StemCell Therapy

The sun was shining with a chill in the air as beep baseball teams from all over Texas gathered Saturday at Moore MST Magnet School in Tyler for the 11th annual Great Texas Shoot Out, an event intended to raise awareness for breast cancer and blindness.

Beep baseball is a form of baseball for those who are blind or visually impaired. There are six fielders and two bases that are randomly triggered by an operator. When the batter hits the ball, they must run to the base that is beeping before a fielder picks up the ball. If they get to the base first, the batting team gets a run. Just like traditional baseball, each team gets three outs per inning, but each batter gets four strikes per at-bat in beep baseball.

The Tyler Tigers, in conjunction with the National Beep Baseball Association, hosted the tournament to raise funds for the Susan G. Komen foundation and help pay for their trip to the Beep Baseball World Series in Ames, Iowa, happening in July 2020.

Texas teams from Austin, Bryan-College Station, Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston came out to participate and support the cause in recognition of breast cancer and Blind Awareness Day.

During opening ceremonies, Tracy Sawyer was named the 2019 Breast Cancer Queen, John Ingram was crowned the 2019 Shoot Out King and Tatyana Contreras, 12, was deemed the 2019 KOOL (Kids of the League) Kid.

Members of the Tyler Lions Club also presented the Tyler Tigers with a $1,000 check donation.

Tyler Lions Club Member Rip Duncan threw out the ceremonial first pitch, Contreras hit the ceremonial first ball and the games began.

Once in the swing of things, players from every team showed support for one another during each play and fun was had by all.

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Tyler Tigers raise awareness of breast cancer and blindness with beep baseball tournament - Tyler Morning Telegraph

New Delhi: The estimated prevalence of blindness in India has reduced by approximately 47% in last 12 years, while untreated cataract continue to be leading cause of blindness, a government survey has revealed.

According to the National Blindness and Visually Impaired Survey (2019) released by Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday, the estimated blindness has came down to 0.36% from 1% in 2006-2007since the last survey. According to the survey report,the visual impairment has come down by 51.9% to 2.55% as a compared to 2010.

As per the survey report, the maximum prevalence of blindness was seen in age group of above 80 (11.6%), followed by 70-79 age group (4.1%), 60-69 age group (1.6%) and 50-59 age group (0.5%). The survey noted that the most of the blindness (92.9%) and visual impairment (96.2%)cases were due to avoidable causes.

The current survey was conducted between 2015 and 2018 by Dr Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi in association with ministry of health and family welfare. The survey covered over 93,000 people aged equal and above 50 years using Rapid Assessment of Avoidable Blindness (RAAB) method in 31 districts of 24 states and Union Territories.

People suffering from blindness have reduced from 12 million in 2006-07 to 4.8 million in 2019. This indicates that the country is close to achieving the World Health Organizations (WHO) goal of reducing it to 0.3% of the total population by 2020," said Harsh Vardhan.

This is 47% decline and the findings of the current survey are for blindness as defined to be vision of less than 3/60 in the better eye.The WHO had set the goal of lowering the prevalence of visual impairment by 25% by 2019 as compared to 2010 levels," he said.

India changed its over four-decade-old definition of blindness in 2017, bringing it in line with the WHO criteria. According to the new definition, a person who is unable to count fingers from a distance of three metres would be considered "blind" as against the earlier stipulation of six metres, which was adopted in 1976.

The survey also revealed that in 66.2% cases the cause of blindness was untreated cataract. The survey found a higher prevalence of blindness in illiterates i.e. 3.23% in comparison to 0.43% among 10 pass and above. Further the report noting a rural urban divide, said that blindness was more prevalent in rural population i.e. 2.14% as compared to 1.80% in rural population.

Blindness was found to be lowest in Thrissur district in Kerala and in Thoubal district in Manipur whereas Bijnor distirct in Uttar Pradesh witnessed the highest prevalence. The house-to-house survey was designed to generate representative data for the sampled districts as well as for India. An additional survey was conducted between 0-49 years age group in Jan-Feb 2019 and covered 18,000 people in six districts across various regions of India," Promila Gupta, Principal Consultant, National Programme for Control of Blindness, Ministry of Health said.

"The results of both surveys, in 0-49 age group and in equal and above 50 years population, were used to estimate the prevalence of blindness and visual impairment in India across all age group," she said.

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Estimates of blindness reduced by 47% in 12 years: Govt survey - Livemint

Sleep apnea linked to blindness in diabetic patients

New York, Oct 15 (IANS) Severe sleep apnea is a risk factor for developing diabetic macular edema, a complication of diabetes that can cause vision loss or blindness, a study said.

For the study, the research team looked at the data from all patients diagnosed over an 8-year period at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taiwan.

"Based on the results, we hope that more medical professionals will approach sleep apnea as a risk factor for diabetic macular edema," said study researcher Juifan Chiang from Taiwan.

This condition is called ''Diabetic Retinopathy'' and is a leading cause of blindness in the US.

Diabetic macular edema is more difficult to treat in patients with severe sleep apnea, the researchers said.

When diabetics have poor control over the blood sugar levels, tiny blood vessels at the back of the eye can become damaged.

Sometimes, tiny bulges protrude from the blood vessels, leaking fluid and blood into the retina. This fluid can cause swelling or edema in an area of the retina that allows us to see clearly.

According to the researchers, sleep apnea may contribute to the development and worsening of Diabetic Retinopathy by increasing insulin resistance, elevating inflammation and raising blood pressure, all of which can damage the blood vessels at the back of the eye.

They found the rate of severe sleep apnea was significantly higher in patients with diabetic macular edema compared with those without diabetic macular edema (80.6 per cent vs. 45.5 per cent).

They also found that the worse their sleep apnea was, the worse their macular edema.

Severe sleep apnea was also more prevalent in patients who needed more treatment to control their macular edema.

The study was presented at the 123rd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology in the US.

--IANS

bu/ar/kr

Disclaimer :- This story has not been edited by Outlook staff and is auto-generated from news agency feeds. Source: IANS

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Sleep apnea linked to blindness in diabetic patients - Outlook India

In an effort to prevent post-operative vision loss, Dr. David Anschel is on a mission to convince hospitals to adopt his invention.

Its not common for patients to lose their vision after surgery. But when it happens, its devastating. Of the 2 million spine, brain and cardiac surgeries performed each year, 3,500 result in whats known as post-operative vision loss, or POVL.

Thats according to research by Dr. David Anschel, who is board-certified in neurology, clinical neurophysiology and epilepsy and currently heads up the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center of Long Island at St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson. Through his company, Rocky Point-based Anschel Technology, he has invented SightSaver, an FDA-approved and patented device that monitors the visual system during surgery and helps reduce the risk of POVL. To hospitals across the country, Anschel is pitching SightSaver as an upgrade to the system they might already have in place, claiming his device is more comfortable, more hygienic and more reliable. And, he said, the device has already been used on hundreds of patients across the country. Anschel spoke with LIBN about the process and what compelled him to become an inventor.

Is there a direct connection between your medical specializations and your invention?

I have a sub-specialization in clinical neurophysiology including intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring. I was serving on the faculty of Stony Brook University Hospital as its director of intraoperative monitoring when I made the decision to develop a better solution for monitoring the visual system during surgery. This involves monitoring and preserving the integrity of the nervous system during surgery. In 2006, my patient went blind during spine surgery and I wanted to find a way to prevent this horrible complication.

That must have been terrible. What is the process of developing such an invention?

After my patient went blind, I tried using the various products on the market at that time for monitoring vision function during surgery, but they did not provide good results. I then began making modifications to some of the off-the-shelf products, which ultimately led to my inventing a new solution the SightSaver, to prevent blindness, which is nearly the worst possible surgical complication, second only to death.

Is there a specific problem that SightSaver addresses?

Post-operative visual loss, or POVL. Many people have no idea that the risk of vision loss during surgery exists. This is particularly true for the over 2 million higher risk operations performed in the U.S. each year. It is not fully understood why some patients become blind during non-intracranial surgeries, but we do know that most are due to optic nerve ischemia [damage of the optic nerve that caused by a blockage of its blood supply, according to Merck Manuals]. The SightSaver helps prevent potential vision loss through better detection and intervention using visual evoked potentials, which is a highly sensitive method for detecting optic nerve dysfunction such as ischemia.

Do certain surgeries pose a higher risk of potential vision loss?

Certain brain and ocular procedures are the highest risk. Additionally, cardiac and spine surgery each are associated with much higher rates of POVL than other non-ocular procedures. However, POVL can occur in a wide range of surgeries, from joint replacements and peripheral vascular to rhinoplasty and certain urological and gynecological procedures using robotics.

What do you tell hospitals as to why they should choose your device over what they are currently using in their surgical units?

SightSaver may help prevent the second worst possible surgical complication. The risks posed by SightSaver appear to be negligible, with a minimal additional cost, which should be recovered likely at a profit by the hospital. These would seem compelling enough reasons for hospitals to explore a better way to monitor the visual system during surgery. For the hospitals across the nation who have already been using the SightSaver on hundreds of patients, I think its value proposition has been demonstrated.

You mention profits, but would your device play a role in helping contain healthcare costs?

The costs of blindness are tremendous. Each case of prevented blindness represents an enormous savings to our healthcare system and allows that person to remain a more productive member of society.

Tell us about what its like to pitch your device in regions where there is a broad selection of high quality hospitals and other healthcare providers?

Competition encourages innovation and implementation of new treatments, so it is very important. Unfortunately, the trend in this country is towards a more centralized and less innovative environment. Thats why in presenting the SightSaver my first outreach within a hospital is to its surgeons, neurologists and anesthesiologists, because their primary focus is on their patients and not on maintaining the status quo.

Did you always want to be a doctor or do you believe there was always an inventor inside you that possibly could have taken you down another career path?

I have always been a curious person and interested in science. Over time, I eventually focused on medicine, but could see myself shifting paths at some point. Where that path may lead, I dont know yet.

What advice do you have for other inventors as they seek to secure FDA approval?

Be persistent and try to lead each step of the process, but dont be afraid to seek help. I did work with a design engineer on the product design and an electrical engineer on the circuitry. Once the device was produced, I subjected it to clinical trials leading to research abstracts attesting to its performance efficacy [and] presented at scientific conferences and ultimately peer-reviewed publications.

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Executive Profile: Dr. David Anschel - Long Island Business News

President of the St. Kitts Society for the Blind, Mr Rockliffe Bowen, has on behalf of the executive and members of the society thanked the St. Kitts (Basseterre) Lions Club for remembering and positively engaging persons with disabilities at a beach picnic celebration Saturday at the Anchorage in Frigate Bay.

I want to say on behalf of our executive how appreciative we are in the Lions Club remembering us, because too many times we feel left out and we feel that nobody is studying us, he said. But I must say that the Lions Club they have come forward and they have put on this wonderful beach picnic for us and we must give our sincere thanks to them.

I must say thanks on behalf of both organisations, to the St. Kitts Basseterre Lions Club for the invitation they have extended to us by providing this wonderful food and everything that we are partaking of, Bowen, who is also the Vice President of the McKnight Community Centre-based St. Kitts and Nevis Association for Persons with Disabilities, added.

October is observed as the Blindness Awareness Month and Lions Clubs worldwide celebrate the blind in the month according to the President of the St. Kitts (Basseterre) Lions Club, Ms. Charmaine Pemberton. World Sight Day was observed on Thursday and this years call to action was Vision First!

Today we are here with the members from the St. Kitts Society for the Blind having a picnic out for them, said Ms Pemberton. Every year we do this picnic, bring out the blind to socialise with us, and have some fun, play dominos, cards we do games, we do swimming. This morning went on a walk from the Cenotaph and we are now here at the beach having fun.

The walk, themed Journey for Sight, started at 6 a.m. from the Cenotaph at the War Memorial in Fortlands, down on the Bay Road, on to Sandown Road, left to Pond Road, straight up Cayon Street via Greenlands, left to Burden Street, and back to the Cenotaph. In the afternoon they assembled under a large tent on the beach at the Anchorage in Frigate Bay where they had a sumptuous meal, played dominos and others swam in the sea.

The St. Kitts (Basseterre) Lions Club will also make a presentation Tuesday to the St. Kitts Society for the Blind and the St. Kitts and Nevis Association for Persons with Disabilities at the McKnight Community Centre. According to Ms Pemberton the presentation will include dominos and cards in braille for their enjoyment, and braille books for their reading.

Members of the McKnight Community Centre-based St. Kitts and Nevis Association for Persons with Disabilities are sponsored by the government of St. Kitts and Nevis agency, Skills Training Empowerment Programme (STEP).

Also I want to say thanks to the persons who showed up here this afternoon to participate in this social event, members of both organisations, the St. Kitts Society for the Blind and the St. Kitts and Nevis Association for Persons with Disabilities which is located at the McKnight Community Centre, Bowen said.

Others present and who helped out included St. Kitts (Basseterre) Lions Clubs 2ndVice President Ms. Heather Grant; Secretary Ms. Toshie Davis; Past President Ms. Adora Warner; and members of the club.

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Lions Club honours visually impaired in celebration of Blindness Awareness Month - The St. Kitts-Nevis Observer

Benjamin Yerxa, chief executive of the Foundation Fighting Blindness, said results from a recent clinical trial represented a major step forward for sufferers of a degenerative disease called retinitis pigmentosa

A leading non-profit group funding research into treatments for retinal degenerative diseases has hailed as major step forward a potential therapy developed by ().

The comments from Benjamin Yerxa, chief executive of the Foundation Fighting Blindness, followed the presentation of data from a phase I/IIa clinical study by trial investigator Pravin Dugel.

He has been working on ReNeurons human retinal progenitor (hRPC) stem cell line, which has shown early promiseimproving, or stabilising clarity of vision in people with the degenerative disease retinitis pigmentosa.

Dugel's address to the American Academy of Ophthalmology Annual Meeting in San Francisco was based on the latest results from the clinical assessment of the drug candidate, published on October 2.

After the presentation, Yerxa said: "We're excited by the progress of ReNeuron's hRPC therapy.

From the Foundation's perspective, any gain in vision, or even stabilisation, is a major step forward for patients with RP as currently it is a condition where progressive loss of vision leads to blindness."

Earlier this month ReNeuron said it had seen rapid and profound results in the first three patients of the second phase of clinical studies of its human retinal progenitor cells.

The phase IIa trials saw noticeable improvements in visual acuity as measured by the number of letters that could be read on a standard eye chart.

Six months after treatment there was a mean improvement of 18.5 letters per treated eye, with a mean improvement of 12 letters per treated eye after nine months, whereas inexorable disease progression is the norm for this disease.

With total of 22 patients now treated and the study still ongoing, ReNeuron said the efficacy in subsequent patients was seen but at a lower rate and magnitude, with improvement in visual acuity ranging from +5 to +11 letters in the treated eye three months after treatment.

I believe that we are seeing a clear signal of efficacy in this patient population where any gain in vision, let alone the levels seen in some of these patients, is so hard to come by and so very much appreciated," said Dr Pravin Dugel, managing partner at Retinal Consultants of Arizona and clinical professor at the Roski Eye Institute in Los Angeles.

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ReNeuron cell-based treatment hailed by leading non-profit group funding research into treatments for retinal degenerative diseases - Proactive...

Sarah Ferguson is telling all on how shes fighting the signs of aging.

Ive had a lot of help to look like this at 60! the ex-wife of Prince Andrew told UKs Daily Mail newspaper on Thursday. Ferguson, nicknamedFergie, revealed shes a fan of non-invasive laser facelifts to keep her features youthful.

Ive started the laser treatment, but its not finished yet, said the proud mom of Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice. The collagen needs to rebuild. I hope it will all be done by my birthday.

PRINCESS MADELEINE, PRINCE CARL PHILIP OF SWEDENS CHILDREN LOSE THEIR ROYAL TITLES

The Duchess of York said she used the same treatmentlast year to prepare forPrincess Eugenies royal wedding. People magazine reported the laser lift is meant to work as a natural facelift, stimulating collagen and refinishing skin texture.

Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, and Princess Beatrice of York arrive for the royal wedding of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, Windsor, Britain October 12, 2018. (Reuters)

I dont like the frozen look, said Ferguson, who turns the big 6-0 on Oct. 15. Im so animated and I like to be myself. I dont like the thoughts of needles and am very glad if I look well and happy Im really happy to be open about what Ive had done.

ELIZABETH HURLEY MET MEGHAN MARKLE BEFORE PRINCE HARRY DID: 'SHE WAS FANTASTIC'

Ferguson admitted that in the past, she has tried Botox. But these days, Ferguson insisted she relies on more minimally invasive treatments. Shes a fan of mesotherapy, which uses injections of vitamins, minerals and amino acids to boost collagen production. Ferguson said the treatment was the right choice for her after years of sun damage.

I need to repair the damage that was done on the beach when I was a child, she said. Its why I had the mesotherapy, the vitamin cocktail to hydrate and boost the skin.

After that therapy session in 2013, Ferguson said she had a facial thread lift, which involves inserting amesh of medically advanced threads under the skin, lifting the face and smoothing away fine lines.

KATE MIDDLETON'S BROTHER JAMES ANNOUNCES ENGAGEMENT TO FRENCH GIRLFRIEND ALIZEE THEVENET

Sarah Ferguson arrives for the wedding ceremony of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle in Windsor, near London, England, Saturday, May 19, 2018. (AP)

ELTON JOHN WRITES QUEEN ELIZABETH SLAPPED HER NEPHEW ACROSS THE FACE IN FRONT OF HIM IN NEW BOOK

Its like garden trellising for sweat peas, said Ferguson. You insert the threads under the skin with a fine needle and they hold everything up. They also encourage collagen production. It takes a couple of months, then the sweat peas blood.

Before I had it done I thought, Oh, this is going to be so painful, but it wasnt bad, Ferguson continued. My skin responded well. I think if you look at photos of me after I had it done, I look much better.

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And her face wasnt the only thing Ferguson focused on.

According to the outlet, Ferguson traveled to the Bahamas earlier this year to have regenerative stem cell therapy on her feet.

PRINCESS BEATRICE ENGAGED TO EDOARDO MAPELLI MOZZI

Sarah Ferguson is getting candid about how she's fighting the signs of aging. (Reuters)

PRINCESS CHARLOTTE 'LOVES' UNICORNS, DAD PRINCE WILLIAM SAYS

I think my toes were ruined by all the riding I did when I was young, she explained, pointing to her big toe. They shaved the bone here and implanted stem cells, 20 million of them taken from my midriff, into my feet to make new cartilage. It takes about six months to heal but now I can walk in heels!

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Sarah Ferguson gets candid on using Botox, laser facelifts and stem cell therapy for her feet - Fox News

Posted: Oct 8, 2019 / 09:45 AM GMT-0600 / Updated: Oct 10, 2019 / 01:15 PM GMT-0600

Stem cell therapy is one of the most successful procedures ever for solving joint pain. Your own bodys cells are injected back into the area where healing is needed: back, neck, hip, shoulder, etc. The new cells signal to body the need for regeneration, which starts to take place.

The treatment is a one-and-done injection, no surgery. Regenerative Medicine of Utah successfully treats many with stem cell therapy. One patient, John Dunn, was scheduled for knee replacement because of bone on bone pain. Before surgery he received an injection. Three months later and regenerated tissue was found in his knee joint. Six months later his knee was even better than that.

In just four weeks John was out of pain, but the body wasnt done healing. The cells continue signaling to the body the need for healing. Its usual to allow 12 months for the regeneration process to complete and reach its limit.

Making sure youre a candidateis important. Not everyone needs it. Many patients that end up being a candidateinitially thought they werent eligible. To know if youre a candidate schedulea consultation.

Right now, at Regenerative Medicine ofUtah an evaluation is $49 for the first 25 callers to (800)453-0286.

This article contains sponsored content.

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How the bodys cells can prevent the need for surgery - ABC 4

For the last few years, writers and scientists have marveled at the potential for gene editing to allow farmers to grow more food on less land and allow more of the earth to grow carbon-sucking forests and savannas.

The main advantage of gene editing is precision. Its right there in the name: Instead of dealing with the randomness of breeding, or the rough power-tool work implied by the term genetic engineering, the editing suggests that scientists could now change the letters of genetic code with the same ease that a writer corrects typos.

But in late July, FDA scientists found a chunk of bacterial DNA in gene-edited calves, prompting people to wonder if this precision tool wasnt as precise as advertised. That hopeful vision of a gene-edited future verdant with pesticide-free, carbon-sequestering crops flickered.

On Monday, the scientists studying these gene-edited cattle published a paper in the journal Nature Biotechnology explaining what happened. Essentially, this new paper tells us that gene editing precisely tweaked specific letters of DNA, exactly what it was supposed to do. But scientists also used older, cruder tools, and one of those caused the genetic typo. Even so, the end result might be that gene-editing slides into the muck of controversy over GMOs.

To be clear, the cows at the center of this study have nothing to do with creating more productive, pest-resistant foods. The scientists had edited their genes in stem cells, which grew into calves without horns. Farmers usually remove the horns to prevent cattle from injuring each other goring is a real danger.

When I visited the University of California Davis in 2015, I saw a pair of these black-and-white bull calves standing and chewing in an outdoor pen, like ordinary but adorable bovines. Unlike other calves, however, they wouldnt have to suffer through a painful dehorning operation, in which a veterinarian burns out their horn buds.

Some cows are naturally hornless: Angus and Hereford breeds, for instance. But those are beef cattle. For dairy you want Holsteins or Jerseys, and these champion milk producers are more carefully bred than the winners of the Westminster dog show. If you started crossing muscled Herefords with black-and-white Holsteins, it would take decades of breeding to move the hornless trait into the dairy line then weed out all the beefy traits.

What if you just plucked a single gene and moved it into dairy cows? With gene editing, you could tweak dairy cows without messing up their finely tuned milk-producing DNA so that they would no longer have to endure dehorning. The Minnesota-based company Recombinetics tried this using a technique called TALENS (you might have heard of CRISPR this is just a different version of the same thing).

To run with the editing metaphor, Recombinetics basically took out the DNA that laid out instructions for HORN and replaced it with 202 letters of DNA that said HORNLESS. But first, they attached it to a bacterial plasmid think of it as a sub-cellular copy machine that would reproduce this strand over and over again (HORNLESS, HORNLESS, HORNLESS!). Then they injected all those copies into a cow cell that gave one of those copies a much better chance of bumping into the one spot in the DNA that read HORN. This is where things went wrong. Instead of just replacing HORN with HORNLESS, the plasmid also folded into the cells DNA so that it read something like HORNLESS-COPYMACHINE-HORNLESS. That genetic information went into an egg, which went into a cows uterus, and, in 2015, grew into a hornless calf. No one noticed until years later.

The calves I saw at Davis were there to be studied by Alison Van Eenennaam, an animal geneticist. Funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture program to assess the risks of biotech, her team first verified that the hornless trait was being passed down through generations of cattle. Basically, we found that Mendel knew his shit, said Van Eenennaam (thats Gregor Mendel, the scientist from the 1800s who described how traits are inherited).

With this new paper, Van Eenennaams team showed that the bacterial plasmid had also been passed down to some of the calves, again following the rules of genetics 101. It doesnt seem to be causing a problem its fairly normal for DNA from germs and viruses to work its way into genomes (the human genome is about 8 percent virus DNA), and critters can usually just roll with it. But because these cattle had DNA from a bacteria, it meant they were genetically modified organisms, or GMOs in the eyes of government regulators. That, in turn, meant they would have to undergo years of testing. A giant corporation like Bayer could afford that, but not a small startup like Recombinetics. The FDA is now treating gene-edited animals like new drugs, requiring multiple rounds of safety testing, which effectively puts an end to the quest to make hornless dairy cows. Longtime opponents of biotechnology think that would be a good thing. Friends of the Earth recently released a report with Janet Cotter, who runs the consultancy Logos Environmental, condemning gene edited animals.

The scientific evidence shows that gene editing, particularly in animals, is far from precise. Cotter said in a statement. Instead, it can produce unintended changes to genetic material and disrupt genetic processes. Such effects could have far reaching consequences for food safety, so these applications will require a rigorous assessment if they are to be used in agriculture.

It would be easy enough to screen out plasmids before putting gene-edited eggs into a cows womb. Thats a routine procedure, said Van Eenennaam. But she worries that wont quell fears that gene editing is sloppier than expected. Treating gene-edited animals like drugs is not proportionate with the risk, Van Eenennaam said, and would prevent breakthroughs that might help us meet the challenge of climate change, whether its cows that dont belch methane, or corals that can survive heat., Van Eenennaam said.

The debate has pretty much blocked the technology in animals through my whole career. I was hoping gene-editing would be different, she said. I have students who are excited about gene editing for disease-resistance but now I feel like its Ground Hog Day. Here we go again.

As a nonprofit news outlet, we rely on reader support to help fund our award-winning journalism. Were one of the few news outlets dedicated exclusively to people-focused environmental coverage, and we believe our content should remain free and accessible to all. If you dig our mission and agree news should never sit behind a paywall, donate today to help support our work. Chip in what you can.

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Gene editing could help save the planet if scientists can avoid the typos - Grist

Death was conquered, via an elaborate cloning technique, and everything looked as if things were finally turning around for Charles Xaviers friends and foes.

And then Powers of X explicitly states that things will always turn out badly for mutants.

Its much worse than that. We always lose, Moira MacTaggart tells Xavier midway through the series, and she should know; by this point in the narrative, she has lived and died nine different times, trying alternative ways to maintain the survival of the mutant race without success. (As the final issue of Powers of X reveals, Moira has lived for a thousand years in one timeline and it still ended with the mutantkind being outstripped by a humanity augmented by its own invention.

Mutants are an evolutionary response to an environment. You are naturally occurring. The next step in human evolution, a character from 1,000 years in the future explains in the issue. But what happens when humanity stops being beholden to its environment? When man controls the building blocks of biology and technology Evolution is no match for genetic engineering. What good was one mutant adapting to its environment when we could make ten super men?

Turning the franchises long-running theme on its head, the core conflict of the X-Men property isnt homo superior (mutant) versus homo sapien (man), but homo superior versus homo novissima (post-human, or genetically engineered human) a battle that, its suggested, mutantkind will lose no matter what.

Armed with this knowledge, Moira has manipulated events throughout the franchise and certain people to try and equip mutantkind as best she can in the upcoming conflict, leading to a united Xavier and Magneto announcing that she has honed them into perfect tools for an imperfect age that would change things moving forward.

The new era of X-Men comics, therefore, is one in which the majority of characters believe that theyre living in a golden age of mutantkind, but theyre actually part of the latest in a series of conflicts for survival that they are, perhaps, destined to lose. How this thread will continue through the multiple Dawn of X spinoff titles remains to be seen, but with Powers of X author Jonathan Hickman writing the ongoing X-Men series launching in the wake of this reveal, one thing is for certain: This isnt an idea that is going to go away anytime soon.

Powers of X No. 6 is available now in comic book stores and digitally.

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Marvel's 'Powers of X' Ends With Surprising Revelation - Hollywood Reporter

This story is part of The 2010s: A Decade in Review, a series on the memes, people, products, movies and so much more that have influenced the 2010s.

The first decade of the 21st century introduced us to sweeping mobile and social revolutions largely driven by names like Jobs, Zuckerberg and Bezos. In the second decade that's now closing, things got a little more complicated. During those years, a new collection of faces have joined the earlier tech titans to continue moving us into the future. Here's CNET's list of the top technology innovators and all-around unavoidable personalities of the 2010s.

A person wears a Guy Fawkes mask, which today is a trademark and symbol for the online hacktivist group Anonymous. From 2012.

More a decentralized collective than a personality, Anonymous was the name claimed by the loose affiliation of hackers who brought "hacktivism" into the mainstream. During the first half of the decade, Anonymous launched attacks against targets like ISIS, the governments of the US and Tunisia, and corporations such as Sony and PayPal. The group's tactics included distributed denial-of-service attacks that overwhelm a target's website and knock it offline and compromising private databases to access and later leak confidential information, such as the personal details of members of the Ku Klux Klan.

In 2019, the group's prominence has faded somewhat -- last year it said it would debunk the QAnon conspiracy theory -- but concerns about hacking remain in the forefront, in part because one large collective of unknown activists put it there.

Julian Assange of WikiLeaks during a livestreamed press conference in 2017.

The founder of online portal WikiLeaks, Assange had a mission to reveal the secrets of the powerful. It made him an instant hero to many and a wanted man to others (in May the US government charged him with violating the Espionage Act). WikiLeaks started the decade by publishing documents obtained by whistleblower Chelsea Manning between 2010 and 2011, and it supported NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden after he sought refuge in Russia in 2013. To avoid extradition to Sweden on charges of rape -- the charges were dropped in 2017, but the case has since been reopened -- Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he remained for seven years.

Despite its founder being stuck in the same building for much of the decade, WikiLeaks still managed to play a role in the 2016 US presidential election by publishing leaked emails that were detrimental to Hillary Clinton and the next year releasing thousands of documents showing how the CIA can hack into phones. The Assange saga is far from over, though. In 2019 he was booted from the embassy by the Ecuadorian government and arrested by London police. He remains in British custody and could be extradited to the US.

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GM CEO Mary Barra says the self-driving technology can help relieve driver stress.

The General Motors CEO became the first woman to lead a major carmaker when she took over in 2014 and has been consistently ranked among the world's most powerful women over the past decade by Forbes and Fortune.

Her tenure has been marked by GM's push to keep up and even eclipse Tesla's efforts to bring electric and driverless cars into the mainstream. The Chevy Volt EV actually brought a sub-$40,000 EV to market ahead of Tesla's Model 3, and GM has also invested in ride-sharing technology to help ensure it stays relevant in the future.

Under Barra, GM is also one of just two global businesses to completely do away with its gender pay gap, according to a study by Equileap.

Bezos speaking at an Amazon press event in 2018.

Even after losing a quarter of his Amazon shares in his divorce settlementin April, Bezos remains the world's richest person, worth more than $107 billion as of this month, according to Forbes. Throughout the decade, he spread his money around,buying the Washington Post in 2013 and growing his company phenomenally. Amazon is now a vast empire that's not only become the world's warehouse, but that also encompasses the Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform, game streaming platform Twitch, a fleet of freight aircraft, music streaming,branded convenience stores, the Kindle e-reader, the Whole Foods Market grocery chain and a space startup meant to give Elon Musk and SpaceX some competition. Its Prime subscription service delivers goods in hours, and serves up a huge gallery of movies, TV programs and audiobooks.

Amazon also makes plenty of products of its own, including its Alexa-powered home assistants and Ring security system, both of which have forced the company torespond to privacy concerns over its increasing expansion into homes. And the company continues to face criticism over working conditions and pay for its employees.

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danah boyd

She may not be a household name, but danah boyd (who prefers to spell her name with lowercase) has become a leading thinker and researcher on the effects of technology on society and our children. In her 2014 book It's Complicated, she argued that social media provides an important space for youth to express themselves and to engage with each other and with society.

She's also a principal researcher for Microsoft and has broadened her research to focus on the relationship between social inequality and technology through her research institute Data and Society. In awarding her its 2019 Pioneer award, the Electronic Frontier Foundation called boyd a "trailblazing technology scholar."

Richard Branson at a Virgin Mobile event.

The billionaire magnate is willing to try just about anything, it seems. Branson's Virgin brand has dabbled in everything from media to hotels to health care, and in the last decade it has also made some far-out bets. In recent years, Branson has invested in Elon Musk's futuristic hyperloop transport technology and is working on Virgin Orbit, which could launch satellites using a combination of rockets and a high-altitude launcher plane. In the coming months, Virgin Galactic mayfinally begin launching tourists (including Branson himself) into orbit using a similar approach from the New Mexico desert.

By 2040, there will be 1 million more young women of color with coding skills if Kimberly Bryant meets her ambitious goal. The electrical engineer and Vanderbilt grad founded Black Girls Code in 2011 with the goal of reaching 1 million girls by midcentury. That could transform places like Silicon Valley, where only 2% of women working in tech are people of color, according to a 2018 report from the Kapor Center. Bryant's work has been widely recognized -- by the White House, the Smithsonian and others -- helping to bring in funding for the mission and increasing the chances that the next Steve Jobs is a woman of color.

Mark Cuban at CNET's Next Big Thing panel at CES 2013

During the 2010s, Cuban became much more than just one of the billionaires from the original dot-com boom of the late 1990s. He completed his crossover to become a major figure in the worlds of sports, entertainment and even politics.

Cuban's riches can be traced to successful exits from old, old-school internet properties like Broadcast.com, but he's since leveraged those early moves into a career as an NBA franchise owner, a TV personality (most notably on Shark Tank) and an investor in dozens of companies including Dropbox, Magnolia Pictures and Alyssa's Cookies. He was even floated as a potential presidential candidate in 2016 and 2020, but says he won't run without his family's permission.

Tim Cook at WWDC 2019.

It was a difficult job to take the mantle after Steve Jobs died in 2011, but Cook has maintained Apple's dominance over the past several years. Cook may not be the showman of his predecessor, but the brand is as far-reaching as ever. The iPhone still rules the mobile roost alongside Android, and under his guidance the company has launched forays into areas like the Apple Watch, content production, Apple Arcade and even finance with the Apple Card.

While it might be a stretch to call Cook a gay icon (he came out in a 2014 essay), he's certainly one of the most powerful LGBTQ people in the world, and his worldview has informed his drive to make Apple more ethical, diverse and values-driven, according to author Leander Kahney.

A pre-beard Dorsey.

Assuming the role of Twitter's CEO in 2015, Dorsey's been the face of one of the most highly trafficked and often toxic online platforms. Over the past decade, Twitter helped give rise to revolution in the Middle East, including the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and also gave us the platform that @RealDonaldTrump has used more effectively than any other American politician to rally support and spin news events. Twitter has also enabled floods of hate speech, fake news and misinformation. Though the company has tried to combat them with new rules and technology, it's only subject to more criticism when the regulations are unevenly enforced.

As he tries to guide Twitter's central role in reshaping global media, Dorsey's also CEO of payments company Square, giving him an outsized influence in how information and money move around the world now and in the coming years.

Jennifer Doudna

One of the key innovations of the 2010s goes by the unwieldy name CRISPR/Cas9, and Doudna is a pioneer in its use to edit DNA. This new tool holds the potential to revolutionize biology, medicine, agriculture and other fields.

Doudna's lab at the University of California, Berkeley has also spun off a for-profit venture to commercialize CRISPR applications, and Doudna has become a leader in the ongoing ethical discussions around the future of genetic engineering.

Susan Fowler at the Women Transforming Technology conference

The #MeToo movement swept through the tech world and other industries beginning in 2017, thanks in large part to Fowler's personal blog chronicling sexual harassment and abuse within Uber, where she worked as a software engineer. The fallout resulted in a shakeup of Uber's power structure and the demotion of founder and CEO Travis Kalanick. Fowler's memoir, Whisteblower, is due out in 2020, and she has a new role writing for the New York Times opinion section.

This power couple has taken the money that Bill made producing the software suites we all love to complain about and turned it into a philanthropic empire. The $50 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has poured millions into global health and development efforts, as well as education in the US. Bill says the foundation played a major role in a drastic reduction of the child mortality rate, saving over 100 million lives. Bill has also stayed relevant through the reading lists he releases regularly, and Melinda debuted as an author herself with a book about empowering women around the world.

Elizabeth Holmes in a still from The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.

Like Pixelon's Michael Fenne (real name: David Kim Stanley) almost two decades earlier, Holmes serves as a cautionary tale for what can go wrong when the hype becomes unmoored from reality in tech.

In the span of a few years, Holmes took Theranos and a never-quite-ready-for-primetime blood-testing technology from a subject of interest to one of investment, investigation and now, potentially Holmes' own incarceration as she faces charges of criminal fraud.

The decade began with Jobs' introduction of the iPad in January 2010, nearly two years before he died in October 2011. Apple, whose iPhone helped change the way we live, has continued to be one of the most iconic and valuable brands in the history of capitalism. His legacy has been a topic of near constant discussion since his passing, including treatments in multiple Hollywood movies and major books from the likes of Walter Isaacson and Jobs' daughter Lisa Nicole Brennan-Jobs.

John Legere

T-Mobile's CEO could be the most interesting person in the wireless industry. Over the past decade, he's masterfully played the role of underdog fighting against telecom giants like AT&T and Verizon. Nearly everything the exec does seems calculated to turn heads, whether it's lacing a press conference with profanity, launching barbs at the competition on social media or dressing in the company's trademark magenta. But Legere also produced results, greatly increasing T-Mobile's customer base over the years, revamping the carrier's customer service and bucking industry trends by keeping unlimited data plans. Despite it all, Legere's future going into 2020 is uncertain, with talk he might be replaced should a pending merger with rival Sprint finally go through.

Travis Kalanick exits federal court after taking the stand during the Waymo v. Uber trial over allegedly stolen driverless car trade secrets.

The Uber founder embodies the success-at-all-costs mentality that has driven many other Silicon Valley success stories. He led a ride-sharing revolution that quickly spread around the world and made Uber the prototypical startup "unicorn." But allegations of sexual harassment (brought by whistleblower and engineer Susan Fowler) and Kalanick's own abrasive leadership style would soon see him pushed out as the company's leader in June 2017, although he still retains a seat on the board.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk

Musk wants to save the planet with electric cars and solar panels, take us to Mars, connect our brains to computers and shoot us around the world in pressurized tubes at near the speed of sound with his hyperloop-creating Boring Company. Most of this visionary's big visions are still in progress, but his credibility comes from simultaneously disrupting both the automotive and commercial space industries over the past decade with the success of Tesla and SpaceX. The world tends to watch his every move, which he often gleefully shares on social media. Musk's tweets have brought him trouble, especially when they move Tesla's stock price and invite lawsuits and the ire of the SEC or appear to smear a diver trying to rescue a Thai soccer team trapped in a cave.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at a company event.

This Indian immigrant with a degree in electrical engineering turned out to be the right man for the job of making Microsoft cool again. Or at least making it cooler. Since becoming CEO in 2014, Nadella has helped increase Microsoft's bottom line and make it a trillion-dollar company. He's overseen a transformation that has done away with the company's cutthroat reputation, both toward competitors and internally, though in 2014 he apologized after making controversial comments about women's pay in an interview. Nadella has also advanced forward-looking acquisitions in artificial intelligence, gaming and brand names like Github, LinkedIn and Mojang, creator of Minecraft.

Very few people seem to know who Nakamoto really is. The presumed pseudonym is attached to the person or persons responsible for the development of bitcoin, which launched a cryptocurrency revolution that started slowly in 2009 but picked up steam over the decade that followed.

A once-worthless digital currency, bitcoin has been valued at up to $20,000 per coin. It inspired the development of countless other cryptos and an entirely new industry around its underlying technology, blockchain. Although some have claimed to be the real Nakamoto and others have been falsely outed as the actual Satoshi, his true identity remains unclear.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai

Google has gone from "Don't be evil" to increasingly having to convince consumers and regulators that it isn't. When the company transformed into Alphabet in 2015 and the Google name was attached to its internet-focused subsidiary (including Android, YouTube and search), Pichai became the new face of Google as CEO. During his first four years, the Googleplex has continued to dominate everything from search to mobile operating systems to online cat videos, while making big moves with new hardware like Google Home and a fleet of Pixel devices. It hasn't been all sunshine, though. Pichai has also had to navigate the proliferation of hate speech and disinformation on YouTube, deal with walkouts over sexual harassment allegations directed at Google executives and confront criticism over a possible censored search service in China. That's to say nothing of the James Damore saga over the company's diversity policies. Still, Pichai and Google seem likely to remain on top for the foreseeable future.

Zoe Quinn.

Years before #MeToo, Gamergate gave us all a preview of the widespread bad behavior and abuse by people in positions of power that would soon be exposed across a number of industries. Quinn, along with fellow game developer Brianna Wu and culture critic Anita Sarkeesian, was among the first to be harassed and threatened by mobs of online trolls that would eventually coalesce around the #gamergate hashtag. It was an early warning sign of how bad things would become online.

Quinn, who uses they/them pronouns, turned their experience and insights into the 2017 book Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate. They have continued to be vocal about instances of abuse within the gaming industry while also churning out new comics (for both Marvel and DC) and collaborating on indie games.

IBM CEO Gini Rometty

CEO of IBM is another job title that doesn't seem as cool as it was 50 years ago. But since taking over in 2012, Rometty has moved the company from dinosaur status to focusing on the future. IBM today is invested deeply in nascent technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain and quantum computing.

Sheryl Sandberg in 2015.

Sandberg was the fresh face Facebook often needed when Mark Zuckerberg spent too much time in the spotlight. While she deserves some credit for building Facebook up to the global force it is today, her 2013 business and leadership memoir Lean In made her a household name. Facebook and Sandberg have since received a healthy dose of criticism for the platform's myriad scandals, ranging from privacy concerns to the spread of misinformation, but they continue to stand their ground.

Former Instagram executive Adam Mosseri, flanked by Mike Krieger on the left and Kevin Systrom on the right.

As social media scandals increasingly give platforms like Facebook and Twitter a bad rep, Instagram seems to remain an almost-pristine place for all our best moments, no matter if they're earnest or fake AF, a la Fyre Festival. The disastrous music festival was promoted using Instagram and harnessed the power of its many "influencers" and the FOMO it engenders perhaps better than any other platform. Systrom and Krieger co-founded the photo-sharing site in 2010 and the service was snapped up by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion. Systrom stayed on as CEO through 2018, growing the service to almost a billion registered users. While the platform has faced criticism over censorship in several countries and other practices like "shadowbanning" (in which posts are hidden from the view of others without it being apparent to the user), Instagram has remained relatively scandal-free compared to its parent company in recent years.

Peter Thiel in 2014.

Like Musk, Thiel made his first big pile of money from the sale of PayPal, which he co-founded, to eBay in 2002. The hits continued when he became Facebook's first outside investor in 2004 and went on to make early investments in Airbnb, LinkedIn, Yelp, Spotify and SpaceX, just to name a few.

Over the past decade, though, he's become better known for his political and social stances, particularly his growing disdain for Silicon Valley and his fervent support of President Trump. He also backed a lawsuit filed in 2012 over wrestler Hulk Hogan's sex tape that ultimately bankrupted gossip site Gawker, allegedly over a grudge he held against the site for a 2007 article outing him as gay. Thiel's Libertarian views have also inspired projects like the Seasteading Institute, which aims to create a society at sea, beyond the reach of any government.

Desktops are still alive and kicking, according to HP CEO Meg Whitman.

The former CEO behind the early growth of eBay is always doing something interesting. After losing a bid for governor of California in 2010, Whitman spent the first half of the decade leading and splitting up Hewlett-Packard into two businesses. After leaving HP in 2017, she turned her energies to new efforts focused on younger consumers than the typical HP customer. She's now CEO of upcoming short-form video service Quibi and an investor and board member at Los Angeles esports startup Immortals.

Mark Zuckerberg discusses Oculus at an event last month.

The decade opened with Jesse Eisenberg playing Zuck in the 2010 film The Social Network, and in recent years the Facebook founder probably would have been happy to have an actor continue to play him as CEO. As we've debated the power of Facebook and how much it knows about us, Zuckerberg has confronted multiple scandals and sat for hours of grilling by Congress over the proliferation of fake news on his platform. Through it all, Facebook has arguably been at the center of everything during the past 10 years, whether it's influencing the Brexit vote and the 2016 presidential election or the revelations that data research firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested the data of millions of Facebook users without their consent. Now presidential candidates talk of breaking up the social networking behemoth even as Zuckerberg hopes to move forward into the brave new world of VR with the help of companies like Oculus that it has swallowed over the past decade.

Originally published Oct. 10, 5 a.m. PT.

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From Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos, these 30 personalities defined the 2010s - CNET

The word agriculture conjures up an array of images: endless fields of corn stalks, amber waves of grain, the deserts of Africa Africa? While thoughts of the African landscape may tend to invoke a dry and empty countryside, scientists at Washington University in St. Louis are working to develop self-sustaining plants that could eventually turn the Sahara into a sea of green.

Himadri B. Pakrasi, the Glassberg Greensfelder Distinguished University Professor in the department of biology in Arts & Sciences and director of the International Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability (InCEES), and Costas D. Maranas, professor of chemical engineering at Penn State, were recently awarded a $1.2-million grant from the National Science Foundation for their collaborative study of systems biology. Specifically, the Pakrasi and Maranas labs hope to decode the inner workings of cyanobacteria for the ultimate purpose of producing nitrogen-fixing crop plants.

For more than a century, farmers around the world have relied heavily on chemical fertilizers to help grow their plants and crops. Fertilizers contain nitrogen, an essential building block for all life forms to grow, and an element that is abundant in the earths atmosphere. However, creating man-made fertilizers is an energy intensive process that contributes to greenhouse gases and leads to run-off issues that severely damage the environment. A solution to this problem is to engineer plants to absorb nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into fertilizer, a process known as nitrogen fixation, so that the plants would become self-sufficient.

If you have engineered seeds that you give to an African farmer, that farmer can then plant the seeds, which gives rise to a field of crops that would not need chemically synthesized fertilizer to grow, Pakrasi said. This has huge agricultural implications not just for the affluent, Western world,but to the areas hardest hit by climate change.

Easier said than done. Nitrogen fixation cannot take place in the cells of most photosynthetic organisms plants that convert sunlight into energy because when plants are undergoing photosynthesis, a byproduct is oxygen. And oxygen is like a poison when it mixes with nitrogenease, the enzyme that enables nitrogen fixation. However, there is an organism that can accommodate both photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation in the same cell: cyanobacteria.

Just like human beings, cyanobacteria have a robust circadian rhythm a 24-hour biological cycle during which they photosynthesize in the day and fix nitrogen at night. Scientists have long studied these bluish-green creatures, but do not have a detailed understanding of how circadian rhythms allow cyanobacteria to adjust its metabolism for both nitrogen fixation and photosynthesis to take place in the same cell. With advances in genetic modification tools, it is now possible to probe deeper into the details of this process.

There are still missing parts of the cyanobacterial puzzle, Pakrasi said. The only way to identify what those missing parts are is to actually go into the cyanobacterium and tease apart the machinery. And thats what this grant will allow us to do.

In other words, the Pakrasi lab will perform a series of genetic modifications to the cyanobacteria and generate new data. The Maranas lab will then take the data and develop a predictive model for the inner working of the cyanobacterium. This iterative process will take some time, but the research is imperative to combating the climate changes facing the planet, Pakrasi said.

Its kind of like building an electric pickup truck, Pakrasi said. How do you go from a gasoline fueled car to a Tesla pickup truck? The basic technology for making a gas fueled car is already known, but were moving to a new paradigm of production in the form of a Tesla truck. Once we figure it out, we can deploy the new technology to our partners all over the world.

Read more:
NSF funds research on nitrogen fixation - Washington University in St. Louis Newsroom

(MENAFN - GetNews) According to report published by Grand View Research,Growing number of approved companion diagnostics and biomarker products have been proved promising avenues for the development of advanced precision diagnostic tests. Several personalized diagnostics and therapeutic products based on companion diagnostics are under clinical trials and development pipelines, which also add an incremental opportunity to accelerate this market.

According to a report, ' Personalized Medicine Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis By Product (Personalized Medical Care, Therapeutics, Personalized Nutrition & Wellness), By Region (Asia Pacific, Europe, North America), And Segment Forecasts, 2019 - 2025 , published by Grand View Research, Inc., The global personalized medicine (PM) market size is expected to reach USD 3.18 trillion by 2025 registering a CAGR of 10.6% over the forecast period, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Growing number of approved companion diagnostics and biomarker products have been proved promising avenues for the development of advanced precision diagnostic tests. Several personalized diagnostics and therapeutic products based on companion diagnostics are under clinical trials and development pipelines, which also add an incremental opportunity to accelerate this market.

Gene therapies are widely utilized to diagnose both chronic and genetic disorders according to individual's genetic makeup. Growing adoption of gene sequencing and data analytics technologies is anticipated to escalate precision medicine market growth. Decreasing cost of whole genome sequencing, advancement in cell biology sector, and the development of 'Human Genome Project are several other factors influencing the demand for gene therapy hence, boosting the overall market. Moreover, key leaders are undergoing numerous strategic developments to launch novel personalized products, which will also contribute to the market expansion.

For instance, in September 2018, Vertex Pharmaceuticals collaborated with Genomics for the delivery of precision medicine based on individual's genetic differences and lifestyle. Similarly, in January 2018, Foundation Medicine collaborated with European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) to facilitate Foundation's comprehensive genomic profiling to across personalized medicine and clinical trial enrolment.

Further key findings from the study suggest:

PM therapeutics is projected to register the fastest CAGR over the forecast period owing to the development of high-capacity rapid sequencing platforms for medical therapies

Reduction in sequencing cost leads to an expected growth of genomic sequencing and genetic research, thus contributing to lucrative opportunities for genomic medicine

Asia Pacific is projected to be the fastest-growing regional market due to rising number of collaborative initiatives between eastern and western market leaders

Chinese personalized medicine market is benefitted due to initiatives implemented by the Chinese government and reimbursements for disease treatment

Prominent companies include GE Healthcare; Illumina, Inc.; Asuragen, Inc.; Abbott Laboratories; Dako A/S; Exact Science Corp.; and Biogen, Inc.

Product Insights

Personalized nutrition & wellness was the largest product segment in 2018. Availability of a wide range of nutrition & wellness products and increased Over The Counter (OTC) sale of these productsplay a significant role in boosting the segment growth. Companies are undertaking several initiatives for sustaining market competition. For instance, in March 2018, DSM partnered with Mixfit to provide personalized nutrition solutions by combining Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.

This strategic partnership was targeted towards offering consumers a personalized approach regarding nutrition. PM therapeutics includes pharmaceuticals, genomic medicine, and medical devices for personalized therapies and it is anticipated to witness the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Advent of high-capacity rapid sequencing platforms and reducing cost of sequencing whole human genome plays a major role in the segment development.

Genomic medicine has emerged as a significant segment in PM therapeutics. Availability of large databases of genomic data enables researchers to develop accurate and effective therapeutic products for several medical conditions. Consequently, this results in high utilization of human genome sequencing techniques for genomic medicine.

Regional Insights

Led by U.S., North America was the dominant regional personalized medicine market in 2018. Increasing adoption of NGS methods and healthcare IT systems in clinical workflow along with supportive government policies and funding drives the regional market.

For instance, in September 2018, the All of Us Research Program initiated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded funds of USD 28.6 million to three genome centers of the U.S. This funding supported the generation of genomic data from biosamples by these centers, which is a critical component of precision medicine discoveries.

Ask Our Industry Expert for More Details on Report -https://www.grandviewresearch.com/inquiry/625/ibb

However, Asia Pacific is projected to witness the highest CAGR over the forecast period owing to low cost of clinical trialsof newly developed precision medicines and diagnostic products. Moreover, rising disposable income levels and growing economy of emerging countries will boost the market further.

Browse Related Report:

Grand View Research has segmented the global personalized medicine market on the basis of product and region:

Personalized Medicine Product Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2014 - 2025)

Personalized Medicine Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2014 - 2025)

Explore the BI enabled intuitive market research database, Navigate withGrand View Compass , by Grand View Research, Inc.

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research provides syndicated as well as customized research reports and consulting services on 46 industries across 25 major countries worldwide. This U.S.-based market research and consulting company is registered in California and headquartered in San Francisco. Comprising over 425 analysts and consultants, the company adds 1200+ market research reports to its extensive database each year. Supported by an interactive market intelligence platform, the team at Grand View Research guides Fortune 500 companies and prominent academic institutes in comprehending the global and regional business environment and carefully identifying future opportunities.

Media Contact Company Name: Grand View Research, Inc. Contact Person: Sherry James, Corporate Sales Specialist - U.S.A. Email: Send Email Phone: 1-415-349-0058, Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519 Address: 201, Spear Street, 1100 City: San Francisco State: California Country: United States Website: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/personalized-medicine-market

MENAFN1310201900703268ID1099120383

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Personalized Medicine Market Is Estimated to Cross USD 3.18 Trillion By the End of 2025 | Grand View Research, Inc. - MENAFN.COM

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

How to Stop Superhuman AI Before It Stops UsStuart Russell | The New York TimesOnce the focus shifts from building machines that are intelligent to ones that are beneficial, controlling them will become a far easier feat. Consider it the difference between nuclear power and nuclear explosions: a nuclear explosion is nuclear power in an uncontrolled form, and we greatly prefer the controlled form.

This Girls Dramatic Story Shows Hyper-Personalized Medicine Is Possibleand CostlyErika Check Hayden | MIT Technology Reviewin a dramatic demonstration of the power of personalized medicine, doctors in Boston created a treatment just for [six-year-old Mila Makovec]. In only eight months, they found the genetic cause of Milas disease, designed a drug to overcome the error, and began giving it to Mila via an injection in her spine, in whats believed to be the first individually tailored treatment of its kind.

Waymo Tells Customers That Completely Driverless Vehicles Are on the WayAndrew J. Hawkins | The VergeIts a sign that Waymo is growing confident enough in its technology to increase the frequency at which it allows passengers to ride in autonomous vehicles without a safety driver behind the wheel.

Virgin Orbit Says It Wants to Send Tiny Spacecraft to Mars in 2022Neel V. Patel | MIT Technology ReviewIf it succeeds, Virgin Orbit will be the first commercial company to travel to the Red Planet. It will also mark an unexpected entrance into deep spaceflight for a company whose plansfocus on air launches, which have always been considered unsuitable for traveling beyond low Earth orbit.

Jeff Bezoss Master PlanFranklin Foer | The AtlanticWhere in the pantheon of American commercial titans does Jeffrey Bezos belong? At 55, Bezos has never dominated a major market as thoroughly as any of these forebears, and while he is presently the richest man on the planet, he has less wealth than Gates did at his zenith. [But] the scope of the empire the founder and CEO of Amazon has built is wider. Indeed, it is without precedent in the long history of American capitalism.

Meet the Robot Racing Drone That Could Beat Human Pilots by 2023Stephen Shankland | CNETSince 2016, the human pilots of theDrone Racing Leaguehave competed to see who could whip a quadcopter around pylons and through hoops the fastest. On Tuesday, theyll get a new challenge: the fully autonomous RacerAI, adroneprogrammed to fly itself.

Image Credit:MEAX /Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through October 12) - Singularity Hub

Novartis is soliciting proposals from patient advocacy organizations for initiatives designed to expand and improve understanding of biomarker testing among people with cancer that are based on the pharma giants Solutions to Empower Patients (STEP) Program.

The STEP Program will fund up to four patient advocacy organizations as much as $75,000 each, with the aim of helping them address education, access, and reimbursement challenges like those that have hindered the development and use of biomarker testing in personalized medicine, Novartis said.

The deadline for submissions is 11:59 on November 4, 2019.

By supporting patient advocacy organizations that empower patients and their care teams to make informed decisions about their health, the STEP Program can help create a path to better care, Ameet Mallik, Executive Vice President and Head, US, Novartis Oncology, said in a statement.

Created in 2017, the STEP Program has helped fund the patient-focused initiatives of eight organizations nationwide. The STEP program funded three organizations in 2017 and five last year.

Novartis says it created the STEP Program with the intent of supporting U.S.-based nonprofit organizations as they work to address some key challenges in healthcare. Any national, US-based, 501(c)(3) patient advocacy organization is invited to submit a STEP Program proposal that focuses on at least one of the following criteria in cancer biomarker testing: Awareness and Education, Self-Advocacy, and/or Policy Improvement.

Proposals will be evaluated by an external review committee consisting of experts in a variety of fields. The committee will review the applications and identify as many as four proposals deemed to have the potential to make the greatest positive impact on the cancer community, Novartis said.

All organizations will be notified of the review committees decision by or before January 31, 2020.

Novartis said organizations interested in details on how to submit proposals, or which want to learn more about the STEP program, should visit the STEP Program page on the companys U.S. website.

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Novartis Solicits Proposals to Advance Biomarker Testing in Cancer - Clinical OMICs News

BALTIMORE, Oct. 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The African American Neuroscience Research Initiative (AANRI) announced today the receipt of a $275,000 grant from the Abell Foundation, which will provide critical funds to support the development and growth of the collaboration between the African American Clergy Medical Research Initiative and the Lieber Institute for Brain Development. Utilizing the Lieber Institute's robust brain repository, the AANRI aims to establish a road map to help close the gap in health disparities and accelerate research efforts that will lead to new treatments for brain disorders.

The Abell Foundation grant will enable the AANRI to establish a Scientific Advisory Committee, expand partnership and collaboration efforts, and hold an inaugural national meeting on the topic next year.

Also, last month U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) championed report language through the Senate Appropriations Committee which officially recognizes the longstanding disparity in neuroscience research among underrepresented minority groups, including African Americans. The Committee urges the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities to support the increase in neuroscience research among ethnically diverse individuals, including African Americans, and collaboration with external partners to develop the framework needed to advance the discovery of treatments for neuropsychiatric disorders which is the scientific goal and objective of the AANRI.

Senator Ben Cardin, senior senator for Maryland, said, "I'm proud to partner with the AANRI and the Lieber Institute for Brain Development to address this long-standing disparity in neuroscience research. Working together, we can correct this inequity and accelerate the discovery of treatments that benefit ethnic minority groups, including African Americans."

Rev. Dr. Alvin C. Hathaway, Sr., Principal of the African American Clergy Medical Research Initiative, said, "My clergy colleagues and I have been studying the emerging science behind precision medicine and believe that this technology has potential for finding cures and treatments for diseases that uniquely affect African Americans. This grant brings us one step closer to ensuring ethnic minority groups are not left behind in the precision medicine revolution. And the efforts of Senator Cardin if realized will be transformative."

The AANRI addresses a long-time disparity. While genomic research has the potential to provide some of the most personalized and effective medical treatments for many medical disorders, minority groups are inadequately represented in these large-scale genomic studies. In neuroscience research studies of brain disorders, underrepresented minority groups, including African Americans, make up less than 5% of research cohorts.

"So far, personalized medicine has not really been for everyone," said Daniel R. Weinberger, M.D., Director and CEO of the Lieber Institute. "The Abell Foundation grant provides critical support to enable the AANRI to execute the scientific strategy, with the ultimate goal of developing new treatments for brain disorders for people of African ancestry."

For more information on the African American Neuroscience Research Initiative, visit aaneuroscience.com or contact Becky Oldham, Director of Communications at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development at media@libd.org.

About the African American Neuroscience Research InitiativeThe African American Neuroscience Research Initiative (AANRI) aims to establish a road map to help close the gap in health disparities and accelerate research efforts that will lead to new treatments for brain disorders. The Initiative is the first of its kind in the nation to address health and neuroscience research disparities.

About the African American Clergy Medical Research InitiativeThe African American Clergy Medical Research Initiative (AACMRI) is focused on ensuring that persons of African descent are equitably represented in medical research. It advocates for equity in public policy, funding, education, training, and awareness that produces improvements in protocols, treatments, medicines and health outcomes.

About the Lieber Institute for Brain DevelopmentThe mission of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development and the Maltz Research Laboratories is to translate the understanding of basic genetic and molecular mechanisms of developmental brain disorders into clinical advances that change the lives of affected individuals. LIBD is an independent, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization and a Maryland tax-exempt medical research institute affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

About the Abell FoundationThe Abell Foundation is dedicated to the enhancement of the quality of life in Maryland, with a particular focus on Baltimore. The Foundation places a strong emphasis on opening the doors of opportunity to the disenfranchised, believing that no community can thrive if those who live on the margins of it are not included.

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African American Neuroscience Research Initiative Awarded Grant From Abell Foundation for Critical Program Support - P&T Community

EAST HANOVER, N.J., Oct. 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Novartis is inviting patient advocacy organizations to submit proposals for programs that offer to expand and improve understanding of biomarker testing among the cancer community through one of its signature patient advocacy initiatives, the Solutions to Empower Patients (STEP) Program. The STEP Program will provide funding to as many as four patient advocacy organizations of up to $75,000 each.

Through the advancement of personalized medicine, cancer treatment has greatly evolved to include more customized treatment options based on a patient's type of cancer determined through biomarker and other forms of testing. The hope is that treatments will one day be tailored to each person's cancer.1 Though biomarker testing has become one of the cornerstones of personalized medicine within oncology, there remain significant challenges when it comes to education, access and reimbursement.2,3,4

"Biomarker testing has the potential to transform the treatment strategy for people living with certain types of cancer, but it is not yet part of routine care for all tumor types," said Ameet Mallik, Executive Vice President and Head, US, Novartis Oncology. "By supporting patient advocacy organizations that empower patients and their care teams to make informed decisions about their health, the STEP Program can help create a path to better care."

Novartis created the annual STEP Program to inspire solutions from US-based nonprofit organizations that help to address some of the most significant gaps in health care. Since 2017, the STEP Program has provided support to eight organizations across the country for their impactful patient-focused initiatives.

Application Details for Interested Patient Advocacy Organizations Any national, US-based, 501(c)(3) patient advocacy organization is welcome to submit a STEP Program proposal for consideration. Suggested proposals should focus on at least one of the following criteria in cancer biomarker testing:

Proposals will be evaluated by an external review committee consisting of experts in a variety of fields. The committee will review the applications and identify as many as four proposals that have the potential to make the greatest positive impact on the cancer community.

Organizations that wish to apply for funding from the program should complete the required submission form available on https://www.pharma.us.novartis.com/stories/education-awareness/step-program-supporting-solutions-patient-advocacy-organizations. All submissions must be received by 11:59pm ET on November 4, 2019.

For more information about STEP Program, including submission details, please visit the Novartis US website, STEP Program page.

About NovartisNovartis is reimagining medicine to improve and extend people's lives. As a leading global medicines company, we use innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. In our quest to find new medicines, we consistently rank among the world's top companies investing in research and development. Novartis products reach more than 750 million people globally and we are finding innovative ways to expand access to our latest treatments. About 108,000 people of nearly 140 nationalities work at Novartis around the world. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, a US affiliate of Novartis, is located in East Hanover, NJ. Find out more at http://www.novartis.com.

Novartis is on Twitter. Sign up to follow @Novartis at http://twitter.com/novartis or follow @NovartisNews for the latest News & Media Updates at https://twitter.com/novartisnewsFor Novartis multimedia content, please visit http://www.novartis.com/news/media-libraryFor questions about the site or required registration, please contact media.relations@novartis.com

References

Novartis Media Relations

Central media line: +41 61 324 2200

E-mail:media.relations@novartis.com

Eric Althoff

Kristen Klasey

Novartis US External Communications

Novartis US Communications

+1 646 438 4335 (direct)

+1 862 778 4763 (direct)

eric.althoff@novartis.com

+1 862 754 1732 (mobile)

kristen.klasey@novartis.com

Novartis Investor Relations

Central investor relations line: +41 61 324 7944

E-mail: investor.relations@novartis.com

Central

North America

Samir Shah

+41 61 324 7944

Sloan Simpson

+1 212 830 2417

Pierre-Michel Bringer

+41 61 324 1065

Cory Twining

+1 862 278 3258

Thomas Hungerbuehler

+41 61 324 8425

Isabella Zinck

+41 61 324 7188

SOURCE Novartis

http://www.novartis.com

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Novartis STEP Program now accepting submissions for proposals that address unmet patient needs in cancer biomarker testing - PRNewswire

NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --Genomics Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Application And Technology (Pathway Analysis, Functional Genomics), By Deliverables (Instruments, Consumables, Services), By End Use, And Segment Forecasts, 2019 - 2025

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5807259/?utm_source=PRN

The global genomics market size is expected to reach USD 27.61 billion by 2025. It is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 8.6% during the forecast period. The past decades have witnessed significant changes in disease management processes due to simultaneous advancements in genomics and personalized medicine. There has been a gradual growth in the usage of genomic studies in clinical practices, which is reflected by the growing trend of targeted therapies.

Results from genomic studies enable a better understanding of diseases and the underlying mechanisms for researchers, physicians, and consumers.This facilitates evidence-based decision-making, and hence, helps improve personalized treatment regime.

In addition, technological advancements in data analysis tools have motivated healthcare community to create precision-based therapies from surplus, available DNA data.

Ability of the medical community to make use of the available genomic information in personalized medicine is anticipated to significantly impact the genomics market.Furthermore, plummeting cost of sequencing has enabled the whole genome sequencing at very less price.

Scientists are combining the sequencing generated data with diagnostics which has proven its effectiveness in enhancing personalized treatment landscape.

The companies are involved in strategic alliances with global as well as local entities to boost their revenue generation and enhance their market share. For instance, in March 2017, Foundation Medicine collaborated with Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, as a result of which Bristol-Myers Squibb could deploy Foundation Medicine's molecular information solutions and comprehensive genomic profiling for identification of predictive biomarkers, such as Microsatellite Instability (MSI) and Tumor Mutational Burden (TMB), to accelerate its immunotherapy clinical trials.

NGS-based services held a major market share in the services segment due to its rapid adoption of whole genome sequencing and application of sequence databases for disease screening and prognosis.The demand would remain strong with the expansion of the customer base from limited to academic and research centers to CROs, biotech and pharma players.

As patients are focusing on their health, Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) laboratory testing is increasingly being employed. DTC genetic tests enable consumers to access information about their genetics without necessarily including healthcare professionals in the process.

Further key findings from the report suggest: High demand in terms of volume coupled with the high cost of specific reagents contribute to substantial revenue share. Companies are embracing the trend of offering varied reagents that simplify workflow process Use of predictive biomarkers for diagnosis and monitoring take cancer eradication a step further. Moreover, organizations and programs such as the National Biomarker Development Alliance (NBDA) are actively participating in development of novel biomarkers for cancer diagnosis Growing interest of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in genomics is expected to drive growth of the genomics market in the forthcoming years Asia Pacific is anticipated to display the maximum potential and an become an emerging market for genomics. It is anticipated to register the fastest CAGR of 10.4% over the forecast period Major players include BGI; Agilent Technologies; Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.; Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc; Foundation Medicine, Inc, 23andMe, Inc, Danaher, Illumina, Inc; Pacific Biosciences; Oxford Nanopore Technologies.; F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., and Myriad Genetics, Inc.

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For more information: Sarah Smith Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com Email: sarah@reportbuyer.com Tel: +1 (718) 213 4904 Website: http://www.reportbuyer.com

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-global-genomics-market-size-is-expected-to-reach-usd-27-61-billion-by-2025--300932801.html

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The global genomics market size is expected to reach USD 27.61 billion by 2025 - P&T Community

Happy Friday! Yours truly is back from beautiful Vietnam and it seems I missed one or two ahem minor news events while traipsing around.

I come bearing no souvenirs but rather two health reminders (one via Sen. Bernie Sanders). Firstly, dont forget your flu shot Australia has had an unusually early and severe season, which rarely bodes well for our own. The second comes in the form of a hard-earned lesson from a 2020 candidate: Dont ignore those heart attack warning signs! (This is especially directed at women, who are dying unnecessarily from cardiac events.)

Now enough mother-henning. (You missed me, didnt you?) On to the news of the week!

The Supremes are back in action, and a look at the high courts docket reveals a potentially doozy of a politically charged term (with rulings expected to land as the general election heats up in 2020).

In the health care sphere, a big case to watch is the Louisiana abortion suit. An essentially identical Texas law which requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals was ruled unconstitutional by the court in 2016, but that means little with two new justices appointed by President Donald Trump weighing in.

The New York Times: As the Supreme Court Gets Back to Work, Five Big Cases to Watch

Oral arguments in two other health-related cases were held this week. The justices grappled with the moral and legal complexities of the insanity defense. The case prompted questions such as this one from Justice Stephen Breyer: One defendant kills a victim he thinks is a dog. The second defendant knows its a person but thinks the dog told him to do it, Breyer said. They are both crazy. And why does Kansas say one is guilty, the other is not guilty?

The New York Times: Supreme Court Opens New Term With Argument on Insanity Defense

Tuesday was all about LGBTQ rights. Although most of the justices were divided along ideological lines on whether federal civil rights legislation applies to sexual orientation and gender identification, Justice Neil Gorsuch hinted his vote might be in play. As an avowed believer in textualism, he suggested that the words of Title VII are really close, really close to barring employment discrimination for those workers. But dont go placing bets on the outcome yet. He also noted that he was worried about the massive social upheaval that would follow such a Supreme Court ruling.

The New York Times: Supreme Court Considers Whether Civil Rights Act Protects L.G.B.T. Workers

On that note, the 2020 Democratic candidates participated in an LGBTQ forum on the eve of National Coming Out Day. There were a handful of notable moments through the night (including a zinger from Sen. Elizabeth Warren that was met with loud applause), but much of the spotlight was on protesters who demanded the candidates pay attention to violence against black transgender women. We are hunted, said one member of the audience.

CNN: Protesters Interrupt CNN LGBTQ Town Hall to Highlight Plight of Black Transgender Women

Elsewhere on the campaign trail this week, controversy over a pregnancy discrimination talking point from Warrens stump speech prompted women including Warren rival Sen. Amy Klobuchar to speak out on social media about their own and their mothers experiences.

NBC News: Women Rally in Support of Elizabeth Warren by Sharing Their Own Pregnancy Discrimination Stories

Sanders campaign confirmed that the health scare from last week was indeed a heart attack. The 2020 candidate who promised to return full blast to the race said he hopes people learn from his dumb mistake of ignoring the warning signs. In true politician-running-for-office style, he also was able to use the scare as a way to emphasize the importance of his signature policy proposal, Medicare for All.

Reuters: Democratic Presidential Hopeful Sanders Says He Was Dumb to Ignore Health Warnings

In a sign of whats to come for Big Pharma, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, one of the fields more moderate candidates, released a drug pricing plan that is decidedly not moderate. The move falls in line with a broader sense that theres an ever-growing appetite among even middle-ground Dems for action to rein in drugmakers.

Stat: Buttigieg Unveils an Aggressive Plan for Lowering Drug Prices

And for you political wonks out there, this was an interesting read on the shifting political dynamics of doctors, who once used to be a sure thing for the GOP.

The Wall Street Journal: Doctors, Once GOP Stalwarts, Now More Likely to Be Democrats

A key ruling on the health law is expected in the next few weeks, but officials (on condition of anonymity, mind you) said that if the ruling is against the ACA, the Trump administration will ask the court to put any changes on hold possibly until after the election. The reports further support the idea that the law, which has been, uh, politically fraught (to say the very least) over its entire life span, is at the moment viewed as an Achilles heel for Republicans.

The Washington Post: Trump Administration Plans to Delay Any Changes If the ACA Loses in Court

Two other major news items out of the administration this week to pay attention to:

The Associated Press: Trump Signs Proclamation Restricting Visas for Uninsured

The Associated Press: Overhaul Is Proposed for Decades-Old Medicare Fraud Rules

The first teenagers death in the outbreak of vaping-related lung illnesses drove home this week public health officials message that young people are playing with their lives when they partake. The number of cases jumped to 1,299 as of Oct. 8, with the number of deaths rising to 26.

The Wall Street Journal: New York Citys First Vaping-Related Death Is a Bronx Teen

Reuters: U.S. Vaping-Related Deaths Rise to 26, Illnesses to 1,299

Although Juul is facing a barrage of lawsuits, one filed this week was notable. It was believed to be the first from school districts, which claim that fighting the vaping epidemic has been a drag on their resources. While some legal experts are dubious about whether the school districts can establish their standing, others arent ruling it out.

The New York Times: Juul Is Sued by School Districts That Say Vaping Is a Dangerous Drain on Their Resources

And the ripple effect of the crisis is spreading to life insurance prices.

Bloomberg: Prudential Plans to Boost Life Insurance Prices for Vapers

Time for you to flex your ethical muscles for the week: Should there be boundaries to highly personalized medicine? A pricey drug designed and named for! just one patient sparked questions this week about how far researchers should go in the name of curing a single person. Especially when there are thousands of patients out there with rare diseases. Would only the wealthiest subset be given cures? Who would decide which patients deserve limited research hours over others?

The New York Times: Scientists Designed a Drug for Just One Patient. Her Name Is Mila.

And ProPublica shines a light on the practice of drug companies using flashy Facebook ads, cash incentives and other marketing techniques to woo Mexican residents over the border to donate plasma. Its not as innocuous as it might seem donating too much plasma can compromise the immune system. (Selling plasma has been banned in Mexico since 1987.)

ProPublica: Pharmaceutical Companies Are Luring Mexicans Across the U.S. Border to Donate Blood Plasma

In the miscellaneous file for the week:

The New York Times: One Doctor. 25 Deaths. How Could It Have Happened?

Los Angeles Times: Americans Increasingly Fear Violence From People Who Are Mentally Ill

The New York Times: When a Steady Paycheck Is Good Medicine for Communities

Stat: Sesame Street Launches Initiative to Help Explain Parental Addiction to Kids

The Associated Press: US Official: Research Finds Uranium in Navajo Women, Babies

The Washington Post: Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded for Discovery of How Cells Sense Oxygen

Thats it from me! Its good to be back with you guys, and I hope you have a great weekend!

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Must-Reads Of The Week From Brianna Labuskes - Kaiser Health News

Executive Summary

As care becomes more centered on the patient and the number of touchpoints and data inputs increases, care teams need a single pane view of the entire patient journey. In response, many health systems have begun to partner with a variety of CRM platforms such as Salesforce that have developed workflows and capabilities to meet the unique challenges of patient engagement and enable system-wide care traffic control. Bringing together data from parer apps and services, the platform gives the organization a shared view of the patient including medical history, insurance, scheduled appointments, preferences all in one place.

Hardly a day goes by without another new entrant declaring its foray into healthcare. Through a series of strategic acquisitions, Best Buy expanded from selling electronics and deploying its Geek Squad for repairs to providing home health services and remote monitoring. As the companys president suggested, achieving the goal of reducing healthcares spiraling costs will require some interesting new bedfellows.

Among these bedfellows is Lyft, which launched a healthcare-specific offering to reduce costly no-shows and remove transportation barriers for patients, especially those with chronic disease. Care teams can now order a ride in the same workflow as they do blood tests and, under some plans, have it covered by insurance. Then theres the explosion of apps, virtual consults and health chat bots making up the telemedicine market, which is expected to grow to $64 billion in the U.S. over the next five years.

What these trends point to is a dramatic expansion over the coming years of healthcares front door as the locus of care shifts from the hospital or clinic to patients themselves at work, home, or wherever their smartphones take them. Paired with a shift to value-based care and alignment of incentives to outcomes, this burst of innovation offers the promise of a more personalized approach to medicine focused on keeping patients well and out of the hospital, reducing overall cost of care. But it also brings with it some significant challenges that demand new approaches and safeguards.

Care traffic control

As care becomes more centered on the patient and the number of touchpoints and data inputs increases, care teams need a single pane view of the entire patient journey what John Halamka, executive director of the Health Technology Exploration Center of Beth Israel Lahey Health, has cleverly termed care traffic control. Orchestrating care and integrating data across an increasingly diverse and potentially virtualized care team requires new tools and what Halamka has called a new paradigm for team-based communication and wellness. Just as the retail industry has embraced knowledge sharing and omni-channel engagement through CRM platforms, so is healthcare recognizing the need for a coordinated approach to managing patient relationships.

In response, many health systems have begun to partner with a variety of CRM platforms that have developed workflows and capabilities to meet the unique challenges of patient engagement and enable system-wide care traffic control. For example, Piedmont Healthcare, a health system serving more than 2 million people across Georgia, partnered with Salesforce to help them deliver, engage and personalize care at scale. Bringing together data from partner apps and services, the platform gives the organization a shared view of the patient including medical history, insurance, scheduled appointments, preferences all in one place.

Piedmont care teams can get a more complete view of the patient by seeing medical history alongside information on employment, socioeconomic status, and other social determinants of health. In-home providers can access the same patient profiles to flag gaps around things like healthy food access or transportation that could land patients with chronic conditions back in the hospital. Armed with this data and the insights generated, outreach teams can send reminders or run targeted campaigns around things like nutrition classes to engage patients in more personalized ways. The ultimate goal is to deliver a more coordinated, tailored patient experience at a lower total cost of care.

While some might argue that EHRs can and should play this role of a unifying platform, most were never designed around patients and their full journey of care beyond the walls of a hospital or health system. Also, the average health system is challenged with integrating data and coordinating care across 18 different EHR systems across its various affiliated providers. A patient-relationship platform that sits atop these otherwise disconnected systems can provide a coordinated view of the patient journey thats otherwise sorely lacking.

Achieving the goal of truly personalized, patient-centered care still runs up against chronic and systemic interoperability challenges. But the expansion of digital health and the entry of Big Tech players such as Apple, Amazon and others have gradually shifted the calculus and created incentives for legacy EHR vendors and health systems to embrace a more open exchange of data. The rapid move across the industry to data-sharing via APIs using FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standards is a positive sign that the industrys information silos may finally be breaking down.

Navigating the healthcare data tsunami

Even with the right tools in place, coordinating patient care across an expanded and more diverse ecosystem will only get more challenging with the tsunami of data coming from these new sources. A recent International Data Corporation report predicts a 36% growth rate for healthcare data over the next five years, faster than in any other industry. With every month that passes, new smart medical devices appear and more app-using patients begin to monitor their health, expecting the resulting data to be sent to their doctors and EHRs. Early in 2019, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services responded with a proposed rule calling on the healthcare industry to take steps to give patients safe, secure access to, and control over, their healthcare data.

But what does this actually mean? With no certification process in place for medical apps, how are newly empowered patients to choose which are trustworthy and effective? Likewise, what criteria are providers to use for prescribing apps or accepting and validating the data coming from them? As John Torous, MD, director of digital psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, has demonstrated, we have yet to figure out how to conduct randomized trials for apps the way we do for drugs. Thus, its hard to distinguish apps with therapeutic benefit from those that are just marketing hype. Along with questions of validation come equally important questions of usability. For the data from a validated app or device to be usable, rules need to be written to separate a signal from the noise for example, what heart rate patterns from a remotely monitored CHF patient get ignored and which trigger an alert to the EHR. Much more work is needed to wrestle with these thorny issues in order to effectively translate clinical skills into digital care delivery.

Finally, as empowering as it sounds to give patients control over their data, we know all too well from recent breaches and scandals how this opens up their data to exploitation. A recent study of 24 of the top medical apps available on the market found that 79% shared user data in ways that might compromise privacy. As data moves into patient hands, the traditional role of the physician as trusted gatekeeper begins to break down. If you share health information with your physician, she has privacy obligations. If you share it with Alexa or Google Home, the same privacy rules dont apply. We need to educate patients to the risk versus reward of these technologies and evolve data privacy regulations to match new realities.

Healthcare is at an inflection point, awkwardly poised between traditional care delivery models with their benefits and well-documented shortcomings and a wave of new, exciting but largely untested offerings and interventions. A healthy dose of skepticism and vigilance is needed as companies and investors look to ride the wave and seize near-term rewards. But the promise of more personalized, patient-centered and outcomes-based healthcare is real, worthy, and within reach.

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How New Health Care Platforms Will Improve Patient Care - Harvard Business Review