institute and University College London in the UK. In all, more than 15,000 volunteers from over 140 clinics in North America took part, and their samples revealed that this ‘liquid biopsy’ had a 0.7% false positive rate for cancer detection. The test was also able to predict the tissue that the cancer originated in with more than 90% accuracy. It performed best on 12 of the most common cancers, including ones that are most lethal and have no established screening paradigms such as pancreatic and ovarian cancers.
Iranian Doctors Urge Neighbours to Liquidate Any US Biological Labs Amid Coronavirus Fears
With over 17,300 cases and 1,135 deaths to date, Iran has been one of the countries hit hardest by COVID-19, with the virus affecting not only the population at large, but a big portion of the political elite as well. Last week, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said there was evidence that the pandemic may have been a “biological attack.”
A group of 101 Iranian doctors has penned a letter addressed to the leaders of Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan to take ‘immediate action’ to destroy “all of the US biological laboratories” in their countries amid fears that the coronavirus pandemic may have been spread deliberately as a form of biological warfare, Press TV has reported, citing the letter.
