StemCell Therapy

A Cantonment woman has been charged with animal cruelty after allegedly performing injections on cats and collecting dead animals.

Selena Dunlap, 21, was charged with felony unlicensed practice of veterinary medicine and cruelty to animals.

Escambia County Animal Control responded to a home in the 1300 block of Tate Road after receiving a reported that Dunlap was injecting cats with food.

An animal control officer reported that she could see a couple of cats and dogs inside the home. When she asked about a kitten, Dunlap and her roommates said it was inside the trailer. Eddins asked Dunlap to show her what they were injecting the cat with when Dunlap brought out a bottle of sodium chloride.

When the officer was invited inside to see a kitten, she noted that the home was filled with old food, trash, cigarette butts and a dog kennel covered in blankets. Dunlap was holding the kitten, according to an arrest report, and said she had been giving it sugar water, watered down milk and antibotics.

Dunlap showed the animal control officer a needle she said she bought online, and the officer observed a magazine on a table with the title Secrets To Being a Vet Tech.

The officer said the kitten was not able to hold its head up. It was taken to the Escambia County Animal Shelter for care. It later died.

The report adds back in October 2019, Dunlaps dad contacted animal control stating she was living in a tent in the woods and collected dead animals and had live animals as well. When animal control responded to Dunlaps tent, she stated she had seven dogs and eight cats. Puppies were found covered in fleas.

Animal control removed 12 animals from Dunlap and ordered her to bury the dead animals.

Dunlap remained in the Escambia County Jail with bond set at $6,000.

Continued here:
Animal Control: Cantonment Woman Gave Injections To Kitten That Died; Collected Dead Animals - NorthEscambia.com

Four years ago, a casual hallway conversation between Virginia Tech work buddies Brian Huddleston and Heather Parrish led them to embark on a life-transforming journey.

According to Huddleston, a support technician on the IT team at theVirginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, Heather and I were work friends. We didnt go to each others houses or know each others families. We talked when we saw each other, but that was about it. I think I once bought her a bag of chips from the vending machine.

In exchange, Parrish, formerly an administrative assistant at the veterinary college who now works at theInstitute for Policy and Governancein theCollege of Architecture and Urban Studies, gave Huddleston one of her kidneys hardly an even trade by any stretch of the imagination.

I remember Brian once mentioning that he had a genetic kidney disorder, said Parrish, who was concerned about her colleague at the time. Huddleston, however, assured her that the disease seemed to be under control.

Doctors had first noticed a problem with Huddlestons kidney function when he was a teenager, but for years, he was able to lead a normal life. The situation took a more serious turn four years ago when a routine checkup revealed worrying changes in Huddlestons kidney function. He altered his diet; and once again, the disease was brought to heel.

I was able to manage things for a long time by being careful, Huddleston said. Despite his best efforts, a bout of Henoch-Schonlein purpura, or HSP, a relatively common illness that typically affects children, sidelined him in early 2019. In most people, HSP resolves on its own after a few weeks, but because of Huddlestons already-compromised kidney function, the disease sent his body into a tailspin.

Kidneys filter out waste and release compounds that regulate the bodys bone health, blood pressure, and creation of red blood cells essential functions. Huddlestons kidneys had lost these crucial filtering abilities.

At that point, my kidneys were just useless bags of fluid, Huddleston said with characteristic wry humor. I was admitted to the hospital, and I started hemodialysis. Even after I was discharged, I had to spend three days a week hooked up to a machine just to stay alive.

The average life expectancy of a person on dialysis is about 10 years. Without a new kidney, the 41-year-old husband might not outlive his eight beloved rescue dogs and cats.

During his illness, Huddleston continued sharing updates on his Facebook page. By then, Parrish had left her job at the veterinary college, but she still stayed in touch with former colleagues through social media.

I saw people posting things on Brians page like Let me know if theres anything I can do to help, and I thought, There is something I can do. If Huddleston were going to survive, he didnt need cheery get-well cards or flowers: He needed a new kidney.

Through online research, Parrish discovered that, typically, more than 110,000 men, women, and children are on the national transplant waiting list and that more than 80 percent of those people are waiting for a new kidney. It was a long line, much too long for her liking.

Parrish reached out to the transplantation team at the University of Virginia (UVA) and began the arduous process of match testing. The early signs were good. Parrish and Huddleston shared a blood type and had compatible antibodies. Further testing revealed that Parrishs kidneys were in tip-top shape.

It was comforting to Parrish to know that even if she and Huddleston werent a match, her donation could start a donor chain allowing her kidney to be matched with someone else while another kidney could then be made available for Huddleston.

Working with Virginia Techs Human Resources, Parrish arranged for paid leave under the Bone Marrow/Organ Donor policy that provides time off to eligible employees donating bone marrow or an organ; in any calendar year, the policy also includes recuperation for up to 30 days. This additional leave, along with solid support from her boss, her co-workers, and her family, eased the way for surgery to be scheduled in March 2020.

Donors and their families do not pay for medical expenses associated with organ and tissue donation. And while much of Huddlestons care was covered by insurance, expenses such as ongoing visits to UVA and a hotel stay for his wife when he was hospitalized in Charlottesville were not.

The staff association at the veterinary college stepped in to help. This is just what we do, said Tami Quesenberry, a licensed veterinary technician who co-chaired a massive fundraising effort, including a goods and services auction that raised nearly $10,000 for Huddleston. The situation brought members of this great big veterinary family together like never before, she said.

Continue reading here:
All That and A Bag of Chips: VA Tech Employee Donates Kidney to Save Co-worker's Life - The Roanoke Star

Veterinary care in the field

The School of Veterinary Medicine was taking care of four-legged patients: more than 1,000 in the field and more than two dozen in the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. Officials said they are purposely trying to do most of their first aid in the field, because they are forced by the pandemic to limit hospital capacity.

On Aug. 25, the Veterinary Emergency Response Team deployed a four-person team one faculty veterinarian and two resident veterinarians, and one student on a search and rescue operation in the Vacaville foothills. The team also performed wellness examinations on animals sheltered in place.

At the campus hospital, the team has treated 11 alpacas, six goats, five horses, three llamas, three cats and two sheep.

Read more about the veterinary schools response to the wildfires.

UC Davis put out the welcome mat Friday, offering short-term emergency housing for campus affiliates including faculty, staff and registered students and their families who had been impacted by evacuations or lost their homes due to the wildfires.

For campus affiliates who need somewhere to stay until evacuation orders are lifted and they can return home, the university is offering stays of up to five days. For campus affiliates who have lost their homes, the university can help explore options for longer-term housing solutions.

UC Davis sustained losses, too, as the LNU Lightning Complex struck four of the universitys natural reserves: Quail Ridge, Stebbins Cold Canyon, Cahill Riparian Preserve and McLaughlin Natural Reserve, all in the vicinity of Lake Berryessa west of Davis.

With access limited, officials had not yet been able to assess the full extent of the damage to facilities and research projects. Shane Waddell, though, has seen some of what happened at Quail Ridge, where he is the reserve director. Fire claimed his home and eight tent cabins.

His family evacuated Aug. 19, while he stayed behind to monitor the fire. As the flames drew closer, he decided to leave but not until he had told his neighbors on the Quail Ridge peninsula it was time to depart for their own safety.

Peggy Fiedler, executive director of the UC Natural Reserve System, said UC reserve managers and stewards up and down the state had been absolutely heroic in their efforts to save life and property.

Read more about what happened at the UC Davis reserves and four other UC reserves.

Read more:
Responding to Record-Setting Wildfires - UC Davis

The University of Georgia once again posted new highs in research and development expenditures, nearly topping the $500 million mark and exceeding last years R&D total by almost 4%, illustrating the rapidly growing research enterprise at UGA.

Fueled by new advancements in infectious diseases, plant sciences, behavioral research, animal health, informatics and many other disciplines, UGA posted $495 million in R&D expenditures in fiscal year 2020, which ended June 30. For six of the past seven years, the university has reported annual increases in R&D, which has grown by 41% during that time.

UGA has focused strategically on growing its research enterprise through faculty hiring initiatives, capital projects dedicated to research (such as the ongoing effort to modernize and expand Science Hill, including the I-STEM Research Building currently under construction), and enhanced administrative support to faculty seeking external research funding.

Growing research and innovation is central to the mission of this university, and the future of the research enterprise at UGA has never been brighter, said President Jere W. Morehead. I am pleased that our strategic investments are paying off, and I look forward to the many life-saving and world-changing advancements that will result.

UGA faculty earned dozens of multi-million-dollar awards last year, including potentially the biggest in the universitys history. Ted Ross, a GRA Eminent Scholar and director of the Center for Vaccines and Immunology in the College of Veterinary Medicine, received a major NIH contract to develop a more effective flu vaccine. Establishing one of several prestigious and multi-institutional Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers, the contract is slated to be worth $130 million over seven years. Once the coronavirus pandemic hit, NIH directed Ross to expand the scope of this project to include the testing of potential COVID-19 vaccines, working with colleagues at both academic and industry labs.

UGA received other eight-figure awards in 2020 as well. Professor David Okech in the School of Social Work was awarded nearly $20 million from the U.S. Department of State to find ways to combat human trafficking. Distinguished Research Professor Jessie Kissinger in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences received two awards worth a combined $16 million to develop specialized health informatics databases.

These large awards complement thousands of other research grants and contracts, large and small, earned by faculty from across UGAs 17 schools and colleges, nearly a third of which received awards totaling more than $10 million.

The University of Georgias growth in external research funding demonstrates the increasing recognition of our faculty, nationally and internationally, said S.JackHu, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. In a broad range of fields and often working together across traditional academic disciplines, they are making a positive impact on our state and world.

UGA recently launched its Innovation District initiative in part to capitalize on the universitys research growth and provide new pathways for discoveries to reach the public. In each of the past six years, UGA has been a Top 5 university for the number of new products brought to market. UGA now ranks No. 10 in the nation for innovation impact as measured by the George W. Bush Institute/Opus Faveo Innovation Development.

UGA faculty have made significant progress in expanding their externally funded research activities, which allows us to better serve the citizens of Georgia and the world, said David Lee, vice president for research. I congratulate the faculty on their continuing progress. To maximize the impact of our growing research engine, the university has invested in the expertise and resources to bring new discoveries to market whenever that is appropriate, and the Innovation District is an exciting new example.

See more here:
UGA nears $500M in R&D expenditures in record-breaking year - University of Georgia

Richland WA, Sept. 03, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vivos Inc. (OTCQB: RDGL), Vivos Inc is pleased to announce today that it is expanding Isopet into the equine market by making IsoPet available to treat solid tumors in horses. The most common tumors are equoids and sarcomas. This is an important expansion of Vivos business plan.

Our regional clinic in the state of Missouri for IsoPet therapy has agreed to expand into IsoPet therapy on solid tumors in horses. The initial few therapies will be subsidized, while we fine-tune the details of the treatment technique, but we are confident that IsoPet will be the best option available to treat these tumors.

Dr. Mike Korenko stated, Treating large tumors in large animal is a special challenge, but with our experience on large tumors in small animals we have the data necessary to proceed to this next step. This is a potentially lucrative market as Isopet provides a highly differentiated treatment alternative for horses suffering with solid tumors.

About Vivos Inc. (OTCQB: RDGL)

Vivos Inc. has developed an Yttrium-90 based injectable brachytherapy device, for the treatment of tumors in animals (Isopet) and in humans (Radiogel). Brachytherapy uses highly localized radiation to destroy cancerous tumors by placing a radioactive isotope directly inside the treatment area using the companys proprietary hydrogel technology. The injection delivers therapeutic radiation from within the tumor without the entrance skin dose and associated side effects of treatment that characterize external-beam radiation therapy. This feature allows safe delivery of higher doses needed for treating both non-resectable and radiation-resistant cancers.

Radiogel is a hydrogel liquid containing tiny yttrium-90 phosphate particles that may be administered directly into a tumor. The hydrogel is an yttrium-90 carrier at room temperature that gels within the tumor interstitial spaces after injection to keep the radiation sources safely in place. The short-range beta radiation from yttrium-90 localizes the dose within the treatment area so that normal organs and tissues are not adversely affected.

Radiogel also has a short half-life delivering more than 90% of its therapeutic radiation within 10 days. This compares favorably to other available treatment options requiring up to six weeks or more to deliver a full course of radiation therapy. Therapy can be safely administered as an out-patient procedure and the patient may return home without subsequent concern for radiation dose to family members. The Isopet Solutions division is using university veterinary hospitals to demonstrate the safety and therapeutic effectiveness for different animal cancers. Testing on feline sarcoma at the Washington State University was completed in 2018 and testing on canine soft tissue sarcomas at the University of Missouri was completed in 2019. In February of 2020, we announced the University of Missouri Veterinary Health Center will serve as a regional clinic for Isopet.

In 2018 the Company obtained confirmation from the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine that Isopet is classified as a medical device according to its intended use and means by which it achieves its intended purpose. The FDA also reviewed the product labeling which included canine and feline sarcomas as the initial indications for use. The FDA does not require pre-market approval for veterinary devices so no additional approval was required for treating skin cancer, which is the largest market sector. Following the demonstration phase, Vivos is able to generate revenue through the sale of Isopet to University animal hospitals and private veterinary clinics.

Isopet for treating animals uses the same technology as RadioGel for treating humans. The Food and Drug Administration advised using different product names in order to avoid confusion and cross-use.

Safe Harbor Statement

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by the use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimates," "projects," "intends," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the Company's ability to successfully execute its expanded business strategy, including by entering into definitive agreements with suppliers, commercial partners and customers; general economic and business conditions, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, delays in completing various engineering and manufacturing programs, changes in customer order patterns, changes in product mix, continued success in technical advances and delivering technological innovations, shortages in components, production delays due to performance quality issues with outsourced components, regulatory requirements and the ability to meet them, government agency rules and changes, and various other factors beyond the Company's control.

CONTACT:

Vivos Inc.Michael K. Korenko, Sc.D.President & CEOMKorenko@RadioGel.com

See the original post here:
Vivos Inc Initiates IsoPet Therapy of Horses Addressing Unmet Need for the Treatment of Equine Tumors - GlobeNewswire

In an effort to safeguard the health and safety of all during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI) has transformed its annual Pet Night on Capitol Hill to a virtual week-long event. Now called Pet Week on Capitol Hill, the event will take place Sept. 8-10.

Pets have become even more important during the coronavirus pandemic, said Steven Feldman, executive director of HABRI. Pet Week on Capitol Hill will feature conversations with members of Congress and pet care leaders about the importance of pet ownership in America.

The first night will include a session about the importance of pets in America, presented by Feldman and Mark Cushing, author of Pet Nation: The Love Affair That Changed America.

The session, Lifesaving Pet-Related Legislation: A Discussion of Important Initiatives That Will Help Keep Pets and People Safe, Healthy and Happy Together, will take place the following day on Sept. 9. Presenters include Kurt Venator, DVM, Ph.D., chief veterinary officer at Nestl Purina PetCare; Nicole Forsyth, president and CEO of RedRover; and Nicole Lanahan, executive director of Got Your Six Support Dogs.

Also taking place that evening is the session One Health Act: The Role of Veterinary Medicine in Preventing Future Pandemics, presented by Representative Kurt Schrader (OR-5).

On Sept. 10, Steven King, president and CEO of American Pet Products Association (APPA), and Dave Bolen, industry specialist at Graham Partners, will present Pet Ownership and Pet Industry Economics in the Post-COVID World.

Following, Susanne Kogut, president of the Petco Foundation, will present COVID-19 Impact on Pet Fostering and Adoption. The Animal Health Institute (AHI) will then present Cutest Pets on Capitol Hill: Honoring the Cutest Congressional Companions from Both Sides of the Aisle.

We plan to be back with Pet Night on Capitol Hill next year to celebrate in person with the pets that we love so much, Feldman said. Until then, we hope that virtual Pet Week will be helpful, and that all of the participating pet care organizations will serve as valuable resources for our friends on Capitol Hill.

Details on Pet Week on Capitol Hill can be found here.

Read more on PPN's coverage of this topic:

Continue reading here:
Pets to Take on Capitol Hill in Virtual Week-Long Event - PetProductNews.com

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK With $814,714 in initial federal funding,RTI InternationalandDuke Universitys Human Vaccine Institutewill collaborate in a global project to identify viruses and other pathogens in wildlife that could cause disease in people, such as the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

RTI and Duke will operate the Coordinating Center for 10 other newly established Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases(CREID), sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

The agency awarded 11 grants with a total first-year value of about $17 million to establish the centers and will provide about $82 million over five years to support them.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic serves as a potent reminder of the devastation that can be wrought when a new virus infects humans for the first time, said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. The CREID network will enable early warnings of emerging diseases wherever they occur, which will be critical to rapid responses. The knowledge gained through this research will increase our preparedness for future outbreaks.

CREID will be part of global network of multidisciplinary investigations into how and where viruses and other pathogens emerge from wildlife and cross into humans to cause disease.

Each center in the network will involve collaborations with peer institutions in the United States and 28 other countries. Research projects will include surveillance studies to identify previously unknown causes of febrile (fever-creating) illnesses in humans; find the animal sources of viral or other disease-causing pathogens; and determine which genetic or other changes make these pathogens capable of infecting humans.

CREID investigators also will develop reagents and diagnostic assays to improve detection of emerging pathogens and study human immune responses to new or emerging infectious agents.

The breadth of research projects in the CREID network will allow for study of disease spillover in multiple phases of the process: where pathogens first emerge from an animal host; at the borders between wild and more populated areas, where human-to-human transmission occurs; and, finally, in urban areas, where epidemic spread can occur.

Each CREID center will focus efforts on one or more regions of the world. In Central and South America, for example, studies will include investigations of several arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) including the ones that cause Zika virus disease, chikungunya and dengue. In East and Central Africa, focus pathogens will include Rift Valley fever virus and the coronavirus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome. In West Africa, in addition to arboviruses, projects are slated on Ebola virus and Lassa virus. In Asia and Southeast Asia, investigators will conduct research on coronaviruses and arboviruses.

In every region, investigators will be poised to study any newly emerging pathogen, dubbed pathogen X.

The CREID Coordinating Center run by RTI and Duke will support network-wide activities such as data management, outbreak research response and quality control for biospecimens, assays and reagents. It will also administer a pilot research program for early career investigators.

The principal investigators for the CREID Coordinating Center will be Donald Brambilla, Ph.D., of RTI and Tony Moody, M.D., of Dukes School of Medicine.

Our ability to support rapid and efficient research response to an emerging infectious disease outbreak is paramount to shortening the duration and reducing morbidity and mortality, said Brambilla, senior research statistician at RTI.

Moody, associate professor of pediatrics at Duke, said, During the past six months, weve seen the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe. By creating and supporting an infrastructure that allows rapid response to infectious disease outbreaks by researchers and by leveraging what we have learned and are learning from research organizations across the globe, we aim to shorten future outbreaks.

As the operational hub for the CREID Network, the RTI-Duke Coordinating Center team offers expertise in supporting administration and management of data and scientific programs, according to the CREID website. The CREID CC has extensive experience in international outbreak research response, including field experience responding to complex outbreaks.

The RTI-Duke team will also maintain and grow existing relationships with domestic and international collaborators, including Ministries of Health and local research institutions, according to the website. Additionally, the team will facilitate and coordinate relevant outreach to engage new partners.

The RTI-Duke team will support 10 CREID centers based at Scripps Research Institute; EcoHealth Alliance; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine; Washington State University; Institut Pasteur; University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston; University of Washington, Seattle; Washington University School of Medicine; and the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston.

(C) N.C. Biotech Center

Read the original:
RTI, Duke team up to identify threats like coronavirus in wildlife that might affect humans - WRAL Tech Wire

Science's COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation

Vacationers on the beach in Tamariu, on Spain's Costa Brava, on 17 August.

We're at risk of gambling away our success, virologist Christian Drosten warned in the German newspaper Die Zeit earlier this month. His message referred to Germany, but it could have been addressed to all of Europe. After beating back COVID-19 in the spring, most of Europe is seeing a resurgence. Spain is reporting close to 10,000 cases a day, more than it had at the height of the outbreak in the spring. France is back to reporting thousands of cases a day. In Germany, numbers are still low, but rising steadily. The pandemic is affecting countries that saw few cases in the spring, such as Greece and Malta, but is also rebounding in places that suffered terribly, including the cities of Madrid and Barcelona.

Drosten, of the Charit University Hospital in Berlin, is one of many calling for renewed vigilance, and he and others are urging a new control strategy that trades blanket lockdowns for measures specifically targeting clusters of cases, which play a key role in spreading the coronavirus. We successfully aborted the [first] wave and now we should make sure that no new wave builds, epidemiologist Christian Althaus of the University of Bern says.

Few dispute that Europe rose to the initial challenge. In Bergamo, the capital of Italy's Lombardy region, crematoria were so overburdened in March that army trucks had to transport the dead to other citiesbut on 24 May, Lombardy registered zero COVID-19 deaths for the first time. By early July, the European Union and the United Kingdom together averaged fewer than 5000 new cases per day, whereas the United States and Brazil (which together have roughly the same population) had 50,000 and 40,000, respectively. Europeans enjoyed a surprisingly normal summer, with northern Europeans flocking to Mediterranean beaches.

The rising case numbers today aren't quite comparable to the peak in April because countries are now testing far more people on a daily basis. But the increase shows that Europe relaxed measures too early and too much, says virologist Ab Osterhaus of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hanover, Germany. The wrong message was given, basically: We have done a great job and now we can relax again. Instead, Europe could have tried to emulate New Zealand by stopping community transmission completely and zealously guarding against reintroductions, says Devi Sridhar, a global health expert at the University of Edinburgh who has been advising the Scottish government. Scotland committed early on to pushing case numbers down to zero, but other countries did not, and now almost all are seeing a resurgence.

People's willingness to stay alert and remember new rules wanes quickly, says Cornelia Betsch, a psychologist at the University of Erfurt who has been monitoring attitudes toward the pandemic in Germany. And we have been going for a while now, and the end is not even clear. Some countries saw workplace infections rise as people returned to their offices, says Gianfranco Spiteri, a public health expert at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. But in many countries the resurgence is driven by young people partying and basically people living their life back in a kind of normal way, he says. Because new cases are younger, fewer of them die, but it's a matter of time before the elderly are affected, Spiteri says. The reopening of schools across the continent may make matters worse.

As in the spring, every country has its own strategies for controlling the pandemic, leading to a sometimes confusing patchwork. Belgium has one of the strictest face mask policies, for instance, but Belgians crossing the Dutch border to shop in Maastricht can take off their masks. Even within countries, the rules can change at dizzying speed. Germany went from a mandatory 14-day quarantine for people arriving from countries considered risky to voluntary tests at the airport and other entry points, with no quarantine for those who tested negative. Next, it made the tests mandatory, then returned to mandatory quarantine with testing after 5 days. What would be necessary is that we define one central policy in Europe, Osterhaus says. The problem is, who is going to do that? The European Union has little power to coordinate health measures.

Yet countries are better prepared this time. Whereas the virus spread largely under the radar in February, widespread testing now reveals its movements. (Fewer than 3% of tests are positive in most European countries, a sign of a healthy testing capacity.) Face masks, not available or even recommended in the beginning, have become ubiquitous in most countries. More than a dozen EU countries have developed apps to help contact tracing efforts. Better treatments are saving lives.

Meanwhile, new insights into viral spread are leading to better targeted control measures. The emphasis on hand hygiene is gone because it has become clear that contaminated surfaces don't play a large role. In the spring, some countries banned almost any outdoor activity, including jogging; now, the focus is on indoor activities. We've learned outdoor hospitality is generally fine, nonessential shops are fine as long as people wear face coverings, public transport doesn't seem that risky, Sridhar says.

Instead, public health experts increasingly argue for targeting clusters of cases and superspreading events. Some studies estimate that 10% of patients cause 80% of all infections, whereas most don't infect anybody at all (Science, 22 May, p. 808). Drosten has urged that contact tracers spend more time finding the source of a new casealong with that person's contactsthan the new case's contacts; after all, the patient may not infect anybody else, but is likely to have caught the virus as part of a cluster, Drosten says.

Adam Kucharski, a disease modeler at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, agrees. Looking backwards can actually give you a disproportionate benefit in terms of identifying infections, he says. In a recent preprint, Kucharski and his colleagues estimated that backward contact tracing could prevent twice as many infections as tracing contacts forward alone. Experience in South Korea, where clusters at churches drove the epidemic early on, confirmed the value of this approach, says University of Florida biostatistician Natalie Dean.

Putting more effort into finding clusters should also help epidemiologists understand where and how they emerge, says Hitoshi Oshitani of Tohoku University in Japanwhich may have changed since the spring. We've seen a massive change in the social structure and interactions of populations from the start of the pandemic, Kucharski says. The conditions that spread the virus then won't necessarily be the same ones that are creating the risk now. In Germany, for instance, many large outbreaks early in the pandemic occurred in long-term care facilities. Now, clusters are increasingly reported from workplaces.

More-targeted measures probably won't be enough to keep the virus from resurging, Althaus says. A point will be reached again where stricter measures have to be taken, he says. But rather than complete lockdowns, he assumes they will be more like the lighter version applied in Sweden, which encouraged people to work from home and banned large gatherings while keeping shops and restaurants open. Scotland recently closed pubs and restaurants in Aberdeen for more than 2 weeks after a cluster of cases emerged; it asked inhabitants not to travel more than 8 kilometers outside the city and visitors to stay away. But schools remained open.

Compared with the United States, Europe has one advantage as it faces its first pandemic winter: Control measures aren't nearly as controversial. Protests against masks and social distancing broke out in many European cities in August, but they represented a small minority of the population, Betsch says. In Germany, support for control measures declined somewhat after infections peaked in spring, but a large majority still backs them, Betsch says. And with case numbers back on the rise, she says, We can already see acceptance numbers go up again.

Link:
Can Europe tame the pandemic's next wave? - Science

Clarksville, TN In January 2020, Dr. Ozzie Di Paolo Harrison, Austin Peay State University (APSU) professor of Spanish, had a busy summer of travel planned. He was set to take a group of students to Argentina for a study abroad trip hed led for years, and later he intended to teach for the Mximo Nivel Institute in Costa Rica.

Austin Peay State University professors (Top L to R) Dr. Sergei Markov, Di Paolo Harrison and Dr. John Steinberg. (APSU)

It was a great time to be involved in international education, with Austin Peay State University offering dozens of opportunities for students to travel and learn in different cultures around the globe. In 2018, more than 175 Austin Peay State University students took advantage of these opportunities.

Then the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic hit. On March 6th, Austin Peay State University issued a moratorium on international travel. Austin Peay State Universitys Study Abroad programs came to an abrupt halt, ending Di Paolo Harrisons summer plans, and six months later, the future of these trips remains uncertain.

It was a real disappointment that this pandemic erased the possibility to take my students to Argentina, Di Paolo Harrison said. You can imagine how sad it was to see all of that collapse in no time. Along with Professors Jenna Campbell Field and Brandon Di Paolo Harrison, we are working on the budget for the upcoming year. Hopefully, we will be able to take our students to South America next summer.

The group is hosting Zoom meetings to promote study abroad programs in accounting, English and Spanish, and they already have students who have rolled their applications from summer 2020 to summer 2021. But Di Paolo Harrison is also hoping to revive interest in study abroad and remind the community of its value with the release of the second issue of Austin Peay State Universitys study abroad journal Explore Your World.

I enjoy being part of this magazine because it clearly documents the experiences of the study abroad participants, and it allows them to express themselves creatively about their encounters away from home, he said.

In 2017, Dr. Sergei Markov, Austin Peay State University professor of biology, asked Di Paolo Harrison and Dr. John Steinberg, APSU professor of history, to join him on a University Student Academic Success Initiative grant to develop an academic and literary journal.

The first issue, released in 2018, featured essays, poems, paintings and short fiction inspired by students experiences. The powerful creative work demonstrated the transformative power of these trips.

I think that studying abroad,without a doubt,will open new horizons for students, burst the studentself-confidenceand create new life opportunities for them, Markov said. Some of my former study abroad students volunteered for the Peace Corps in Mali (West Africa), worked for the refugee agency in Egypt, studied medicine in Saint Martin Caribbean School of Medicine and learned veterinary medicine in Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine in Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean too.

The three professors wanted the journal to focus on the student experience, so they appointed an editorial staff of study abroad participants to oversee all aspects of its creation. This issues student editorial team included Amy Hotchkin, Jamie Hotchkin, Kasey Burns and Samantha Melber.

Studying Abroad in Argentina was a vital part of my college experience, Amy Hotchkin said. After my first trip, I changed my major to Spanish. It made such an impact that I went a second time! I have now graduated from Austin Peay and teach high school Spanish at Clarksville Academy. I believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that we must encourage students to participate in Study Abroad programs, as soon as it is safe to do so, to promote growth and greater cultural understanding.

Kevin Bouma, an APSU student serving on the editorial board for the upcoming third issue, said traveling abroad helped him cope with his anxiety.

Forcing myself outside my comfort bubble has allowed me to become calmer and more open-minded, he said. On another note, traveling to another country is another type of education. Students spend years studying books, lectures and notes, but nothing compares to the opportunity to learn from others within their area of living. When I traveled to Belize, I not only learned about all the sea life, but I had the opportunity to literally jump in and experience it for myself.

Markov originally planned to spend some of his upcoming winter break in Belize, leading the Austin Peay State Universitys marine biology trip to that country, but the pandemic canceled that trip as well.

I am just now realizing how much I am going to miss these study abroad trips with students, he said. There are really two opportunities for me to interact closely with my students: study abroad trips and research. Both of these activities are life-changing.

Steinberg, director of Austin Peay State Universitys Poland Study Abroad program, offered this thought: Everyone should participate in Study Abroad! Going to any place in the world under the guidance and supervision of an APSU professor provides students with the opportunity to not only see, observe and experience other cultures and civilization, it also teaches them about diversity, ethnicity and tolerance. Such encounters will better prepare them to understand the world and make educated decisions about their future and their place in the 21stcentury world.

Steinberg intends to take another group to Poland next summer if the pandemic will allow the restoration of international travel.

To submit work, receive a copy of the current issue or for information on studying abroad, contact the APSU professors at *protected email*, *protected email* or *protected email*.

Related Stories

See original here:
Austin Peay State University student journal to remind post-COVID world of the need for studying abroad - Clarksville Online

Americas Seed Fund focuses on next-generation research, development

UGA entrepreneurs working on advanced technologies soon will have an opportunity to connect directly with the countrys largest source of early-stage funding.

The University of Georgias Innovation Gateway is hosting the U.S. Small Business Administrations Regional Small Business Innovation Research Weekvirtuallybeginning Sept. 14. It will provide a rare opportunity for innovators, researchers, entrepreneurs, technology companies and small businesses in the Southeast to connect directly with managers of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs.

Also known as Americas Seed Fund, the SBIR/STTR programs provide more than $3.7 billion in funding annually to small businesses focused on next-generation research and development.

Last year, UGA startup companies received more than $7.3 million in SBIR/STTR funding.

SBIR Virtual Weeks play an important role building greater networks to support the creation of small businesses across the country. The focus is on high-impact research and drawing attention to underserved regions, rural innovative communities, and underrepresented minority researchers and innovators who experience greater barriers to funding access.

These virtual activities coordinated by SBA can be leveraged by technology-based entrepreneurs and businesses in Athens and across the region to access highly competitive R&D funding, said Ian Biggs, director of startups in Innovation Gateway.

The two-day virtual event features programming designed to advance the commercialization of new technologies. On Sept. 14, SBIR/STTR program managers will take part in targeted panels, discuss technology areas and share firsthand insights into how federal agencies make funding decisions. On Sept. 17, the managers will conduct one-on-one virtual meetings with entrepreneurs and small businesses in Georgia wishing to move their technologies into the marketplace.

Innovation Gateway will host a pre-event virtual workshop on Sept. 11 to help attendees prepare for their meetings with program managers, who administer over 5,500 new SBIR/STTR awards annually. Registration for that workshop is now open.

Every year, we meet entrepreneurs from around the country looking to turn their big idea into another great American innovation story. We are committed to supporting Americas small businesses owners, wherever they are, said John Williams, director of innovation and technology for SBAs Office of Investment and Innovation. This virtual tour reflects our continued commitment to ensuring that these innovators are aware of SBAs resources to help them reach that goal.

A $20 deposit for registration is required and will be refunded after the event. To register, please visit: https://research.uga.edu/gateway/researchers/startups/sbir

See the article here:
UGA to host virtual Innovation Research Week - University of Georgia

The University of California, Davis, set a new record for external research funding in fiscal year 2019-20, receiving $941.2 million in awards, a $94.5 million increase from the previous record set in 2018.

The awards reflect a broad range of critical work, from therapies for pancreatic cancer and disability research to new online learning platforms and tackling issues related to climate change, such as wildfire smoke and the spillover of zoonotic diseases.

This new record validates how UC Davis is sought more than ever to find solutions for the worlds most critical issues, Chancellor Gary S. May said. During these historic times, our collaborative research community is eager to make breakthroughs in health, environmental sustainability, education and so much more.

The largest increases in funding compared to the previous year were in the College of Engineering (up $60 million), Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing (up $40 million) and College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (up $29 million). (Reports are based on the principal investigators school or college.)

UC Davis researchers also applied their unique areas of expertise to tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. More than two dozen grants totaling $2.4 million were awarded during fiscal year 2019-20, which ended June 30.

COVID-19 grants have funded multiple clinical trials and the development of novel vaccine strategies, as well as launching new studies on poverty and social distancing, the impact of online learning, community spread and mitigation measures, and predicting potential mutations of the virus, among others.

Our researchers eagerness and ability to quickly respond to the pandemic is a testament to their passion and mission-driven focus to provide critical insight and solutions that help our global community, said Prasant Mohapatra, vice chancellor for research. Right from the onset of the pandemic, we witnessed an inspiring level of collaboration across different areas of expertise, including between the School of Medicine and researchers on the campus in Davis.

In general, the level of research funding associated with cross-disciplinary research units, where experts from different fields of study collaborate on projects, has been one of the fastest growing segments over the last five years climbing 162 percent. One of these units, the California National Primate Research Center, received a $3.8 million award to develop a model to study early Alzheimers disease. Another, the Air Quality Research Center, received $3.75 million for the assessment and mitigation of wildfire-induced air pollution.

The federal government remains the top funder for research at UC Davis, making up half the total awards with a slight increase to $477 million in total grants. Funding from the National Institutes of Health was the highest funder at $251.5 million, with awards from the National Science Foundation totaling $44.7 million and awards from the U.S. Department of Agriculture totaling$39.7 million.

State funding rose slightly to $132 million, with $53.7 million in research funding from the Department of Transportation, $34.5 million from the Department of Food and Agriculture and $22.1 million from the Resources Agency.

UC Davis also saw significant increases from other funders, including a $37.5 million increase in foundation funding for a total of $47.5 million; a $25.7 million increase in other government funding totaling $45.6 million; and an $11 million increase in business funding, which totaled $85.4 million in awards for fiscal year 2019-20.

Where funds are awarded up-front to cover several years, the money is counted in the first year the award was received. Incrementally funded awards are counted as authorized in each year.

Research enabled by this funding not only helps to better understand and solve issues facing our society, but also leads to new innovations, products and startup companies each supporting economic growth. Over the last fiscal year, 15 emerging startups licensed foundational technology developed at UC Davis. Researchers also submitted 141 invention disclosures and were awarded 89 domestic and foreign patents that same year.

See the original post:
UC Davis Sets Record With $941 Million in Research Funding - UC Davis

As Labor Day weekend nears, Colorado State University is urging the university community to keep social gatherings small.

Its all part of an ongoing campaign to encourage the community to practice public health behaviors amidst COVID-19. Launched in August, the campaign features print and digital messaging across all university campuses with an illustrated CAM the Ram demonstrating the behaviors.

The latest thrust of the campaign shows CAM interacting with a small group of people. The campaigns first installment focused on how face coverings can help slow the spread of COVID-19, pulling data from a July survey that found 91% of students are motivated to practice health behaviors.

Jenn JR Rieskamp, community liaison specialist between Off-Campus Life at CSU and Neighborhood Services at the City of Fort Collins, has first-hand experience seeing students practicing health behaviors. Looking back at the past six months, Rieskamp said off-campus students have generally done a good job of keeping gatherings small.

Ive gone on ride-alongs with Fort Collins police officers, Rieskamp said, and Ive seen students doing the right things.

Cody Frye, executive director of Campus Recreation, has seen similar instances on campus.

While Frye hasnt been on campus in the evenings as much as in previous years, he said he hasnt seen the large groups of students playing sports on the intramural fields, just a couple of small groups playing catch. Typically in the first week of classes, wed see the fields full of drop-in sport groups, he said.

More here:
CSU community encouraged to keep gatherings small - Source

The company is to invest 3.4m (around US$4.5m) alongside the grant.

The funds will support research into the manufacturing challenges associated with scaling gene therapies for widespread patient access, to further develop technologies to improve the safety and efficacy of current therapies, and to enable the treatment of genetic diseases with more complicated disease pathways the industry is not yet able to address.

Along with the creation of 11 new jobs in Edinburgh, the developer said it will further enhance its Pro10 platform, an AAV manufacturing process that can be scaled and applied throughout the group.

The grant will also advance development of the tool kit of inducible, repressible, tunable and responsive expression cassettes to be adopted in the current clinical pipeline and new disease targets.

Gene therapy has the potential to treat a wide range of diseases including certain forms of muscular dystrophy, congestive heart failure and some diseases of the central nervous system but, at present, only two market-approved therapies are available.

David Venables, president, AskBio Europe, commented: The grant awarded by Scottish Enterprise supports AskBio in working towards developing even safer and more effective gene therapies through improved development and manufacturing techniques. Science and innovation keep progressing, and that makes this an exciting time to develop this type of therapeutic agent.

AskBios technology is inside both currently approved AAV gene therapies, which include Luxturna, developed by Spark Therapeutics, for the treatment of patients with inherited retinal disease, and Zolgensma, developed by AveXis, for the treatment of patients with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

AveXis licenses AskBios self-complementary DNA technology for Zolgensma.

While the promise of such therapies is being shown, significant barriers remain before gene therapies can become more broadly impactful, according to AskBio.

With global headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and European headquarters in Edinburgh, UK, AskBio has generated hundreds of proprietary third generation AAV capsids and promoters, several of which have entered clinical testing.

BioPharma-Reporter (BPR) spoke to Ken Macnamara, (KM), PhD, chief operating officer, AskBio Europe,to get the AAV developers take on the factors preventing gene therapy going mainstream.

BPR: What criteria did AskBio have to fulfill to be awarded this grant?

KM: The research must be highly novel with significant risk from which a successful outcome will accelerate business growth within Scotland and globally.

BPR: What are the current manufacturing challenges associated with scaling gene therapies for widespread patient access?

KM: As we see growing evidence that gene therapy is a viable, transformational medicine, along with an acceleration in the number of AAV therapeutics moving towards regulatory approval, the ability to manufacture these therapies for diseases with large patient populations does not exist today and costs are extremely high.

Many companies can manufacture small batches of therapeutics for clinical applications, but as they approach commercialization, the challenges of production costs and timelines remain an issue. We recognized this more than a decade ago and focused on creating robust, scalable manufacturing capabilities.

Today, the challenges for manufacturing gene therapy are being met by simply adding large amounts of capacity, which is not the long-term answer. There is a significant amount of innovation taking place that will no doubt shape the future of manufacturing AAV gene therapeutics. This work continues today in our Edinburgh and US facilities to further improve the technology.

BPR: What are some of the typical safety and efficacy issues linked to current therapies?

KM: Currently approved gene therapies have provided effective therapy by targeting tissues in the body with an administered gene that produces a new, effective protein. This new gene replaces the defective or missing gene causing the patients underlying disease.

Because the techniques are relatively new, some of the risks may be unpredictable; however, medical researchers, institutions, and regulatory agencies are working to ensure that gene therapy research is as safe as possible.

AAV is not known to cause human disease, and it cannot make more of itself without outside help, so it will not replicate in the body like normal viruses do. AAV is engineered to carry therapeutic genes by removing some of its genetic cargo and replacing it with human gene sequences. This results in an AAV vector, a therapeutic genetic medicine.

Risks associated with AAV gene therapy vector administration include unwanted immune system reactions. The body's immune system may see the newly introduced AAV vectors as intruders and attack them, which may cause inflammation and, in severe cases could be local and mild or throughout a greater area of the body and be more serious. AAV vectors can also target tissues other than the intended tissue. Thus, it's possible that AAV vectors may affect additional cells, not just the targeted cells containing mutated genes. These are called off-target effects. If this happens, healthy cells may be damaged.

BPR: Can you indicate the other significant barriers that remain before gene therapies can become more broadly impactful?

KM: Therapies need to express the gene in the right tissue, at the right level, for the right amount of time. There is a great deal of research happening throughout the gene therapy field to identify the best means of delivering and controlling activation of the genetic material. Furthermore, the response of the patients immune system also needs to be considered based on the therapy. Additional funding, like that from Scottish Enterprise, can help speed up the development process of promising therapies.

BPR: How does AskBio envisage exploring the treatment of genetic diseases with more complicated disease pathways that the industry is not yet able to address?

KM: One of the most exciting advances in modern medicine has been the discovery of how AAV vectors can be used as an effective delivery system for therapeutic genetic material into living tissue. AAV gene therapy has broad therapeutic implications for a vast array of diseases.

Some genetic diseases are caused by mutations in a single gene, while others are a result of mutations in multiple genes, for example, cancer. Additionally, environmental factors, such as smoking and diet, can play a role in diseases. The complexity of these disease characteristics creates variables in developing and testing potential treatments. Currently the gene and cell therapy options that exist today are limited to treating diseases caused by a single gene mutation.

AskBios Edinburgh team leads the gene therapy field in the design and development of synthetic gene expression cassettes. The technology is essential for controlling the expression of AAV therapeutics, thereby improving their safety and efficacy. This R&D project will enable AAV therapeutics to be turned on and off and dialed up or down depending on the amount of drug needed at any given time. This technology provides a desired safety switch and level of variable dosing that previously did not exist. Before this breakthrough, AAV therapeutics could only express at one constant level and could not be turned off, which limited the type of therapeutics for which AAV could be used and may hold the key to treating pathway diseases where multiple genes are affected.

BPR: On the job creation front, is the talent already hired or are you starting a recruitment drive?

KM: The grant allows us to make some positions permanent and bring in new talent.

Ken Macnamara joined AskBio in 2019 with a wealth of R&D, business operations, financial planning, intellectual property and quality/compliance experience gained from start-up to multinational firms. He most recently was COO at Synpromics.

Dr Macnamara began his career at the University of Edinburgh, where he earned a PhD in chemistry before helping to start Lab901 (Scottish SME). There, he was a product development manager responsible for developing the TapeStation and ScreenTape technologies from concept to market success. Lab901 was acquired by Agilent Technologies in 2011. Dr Macnamara then served as R&D director for the Microfluidics business at Agilent.

Read more:
Reducing barriers to mainstream gene therapy - BioPharma-Reporter.com

Paula Cannon. (USC Photo/Richard Carrasco)

An HIV research program led by scientists at USC and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle has received a five-year, $14.6million grant from the National Institutes of Health. The team is advancing a gene therapy approach to control the virus without the need for daily medicines.

The programs co-directors are Paula Cannon, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and Hans-Peter Kiem, MD, PhD, the Stephanus Family Endowed Chair for Cell and Gene Therapy at Fred Hutch. Other key partners are David Scadden, MD, a professor at Harvard University, and the biotechnology company Magenta Therapeutics.

The NIH award will support preclinical studies that combine gene editing against HIV with technologies for safer and more effective hematopoietic stem cell transplants. Such transplants, also known as bone marrow transplants, are currently used for severe blood cancers. They renew a patients immune system, which can be damaged by cancer therapies, by infusing healthy donor blood stem cells that can grow into any type of blood or immune cell.

The researchers goal is to build a therapy that prepares patients for a stem cell transplantation using their own cells with little to no toxicity, engineers their own stem cells to fight HIV and stimulates those cells to quickly produce new and engineered immune cells once theyre reintroduced into the patient.

This grant funds a team with an overarching goal of developing what our perfect HIV gene therapy would look like, Cannon said. All of these pieces could happen separately, but the fact that the NIH has funded us as a team means that the sum will be so much bigger than the parts.

Halting HIV without daily drugs

About 38million people worldwide are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. HIV is manageable with daily antiretroviral drugs, but the research team seeks a more durable solution.

Their strategy is inspired by the three cases where patients seem to have been cured of HIV. All had aggressive leukemia and received blood stem cell transplants from donors who also carried a mutation that confers immunity to HIV. The mutation was in the CCR5 gene, which encodes a receptor that HIV uses to infect immune cells and is present in about 1 percent of the population.

Timothy Ray Brown, famously nicknamed the Berlin patient, received such a transplant in 2007; he has been off antiretroviral drugs since then, and the virus remains undetectable in his system. In recent years, patients in London and Dusseldorf have shown similar results.

I think of the Berlin patient as proof of principle that replacing the immune system with one thats HIV-resistant by removing CCR5 is a possible way to treat somebody, Cannon said.

However, the rigors of the blood stem cell transplant process, combined with the difficulty in finding tissue-matched CCR5-negative donors, make it highly unlikely that this will provide more than a very rare treatment.

Three for one gene therapy

The research team will tackle these two major problems. First, to get around the lack of CCR5-negative donors, Cannon has already helped pioneer the use of gene editing to remove CCR5 from a patients own stem cells. This is now an investigational treatment for HIV in a clinical trial at City of Hope in Duarte, California.

She will now combine CCR5 disruption with additional genetic changes, so that the progeny of engineered stem cells will release antibodies and antibody-like molecules that block HIV.

Our engineered cells will be good neighbors, Cannon said. They secrete these protective molecules so that other cells, even if they arent engineered to be CCR5-negative, have some chance of being protected.

Meanwhile, Kiems group is providing a third approach by adapting an emerging cancer treatment called CAR T cell therapy. This re-engineers T cells of the immune system with chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), which are customized to recognize cancer cells.

In this project, Kiem and colleagues will create stem cells whose T cell descendants can instead hunt down HIV-infected cells.

A gentler blood stem cell transplant

The grant also supports two other components that relate to the blood stem cell transplant.

Magenta Therapeutics is developing less-toxic protocols for conditioningpreparing a patients bone marrow to receive a transplant. Traditionally, mild chemotherapy or radiotherapy is needed to make room for newly infused stem cells and to help them re-engraft.

The company is instead using antibody-drug conjugates to deliver this conditioning much more narrowly and to reduce the side effects that occur with systemic chemo or radiation.

Meanwhile, Scadden and his team are addressing another drawback of stem cell transplants and conditioning, the delay before infused stem cells generate new immune cells in sufficient numbers. In cancer patients, this delay leaves them highly susceptible to infection.

Scadden is approaching this using an injectable gel that biochemically resembles the bone marrow environment, to quickly repopulate the immune system with HIV-fighting cells.

With success, the teams research may free HIV patients from the need for daily medication and the expense and potential side effects that come with it. Their work may also improve other therapies based on blood stem cells, for conditions such as cancer, sickle cell disease and autoimmune disorders.

A home run would be that we completely cure people of HIV, Cannon said. What Id be fine with is the idea that somebody no longer needs to take anti-HIV drugs every day because their immune system is keeping the virus under control, so that it no longer causes health problems and, importantly, they cant transmit it to anybody else.

By Wayne Lewis

The rest is here:
Gene therapy research for HIV awarded $14.6 million NIH grant - USC News

Could gene therapy provide a solution to HIV? A new research project aims to find out.

The National Institutes of Health(NIH) has backed researchers at the University of Southern California and the Fred Hutchison Cancer Center with a five-year, $14.6 million grant to develop a gene therapy that could potentially control HIV without the need for daily medications. Most HIV patients take a well-regimented cocktail of medications each day to control the virus. This therapy could change that. According to an announcement from the Keck School of Medicine at USC, the goal will be to develop a therapy that prepares patients for a stem cell transplantation using their own cells with little to no toxicity, engineers their own stem cells to fight HIV and stimulates those cells to quickly produce new and engineered immune cells once they're reintroduced into the patient. The hematopoietic stem cell transplants, also known as bone marrow transplants, have been used to treat some blood cancers. The idea is to infuse an HIV patient withhealthy donor blood stem cells that can grow into any type of blood or immune cell.

The gene therapy strategy has been inspired by three cases where leukemia patients who also had HIV received blood stem cell transplants from donors who also carried a mutation that confers immunity to HIV. The mutation was in the CCR5 gene, which encodes a receptor that HIV uses to infect immune cells and is present in about 1 percent of the population, USC said.

The program will engineer blood cells to remove CCR5 from a patient's own stem cells.That will be combined with other genetic changes so that the progeny of engineered stem cells will release antibodies and antibody-like molecules that block HIV.

In addition to the potential gene therapy treatment, researchers are also assessing whether or not CAR-T treatments will benefit HIV patients. Researchers from Harvard University developed a Dual CAR T-cell immunotherapy that can potentially help fight HIV infection. First reported by Drug Target Review, the HIV-specific CAR-T cell is being developed to not only target and eliminated HIV-infected cells, but also reproduce in vivo to enable the patients to fight off the infection. HIVs primary target it T cells, which are part of the bodys natural immune response.

Todd Allen, a professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, said the Dual CAR-T cell immunotherapy has so far provided a strong, long-lasting response against HIV-infection while being resistant to the virus itself.

According to the report, theDual CAR T cell was developed through the engineering of two CARs into a single T cell. Each of the CARs contained a CD4 protein that allowed it to target HIV-infected cells and a costimulatory domain, which signaled the CAR T cell to increase its immune functions. As DTR reported, the first CAR contained the 4-1BB co-stimulatory domain, which stimulates cell proliferation and persistence, while the second has the CD28 co-stimulatory domain, which increases its ability to kill infected cells.

To protect the CAR-T cells from HIV, the team added the protein C34-CXCR4, which prevents HIV from attaching to and infecting cells. When that was added, the researchers found in animal models that the treatment was long-lived, replicated in response to HIV infection, killed infected cells effectively and was partially resistant to HIV infection.

Still, other researchers are looking to those rare individuals who are infected with HIV but somehow on their own are able to suppress the virus without the need for any treatment. Researchers have sought to replicate what this small percentage of patients can naturally do in other patients who require those daily regimens of medications. Through the sequencing of the genetic material of those rare individuals, researchers made an interesting discovery.

The team discovered large numbers of intact viral sequences in the elite controllers chromosomes. But in this group, the genetic material was restricted to inactive regions, where DNA is not transcribed into RNA to make proteins, MedNewsToday reported.

Now the race is on to determine how this can be replicated and used to treat the nearly 38 million people across the globe who have been diagnosed with HIV.

The rest is here:
New HIV Gene Therapy, CAR-T Treatments Could be on the Horizon for Patients - BioSpace

As many as 40,000 people in Germany suffer from retinitis pigmentosa. This hereditary disorder is characterized by loss of photoreceptors in the retina, and can be caused by mutations in many different genes. Depending on the nature of the underlying genetic defect, the severity of the condition can vary between night blindness and progressive visual field loss that can ultimately result in total blindness. The first gene therapies for the disease have recently been approved. However, these approaches have certain disadvantages, which limit their range of application.

A research team led by PD Dr.Elvir Becirovicat the Department of Pharmacology of Natural Sciences (Head: Prof. Dr.Martin Biel) has developed a new strategy in collaboration with Prof. Dr.Stylianos Michalakisof the Opthalmology Clinic in the LMU Medical Center. This approach is designed to compensate for the causative hereditary defect by activating genes with similar functions that are normally repressed in the affected tissues, and utilizes a variant of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology that was first described in 2015. In the online journalScience Advances, the team describes the first successful application of this method in the context of gene therapy.

Currently, two strategies are being used in the development of gene therapies: In the context of gene supplementation, an attempt is made to replace the defective gene with an intact version. However, this is currently only possible for relatively small genes. The second strategy aims to correct disease-causing mutations, but this usually has to be tailored to each individual mutation. In view of the high effort and the associated development costs, a broad application of this strategy is therefore not possible. "To overcome these limitations, we have developed a new strategy," says Becirovic.

Many genes in the human genome fall into families, whose members fulfill similar functions in different cell types, or are activated at different stages during the differentiation of a particular cell type. Our idea was to compensate for the mutant genes loss of function by specifically activating genes that have a similar function but are normally not expressed in retinal cells, says Becirovic. To do so, we delivered a system called Cas9-VPR into the affected retinal cells. The Cas9-VPR system is a derivative of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology that is widely used for the targeted modification of genes. Akin to the classical CRISPR/Cas9 system, Cas9-VPR utilizes the same targeting principle to guide an activating protein to the particular gene of interest.

Becirovic and colleagues made use of a mouse model for retinitis pigmentosa to test the activation approach. These mice lack the light-sensitive rhodopsin protein that is normally expressed exclusively in the rod cells of the retina, which are required for dim light and night vision. The researchers delivered the Cas9-VPR system into the rod cells with the aid of a harmless virus. By introducing Cas9-VPR into the rods of the mice, the scientists switched on genes closely related to the rhodopsin gene, which are normally active in the cones responsible for color and daylight vision. In this way, we were able to compensate for the lack of rhodopsin function in the rod cells, to attenuate the rate of retinal degeneration and improve retinal function without detectable side-effects, says Becirovic.

The authors believe that a similar strategy can be applied to a wide range of genes and genetic diseases, and offers a number of significant advantages over existing strategies. Given the growing importance of gene therapy and its potential benefits for patients, we are convinced that our approach could soon be used in initial clinical feasibility studies, says Becirovic.

Reference: Bhm S, Splith V, Riedmayr LM, et al. A gene therapy for inherited blindness using dCas9-VPRmediated transcriptional activation. Sci Adv. 2020;6(34):eaba5614. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aba5614.

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

See more here:
A New Target for Congenital Blindness Gene Therapy Is in Sight - Technology Networks

For the first time ever, a team of neurologists and neurosurgeons atThe Ohio State University Wexner Medical CenterandThe Ohio State College of Medicinehas performed a novel gene therapy brain infusion to treat a patient with Parkinsons disease.

This multicenter, Phase 1bclinical safety studyis sponsored byBrain Neurotherapy Bio, Inc.and funded by theCalifornia Institute for Regenerative Medicineto test GDNF gene therapy in patients with early to moderate stages of Parkinsons disease. The one-time treatment involves infusion of a gene therapy solution into deep structures of the brain that are affected by the disease.

Parkinsons disease is a neurodegenerative movement disorder that affects one million people in the United States. Degeneration of neural pathways deep in the brain causes symptoms such as tremor, slow movement and behavioral abnormalities, said Ohio State neurosurgeon Dr. James Brad Elder who performed the gene therapy surgery on Aug. 25.

The overall goal of this gene therapy treatment strategy is to slow the neurologic deterioration associated with Parkinsons disease by enhancing levels of a naturally occurring growth factor called GDNF. Targeting gene therapy delivery to the putamen, a deep brain structure affected by Parkinsons disease, will hopefully improve overall quality of life, Elder said.

The patient, a 55-year-old Ohio man first diagnosed with Parkinsons disease in 2008, takes medicine to help control his progressively worsening disease. He said the gene therapy surgery gives him hope that his disease wont get any worse, and that he may even feel better without medications. But he added that it could take up to six months before he notices any improvements.

There has long been evidence in animal and cell culture models of Parkinson's disease suggesting that glia cell derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) has promise as a therapy for the disease, said Dr. Sandra Kostyk, director of theMovement Disorders Divisionat Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. Patients with Parkinsons disease and related disorders are diagnosed and treated in the Movement Disorders clinics and neurosurgery programs at Ohio State.

One of the biggest clinical hurdles has been getting the molecule to the regions in the brain that would benefit these patients the most. GDNF is a relatively large molecule that cant be administered as a pill, nor intravenously, since it cant penetrate the blood brain barrier.

This new targeted gene delivery approach overcomes many of the obstacles that have slowed GDNF clinical trial research and is expected to facilitate the production of a continuous supply of GDNF to a critical region of the brain affected by Parkinsons disease.

This is a onetime treatment strategy that could have ongoing lifelong benefits. Though its hoped that this treatment will slow disease progression, we dont expect this strategy to completely stop or cure all aspects of the disease.Were cautiously optimistic as this research effort moves forward, Kostyk said.

Brain Neurotherapy Bio is a biotechnology startup company founded in 2018 byDr. Krystof Bankiewiczto develop gene therapies for neurological disorders. Bankiewicz is also a member of Ohio State Wexner Medical CentersNeurological Institute.

Ive been investigating therapeutic gene therapy approaches for Parkinsons disease for nearly 30 years, and this marks a significant milestone that may lead to major therapeutic opportunities for those suffering with this devastating condition, said Bankiewicz, who is CEO and chairman of the board of Brain Neurotherapy Bio.

Additional sites for this clinical trial include the University of California San Francisco and the University of California Irvine medical centers. For more information, emailOSUgenetherapyresearch@osumc.edu.

Read the original post:
Wexner Medical Center performs gene therapy brain infusion for Parkinson's disease - The Highland County Press

Sept. 2, 2020 12:00 UTC

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Magenta Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MGTA), a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel medicines to bring the curative power of immune reset to more patients, today announced the appointment of two new executives, Lisa M. Olson, Ph.D., as Chief Scientific Officer and Kevin B. Johnson, Ph.D., as Senior Vice President, Head of Regulatory and Quality. The Company also announced that Jason Ryan will transition from Chief Operating and Financial Officer to a consulting role for personal reasons while a search for his replacement is conducted.

With the additions of Lisa and Kevin to our team, Magenta continues to deepen our technical expertise, bolstering our strong discovery, research, development and regulatory leadership to further our goal of delivering curative immune reset to patients in need, said Jason Gardner, D.Phil., Chief Executive Officer and President, Magenta Therapeutics. We are delighted to welcome Lisa and Kevin on board and look forward to their many contributions to the Magenta mission.

As Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Olson will provide strategic direction, oversight and execution for Magentas research and discovery efforts. This entails driving research strategy as Magenta continues to optimize its preclinical and clinical pipeline. She will join the executive team and will be a key member of the R&D leadership team.

Dr. Olson is an experienced senior-level pharmaceutical executive, with more than 20 years of experience in research and drug discovery. She comes to Magenta following 15 years in leadership positions at the AbbVie Bioresearch Center, most recently as Vice President, Immunology Discovery and Site Head, where she was responsible for all immunology discovery scientific and portfolio decisions, including new target approval, project advancement and licensing opportunities. Under her leadership, 15 molecules advanced into clinical development, including Upadacitinib that launched last year as Rinvoq. Prior to AbbVie, she served as a Research Fellow and Group Leader in Inflammation & Immunology at Pfizer, Inc. She began her career as an Assistant Professor at Washington University School of Medicine, following a post-doctoral cardiovascular fellowship at the University of Chicago.

Dr. Olson holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor of Science from Iowa State University.

As Senior Vice President, Head of Regulatory and Quality, Dr. Johnson will lead Magentas global regulatory strategy for the Companys programs across multiple therapeutic areas. He will also be responsible for the oversight and accountability for all quality activities to enable Good Practice (GxP) functions across the portfolio. In this role, Dr. Johnson will provide strategic guidance and leadership to members of the R&D leadership team and the regulatory and quality teams for Magentas portfolio for all phases of product lifecycle.

Dr. Johnson bring years of regulatory, quality assurance and development leadership, coming to Magenta from Imara, Inc., where he served as Senior Vice President, Regulatory Affairs, Quality and Pharmacovigilance, leading successful requests for several regulatory designations with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Prior to his time at Imara, Dr. Johnson led global regulatory strategy and implementation for breakthrough therapy-designated rare disease development programs at Vtesse, later acquired by Sucampo. He also served as Director, Global Regulatory Affairs for Rare Diseases and Gene Therapies at GlaxoSmithKline, where he was part of on the international regulatory team for the European approval of the gene therapy Strimvelis for ADA-SCID, and subsequently secured Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) designation for a retinal gene therapy product.

Dr. Johnson holds a Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine; a Master of Business Administration from the Kenan-Flagler School of Business, UNC; and a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of South Florida.

Along with these leadership team additions, Magenta also announced today that Jason Ryan, Chief Operating and Financial Officer, will step down from that role at the end of September. He will continue to contribute to Magenta in a consulting capacity, and the Company has commenced a search for a replacement.

Jason has been a dynamic and reliable leader at Magenta since he joined us in 2019, leading finance and operations, contributing to our strategic planning efforts, and spearheading two financings during a period of significant growth, said Gardner. We are truly grateful for his contributions to the patients we seek to serve, our employees and business partners.

About Magenta Therapeutics

Magenta Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing medicines to bring the curative power of immune system reset through stem cell transplant to more patients with autoimmune diseases, genetic diseases and blood cancers. Magenta is combining leadership in stem cell biology and biotherapeutics development with clinical and regulatory expertise, a unique business model and broad networks in the stem cell transplant world to revolutionize immune reset for more patients.

Magenta is based in Cambridge, Mass. For more information, please visit http://www.magentatx.com.

Follow Magenta on Twitter: @magentatx.

Forward-Looking Statement

This press release may contain forward-looking statements and information within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other federal securities laws. The use of words such as may, will, could, should, expects, intends, plans, anticipates, believes, estimates, predicts, projects, seeks, endeavor, potential, continue or the negative of such words or other similar expressions can be used to identify forward-looking statements. The express or implied forward-looking statements included in this press release are only predictions and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including, without limitation risks set forth under the caption Risk Factors in Magentas Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on March 3, 2020, as updated by Magentas most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In light of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the forward-looking events and circumstances discussed in this press release may not occur and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Although Magenta believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee that the future results, levels of activity, performance or events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements will be achieved or occur. Moreover, except as required by law, neither Magenta nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the forward-looking statements included in this press release. Any forward-looking statement included in this press release speaks only as of the date on which it was made. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200902005236/en/

See the original post here:
Magenta Therapeutics Appoints Lisa M. Olson as Chief Scientific Officer and Kevin B. Johnson as Senior Vice President, Head of Regulatory and Quality;...

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Taysha Gene Therapies, a patient-centric gene therapy company with a mission to eradicate monogenic CNS disease, today announced the appointment of its executive leadership team. This group has significant experience in gene therapy drug development and commercialization, and will enable Taysha to build the corporate culture and infrastructure necessary to advance its extensive pipeline of 18 gene therapy programs, with exclusive options to acquire four additional programs from UT Southwestern Gene Therapy Program. In addition, Sukumar Nagendran, M.D., former Chief Medical Officer of AveXis, and Phillip Donenberg, former Chief Financial Officer of AveXis, have joined the companys Board of Directors. Mr. Donenberg will also serve as the companys Audit Committee Chairman.

Joining the Taysha Board is a unique opportunity to contribute to scientific advancements in CNS gene therapy, said Sukumar Nagendran, M.D., Taysha Board of Directors. In partnership with UT Southwestern, Taysha has built an extensive pipeline of gene therapy candidates for life-threatening CNS diseases with significant unmet medical need.

It is a distinct pleasure to be reunited with many of my former AveXis colleagues that enabled the development and successful commercialization of Zolgensma, said Phillip Donenberg, Taysha Board of Directors. I am excited to contribute to Tayshas efforts to deliver therapies with the potential to improve the lives of patients with devastating CNS disease.

Each member of the Taysha leadership team has significant gene therapy expertise, with an unrelenting, patient-first focus guiding their individual areas of focus. Joining RA Session II, Founder, President and CEO of Taysha, on the management team are the following individuals:

From day one, we set out to build a team that has the passion, experience and talent to achieve our mission of eradicating monogenic CNS disease. Today, we are proud to announce a highly experienced team of CNS gene therapy experts, said Mr. Session. We are also pleased Dr. Nagendran and Mr. Donenberg have joined our Board and will contribute their several years of gene therapy expertise. Their experience in building AveXis will be invaluable as we continue to grow and advance several programs into the clinic.

About Taysha Gene Therapies

Taysha Gene Therapies is a patient-centric gene therapy company with a mission to eradicate monogenic CNS disease. We are focused on developing and commercializing AAV-based gene therapies for the treatment of monogenic diseases of the CNS in both rare and large patient populations. We were founded in partnership with The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, or UT Southwestern, to develop and commercialize transformative gene therapy treatments. Together with UT Southwestern, we are advancing a deep and sustainable product portfolio of 18 gene therapy product candidates, with exclusive options to acquire four additional development programs. By combining our management teams proven experience in gene therapy drug development and commercialization with UT Southwesterns world-class gene therapy research capabilities, we believe we have created a powerful engine to develop transformative therapies to dramatically improve patients lives. More information is available at http://www.tayshagtx.com.

See more here:
Taysha Gene Therapies Builds Experienced Executive Leadership Team to Advance Pipeline of Gene Therapies for Monogenic CNS Disease in Both Rare and...

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. and RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., Sept. 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Kriya Therapeutics, a next generation gene therapy company focused on developing transformative treatments for highly prevalent diseases,announced today that its CEO, Shankar Ramaswamy, M.D., will present at multiple upcoming healthcare conferences in September and October. These include the following:

Citi's 15th Annual BioPharma Virtual ConferenceDate: Tuesday, September 8thTime: 3:30 PM ET / 12:30 PM PT

H.C. Wainwright & Co. 22nd Annual Global Investment ConferenceDate: Wednesday, September 16thTime: 9:30 AM ET / 6:30 AM PT

Cantor Fitzgerald Virtual Global Healthcare ConferenceDate: Thursday, September 17thTime: 3:20 PM ET / 12:20 PM PT

Chardan 4th Annual Genetic Medicines ConferenceDate: Tuesday, October 6thTime: 9:00 AM ET / 6:00 AM PT

About Kriya Therapeutics

Kriya Therapeutics is a next-generation gene therapy company focused on developing transformative treatments for highly prevalent serious diseases. With core operations in California and North Carolina, Kriya's technology-enabled platform is directed to the rational design and clinical translation of gene therapies for large patient populations. For more information, please visit http://www.kriyatx.com.

Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes forward-looking statements pertaining to our development programs and our proprietary platform. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release reflect Kriya's current views with respect to future events, and Kriya does not undertake and specifically disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

ContactDan ChenChief Financial Officer[emailprotected]

SOURCE Kriya Therapeutics

https://www.kriyatx.com/

See the rest here:
Kriya Therapeutics To Present At Upcoming Healthcare Conferences - PRNewswire