The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today allowed marketing of 23andMe Personal Genome Service Genetic Health Risk (GHR) tests for 10 diseases or conditions. These are the first direct-to-consumer (DTC) tests authorized by the FDA that provide information on an individual’s genetic predisposition to certain medical diseases or conditions, which may help to make decisions...
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Engineered E. coli could color-code your poop to diagnose gut problems
Engineered E. coli has been shown to help diagnose gut problems in mice by expressing fluorescent proteins into their feces Humans have an uneasy relationship with bacteria – sure, they can make us very sick, but we also couldn’t live without the complex society residing in our guts. Now, researchers at Rice University have engineered E. coli to help...
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Scientists develop new antibody for bowel disease
Sadikshya Bhandari, a Ph.D. student in molecular and cell biology, ‘passing cells,’ or feeding them, to keep them from overgrowing. UConn molecular and cell biologist Michael Lynes and an international team of researchers have been awarded a patent for a novel antibody therapeutic that may prove to be safer in the treatment of Inflammatory...
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Your Brain Cells Could Be Reprogrammed to Fight Parkinson’s Disease
IN BRIEF Researchers have reprogrammed existing brain cells in mice into dopamine neurons to reduce their symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. This novel approach could be used to treat Parkinson’s disease with stem cells which are not transplanted, but induced from patients’ own brain cells. SUPPORT CELLS TURNED SUPER CELLS Parkinson’s disease is one of the...
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Huntington’s Disease: Researcher Discover A Way To Stop Progression Of The Fatal Disease
Huntington’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder, which mostly affects middle-aged people. It is a genetic disorder and affects muscle co-ordination, which eventually progresses into dementia. Scientists have been unable to find a cure for the fatal brain disease. However, a new study may be the light at the end of the tunnel and may have...
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Researchers identify link between birth defect and neurodegenerative diseases
A new study has found a link between neurological birth defects in infants commonly found in pregnant women with diabetes and several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases. This is the first time this link has been identified; it may indicate a new way to understand, and perhaps treat, both neural tube...
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Detecting Alzheimer’s disease earlier using … Greebles?
Which Greeble is different? Unique graphic characters called Greebles may prove to be valuable tools in detecting signs of Alzheimer’s disease decades before symptoms become apparent. In an article published online last week in Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Emily Mason, Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of Louisville,...
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Conversion of brain cells offers hope for Parkinson’s patients
Dopamine neurons degenerate and die in the brains of people suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have made significant progress in the search for new treatments for Parkinson’s disease. By manipulating the gene expression of non-neuronal cells in the brain, they were able to produce new dopamine neurons. The study, performed on...
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Turning skin cells into blood vessel cells while keeping them young
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago have identified a molecular switch that converts skin cells into cells that make up blood vessels, which could ultimately be used to repair damaged vessels in patients with heart disease or to engineer new vasculature in the lab. The technique, which boosts levels of an enzyme that keeps...
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An alternative to Statins with Stem cell drug screen
Stem cell drug screen yields potential alternative to statins. A novel drug screen in liver-like cells produced from a patient’s stem cells shows that cardiac glycosides could reduce LDL cholesterol differently from statins, report researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina. In a study appearing in the April 6, 2017 issue of Cell Stem...