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Archive for the ‘Genetic Engineering’ Category

From Cotton to Brinjal: Fraudulent GMO Project in India Sustained by Deception – CounterPunch

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020

Insecticidal Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton is the first and only GM (genetically modified) crop that has been approved in India. It has been cultivated in the country for more than 20 years. In a formal statement to the Supreme Court of India, the Indian government has asserted that hybrid Bt cotton is an outstanding success. It therefore argues that Bt cotton is a templatefor the introduction of GM food crops.

However, over the last week, two important webinars took place that challenged the governments stance. The first was on Bt cotton and involved a panel of internationally renowned scientists who conclusively debunked the myth of Bt cotton success in India. The webinar, organised by the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture and Jatan, focused on an evidence-based evaluation of 18 years of approved Bt cotton cultivation in India.

The second webinar discussed the case of Bt brinjal, which the countrys apex regulatory body, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), has brought to the brink of commercialisation. The webinar highlighted deep-seated problems with regulatory processes in India and outlined how the GEAC is dogged by secrecy, conflicts of interest and (scientific) fraud: participants outlined how the GEAC has been colluding with crop developers and seed companies to drive GM crops into agriculture.

Bt cotton failure

The panel for the Bt cotton webinar (YouTube: Bt Cotton in India: Myths & Realities An Evidence-Based Evaluation) on 24 August included Dr Andrew Paul Gutierrez, senior emeritus professor in the College of Natural Resources at the University of California at Berkeley; Dr Keshav Kranthi, former director of Central Institute for Cotton Research in India; Dr Peter Kenmore, former FAO representative in India, and Dr Hans Herren, World Food Prize Laureate.

Dr Herren said that the failure of Bt cotton is a classic representation of what an unsound science of plant protection and faulty direction of agricultural development can lead to.

He explained:

Bt hybrid technology in India represents an error-driven policy that has led to the denial and non-implementation of the real solutions for the revival of cotton in India, which lie in HDSS (high density short season) planting of non-Bt/GMO cotton in pure line varieties of native desi species and American cotton species.

He argued that a transformation of agriculture and the food system is required; one that entails a shift to agroecology, which includes regenerative, organic, biodynamic, permaculture and natural farming practices.

Dr Kenmore said that Bt cotton is an aging pest control technology:

It follows the same path worn down by generations of insecticide molecules from arsenic to DDT to BHC to endosulfan to monocrotophos to carbaryl to imidacloprid. In-house research aims for each molecule to be packaged biochemically, legally and commercially before it is released and promoted. Corporate and public policy actors then claim yield increases but deliver no more than temporary pest suppression, secondary pest release and pest resistance.

Recurrent cycles of crises have sparked public action and ecological field research which creates locally adapted agroecological strategies.

He added that this agroecology:

now gathers global support from citizens groups, governments and UN-FAO. Their robust local solutions in Indian cotton do not require any new molecules, including endo-toxins like in Bt cotton.

Prof Gutierrez presented the ecological reasons as to why hybrid Bt cotton failed in India: long season Bt cotton introduced in India was incorporated into hybrids that trapped farmers into biotech and insecticide treadmills that benefited GMO seed manufacturers.

He noted:

The cultivation of long-season hybrid Bt cotton in rainfed areas is unique to India. It is a value capture mechanism that does not contribute to yield, is a major contributor to low yield stagnation and contributes to increasing production costs.

Prof Gutierrez asserted that increases in cotton farmer suicides are related to the resulting economic distress.

He argued:

A viable solution to the current GM hybrid system is adoption of improved non-GM high-density short-season fertile cotton varieties.

Presenting data on yields, insecticide usage, irrigation, fertiliser usage and pest incidence and resistance, Dr Keshav Kranthi said that a critical analysis of official statistics (eands.dacnet.nic.inandcotcorp.gov.in) shows that Bt hybrid technology has not been providing any tangible benefits in India either in yield or insecticide usage.

He said that cotton yields are the lowest in the world in Maharashtra, despite being saturated with Bt hybrids and the highest use of fertilisers. Yields in Maharashtra are less than in rainfed Africa where there is hardly any usage of technologies such as Bt, hybrids, fertilisers, pesticides or irrigation.

It is revealing that Indian cotton yields rank 36th in the world and have been stagnant in the past 15 years and insecticide usage has been constantly increasing after 2005, despite an increase in area under Bt cotton.

Dr Kranthi argued that research also shows that the Bt hybrid technology has failed the test of sustainability with resistance in pink bollworm to Bt cotton, increasing sucking pest infestation, increasing trends in insecticide and fertiliser usage, increasing costs and negative net returns in 2014 and 2015.

Dr Herren said that GMOs exemplify the case of a technology searching for an application:

It is essentially about treating symptoms, rather than taking a systems approach to create resilient, productive and bio-diverse food systems in the widest sense and to provide sustainable and affordable solutions in its social, environmental and economic dimensions.

He went on to argue that the failure of Bt cotton is a classic representation of what an unsound science of plant protection and a faulty direction of agricultural development can lead to:

We need to push aside the vested interests blocking the transformation with the baseless arguments of the world needs more food and design and implement policies that are forward looking We have all the needed scientific and practical evidence that the agroecological approaches to food and nutrition security work successfully.

Bt brinjal the danger is back

The governments attempt to use a failed technology as a template for driving GMOs into agriculture has been exposed. Nevertheless, the GEAC has been moving forward with late-stage trials of Bt brinjal, while ignoring the issues and arguments against its commercialisation that were forwarded a decade ago.

In February 2010, the Indian government placed an indefinite moratorium on the release of Bt brinjal after numerous independent scientific experts from India and abroad had pointed out safety concerns based on data and reports in the biosafety dossier that Mahyco, the crop developer, had submitted to the regulators.

The then Minister of the Ministry of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh had instituted a unique four-month scientific enquiry and public hearings. His decision to reject the commercialisation of Bt brinjal was supported by advice from the renowned scientists.Their collective appraisals demonstrated serious environmental and biosafety concerns.

Jairam Ramesh pronounced a moratorium on Bt brinjal in February 2010 by stating:

it is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary principle-based approach and impose a moratorium on the release of Bt brinjal, till such time independent scientific studies establish, to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals, the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment, including the rich genetic wealth existing in brinjal in our country.

The moratorium has not been lifted and the conditions he set out have still not been met. Moreover, five high-level reportshave advised against the adoption of GM crops in India. Appointed by the Supreme Court, the Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report (2013) was scathing about the prevailing regulatory system and highlighted its inadequacies. The TEC went a step further by recommending a 10-year moratorium on the commercial release of all GM crops.

The regulatory process was shown to lack competency, possessed endemic conflicts of interest and demonstrated a lack of expertise in GMO risk assessment protocols, including food safety assessment and the assessment of environmental impacts.

Ten years on and regulators have done nothing to address this woeful state of affairs. As we have seen with the relentless push to get GM mustard commercialised, the problems persist. Through numerous submissions to the Supreme Court, Aruna Rodrigues has described how GM mustard is being forced through withflawed tests (or no tests) and a lack of public scrutiny.Regulators are seriously conflicted: they promote GMOs openly, fund them and then regulate them.

And this is precisely what the webinar Bt brinjal the danger is back (watch onYouTube) discussed on 27 August. Organised by the Coalition for a GM-Free India, the webinar was arranged because the regulators have again brought to the brink of commercialisation a new Bt brinjal event a different Bt brinjal than the 2010 version. Also included in the webinar were the experiences of Bt brinjal introduction in Bangladesh.

Dr Ramanjaneyulu (Centre for Sustainable Agriculture) highlighted how need has never been established for Bt brinjal of which India is a recognised centre of diversity. The argument for Bt brinjal in the run-up to Jairam Rameshs moratorium was that pesticide use is a problem in containing the brinjal fruit and shoot borer. He noted that Bt brinjal was promoted by Monsanto, USAID and Cornell University, but serious protocol violations, environmental contamination concerns and potential adverse health impacts were discovered.

He outlined simple non-pesticidal, agroecological management practises that can and are being used to deal with the brinjal fruit and shoot borer.

Farida Akhter of UBINIG (Policy Research for Development Alternative) outlined how the introduction of Bt brinjal in Bangladesh was not needed but imposed on the country, which has 248 varieties of brinjal. Where pesticide use is problematic, she argued that it concerns hybrid varieties rather than traditional cultivars of which 24 varieties are resistant to fruit and shoot borer.

Akhter said that poor quality brinjal and financial losses for farmers have been major issues. Many have abandoned Bt brinjal, but farmers have received incentives to cultivate and where they have done so, fertiliser use has increased and there have been many pest attacks, with 35 different types of pesticides applied.

The Bill Gates-funded Cornell Alliance for Science, a public relations entity that promotes GM agriculture, and USAID, which serves the interests of the GMO biotech sector, tried to sell Bt brinjal on the basis it would save people from the overuse of pesticides and related illnesses. But Akhter argued that Bangladesh was targeted because the Philippines and India had rejected Bt brinjal. Again, protocol violations occurred leading to its introduction and Akhter concluded that there was no scientific basis for Bt brinjal: its introduction was political.

As for India, event EE1, the initial Bt brinjal, has now been replaced by event 142, a different Bt brinjal. Kavitha Kuruganti (Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture) explained this in the webinar and notes that the GEAC, immediately after the 2010 moratorium was announced, went straight ahead and sanctioned new trials for this Bt brinjal. The GEAC basically stated that the moratorium did not apply to this version, while ignoring all the criticisms about lack of competence, conflicts of interest, non-transparency and protocol violations. It was effectively business as usual!

With event EE1, Kuruganti implied that the GEAC acted more like a servant for Mayco and its Monsanto master. Nothing has changed. She noted the ongoing revolving door between crop developers (even patent holders) and regulators. As before, developers-cum-lobbyists were actually sitting on regulatory bodies as event 142 was proceeding.

Under public-private-partnership arrangements, event 142 has been licensed to private companies for biosafety testing/commercialisation. Despite major concerns, the GEAC has pressed ahead with various trials. In May 2020, under lockdown, Kuruganti notes that the GEAC held a virtual meeting and sanctioned what were effectively final trials prior to commercialisation. She explains that important information and vital data is not in the public domain.

According to Kuruganti, the regulator sits with the crop developer and the companies and grant biosafety clearance, claiming all tests (soil, pollen flow, toxicity, etc) are complete. What is also disturbing is that these licensed companies have closed and opened under new names (with the same people in charge), thereby making accountability and liability fixing very difficult if something were to go wrong further down the line.

She concludes that the story of event 142 is even worse than event EE1:

Once again, they are certainly hiding things that they dont want conscientious scientists and aware citizens to see and know.

Taken together, the two webinars highlighted how hybrid Bt cotton is being deceptively used as a template for rolling out GM food crops: a fraud being used to promote another fraud in order to force unnecessary GMOs into Indian agriculture.

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Nucleic Acid Isolation and Purification Market : The Rescuer in COVID-19 Crisis, Says TMR – Owned

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020

Nucleic acid isolation and purification is an initial step in molecular biology studies and recombinant DNA techniques. The process of isolation includes mechanical and chemical disruption, enzymatic digestion, while the purification involves combination of extraction/precipitation, chromatography, centrifugation, electrophoresis, and affinity separation.

View Report : https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/nucleic-acid-isolation-purification-market.html

This technique has wide applications in the field of genetic engineering, life science research, forensics and molecular diagnostics. Nucleic acid isolation helps in processing of more sample in less time, minimizes nucleic acid loss ad degradation and increases laboratory efficiency and effectiveness. The purified product can thus be used in recombinant technology methods, and be used in targeted purposes in research.

The rising demand of pure nucleic acids in pharmaceutical and biotechnological industries, and growing use of nucleic acid-based tests in diagnosis have propelled the growth of this market across the globe. Moreover, increasing applications of these techniques in various fields such as genetic engineering, life science research, forensics and molecular diagnostics and government funding in R&Ds and the recent technological innovations are expected to fuel the growth of this market.

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In addition, emergence of new technologies in molecular diagnostics, expression analysis and genotyping would create an opportunity for the suppliers in future. However, low market penetration of automated nucleic acid isolation and purification procedures in developing countries, is a key factor restraining the growth of global nucleic acid isolation and purification market. Similarly, higher prices of the instruments associated with these procedures is one of the major challenges for this market. New product development, mergers and acquisition and partnership are some of the key trends in nucleic acid isolation and purification market.

The market is segmented into technology, application, product, end user, and geography. Based on various type of technology, the market can be segmented as: columnbased, magnetic bead-based, reagent-based, and other (anion exchange-based, glass fiber-based) for DNA and RNA isolation and purification. Column-based technology for DNA isolation and purification commands the largest share of the global market. Magnetic bead-based technologyis poised to grow at fastest rate.

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Application segments of this market includes genomic DNA isolation and purification, micro RNA isolation and purification, blood DNA isolation and purification, mRNA isolation and purification, plasmid DNA isolation and purification, total RNA isolation and purification, and PCR clean up. The plasmid DNA isolation and purification is the leading market segment by application. The end-users of the market are academic research, hospitals and diagnostic centers, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, contract research organizations, and other end users. Nucleic acid isolation and purification market have its major share in academic research organizations.

Read our Case study at :https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/casestudies/innovative-medical-device-manufacturing-start-up

North America holds the leading position in the Nucleic Acid Isolation and Purification market followed by Europe. Asia Pacific is the most promising market for the growth of market due to various emerging economies. The market in the region is easy to penetrate and it is expected to have a huge future scope in the region, especially India and China, so the players are looking invest more in Asia-Pacific region. Some of the key players in global Nucleic Acid Isolation and Purification Market are Agilent Technologies Inc. (U.S.), Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. (U.S.), Danaher Corporation (U.S.), Illumina Inc. (U.S.), Life Technologies (U.S.), Promega Corporation (U.S.)., among others.

More Trending Reports by Transparency Market Research 1.https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-radiation-therapy-market-to-reach-us-8-6-bn-by-2026product-approvals-to-drive-growth-transparency-market-research-300998453.html

2.https://www.biospace.com/article/dna-test-kits-market-increase-in-demand-for-ancestry-testing-to-drive-market/

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Nucleic Acid Isolation and Purification Market : The Rescuer in COVID-19 Crisis, Says TMR - Owned

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Bacterial Superglue Allows Adhesion to the Gut – Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020

Before bacteria colonize a tissue in the human body, such as the intestine, they have to attach. Not only that, they have to achieve firm adhesion under hydrodynamic flow. New research reports a molecular mechanism behind an ultrastable protein complex responsible for resisting shear forces and adhering bacteria to cellulose fibers in the human gut. The results explain how gut microbes regulate cell adhesion strength at high shear stress through intricate molecular mechanisms including dual-binding modes, mechanical allostery, and catch bonds.

The researchers used single-molecule force spectroscopy (SMFS), single-molecule FRET (smFRET), and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to uncover that two different binding modes allow bacteria to withstand the shear forces in the body. The findings are published in Nature Communications in the paper titled, High force catch bond mechanism of bacterial adhesion in the human gut.

Cellulose is a major building block of plant cell walls, consisting of molecules linked together into solid fibers. For humans, cellulose is indigestible, and the majority of gut bacteria lack the enzymes required to break down cellulose.

However, recently genetic material from the cellulose-degrading bacterium R. champanellensis was detected in human gut samples. Bacterial colonization of the intestine is essential for human physiology, and understanding how gut bacteria adhere to cellulose broadens our knowledge of the microbiome and its relationship to human health.

The bacterium under investigation uses an intricate network of scaffold proteins and enzymes on the outer cell wall, referred to as a cellulosome network, to attach to and degrade cellulose fibers. These cellulosome networks are held together by families of interacting proteins.

Of particular interest is the cohesin-dockerin interaction responsible for anchoring the cellulosome network to the cell wall. This interaction needs to withstand shear forces in the body to adhere to fiber. This vital feature motivated the researchers to investigate in more detail how the anchoring complex responds to mechanical forces.

By using a combination of single-molecule atomic force microscopy, single-molecule fluorescence, and molecular dynamics simulations, Michael Nash, PhD, assistant professor with joint appointments at the University of Basel, department of chemistry, and at ETH Zurich, department of biosystems science & engineering, along with collaborators from LMU Munich and Auburn University, studied how the complex resists external force.

Two binding modes allow bacteria to stick to surfaces under shear flow

They were able to show that the complex exhibits a rare behavior called dual binding mode, where the proteins form a complex in two distinct ways. The researchers found that the two binding modes have very different mechanical properties, with one breaking at low forces of around 200 piconewtons and the other exhibiting a much higher stability breaking only at 600 piconewtons of force.

Further analysis showed that the protein complex displays a behavior called a catch bond, meaning that the protein interaction becomes stronger as force is ramped up. The dynamics of this interaction are believed to allow the bacteria to adhere to cellulose under shear stress and release the complex in response to new substrates or to explore new environments.

We clearly observe the dual binding modes, but can only speculate on their biological significance. We think the bacteria might control the binding mode preference by modifying the proteins. This would allow switching from a low to high adhesion state depending on the environment, Nash explained.

By shedding light on this natural adhesion mechanism, these findings set the stage for the development of artificial molecular mechanisms that exhibit similar behavior but bind to disease targets. Such materials could have applications in bio-based medical superglues or shear-enhanced binding of therapeutic nanoparticles inside the body. For now, we are excited to return to the laboratory and see what sticks, said Nash.

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Viewpoint: Is there a scientific basis to ban gene drive technology that can rid us of virus-carrying rodents and mosquitoes? – Genetic Literacy…

Tuesday, August 18th, 2020

Gene drives may be invaluable tools to control the spread of parasites, invasive species, and disease carriers. But the technology has faced strong opposition from activist groups and some mainstream scientists based on environmental and food safety. Are these concerns valid?

On June 30, some 80 environmental organizations, led by Greenpeace EU, Friends of the Earth Europe and Save Our Seeds, signed an open letter to the European Commission asking for support for a global moratorium on gene drive technology. The advocacy groups claimed that the release of gene drives poses serious and novel threats to biodiversity and the environment at an unprecedented scale and depth.

Citing a report by the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER), the coalition wrote:

in light of the unpredictabilities, the lack of knowledge and the potentially severe negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, any releases (including experimental) of Gene Drive Organisms into the environment be placed on hold to allow proper investigation until there is sufficient knowledge and understanding.

The environmental claims were unsupported by any documents other than the report by ENSSER, a controversial group of anti-biotechnology activist scientists co-founded by Gilles-ricSralini, best known for his retracted and discredited 2012 paper linking GMOs to cancer in rats.

The European parliament has already supported such a moratorium, an act that echoes EUs precautionary approach to genetic engineering, transgenic organisms and gene editing. The EU stated reasons include:

Recent advances in genetics and synthetic biology, particularly the development of CRISPR gene editing tools, have given scientists a powerful way to address problems created by pests, from mosquitoes to rodents, that vector disease to humans. In classical genetics, genes that offer adaptation benefits to individuals tend to increase their occurrence in the population while genes that reduce fitness tend to disappear.

Gene drives are genetic sequences designed to spread strongly and become present in every individual of a targeted species after a few generations. The genes may offer benefits, be neutral for adaptation purposes, or hinder their carriers survival and reproduction potential.Generation after generation, it would relentlessly copy and paste the gene it carried, until the gene and the desired trait was present in every descendant.Because the spread of a trait happens over generations, a gene drive works best in species that reproduce quickly, like insects and rodents

Gene drives are the first genetic constructs that can theoretically affect a population in its entirety, and quickly. It could even lead to the extinction of entire species, as gene drive critics allege. Species distinction has been part of life and evolution for all of Earths history. Although the data are fuzzy and contested, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity concluded that 150-200 plant, insect bird, and mammal species go extinct every day.

The likelihood that a gene drive will destroy a species in part or in whole, such as the infectedAedes aegyptimosquito species that carries the Zika, dengue and chingunya viruses and offers no known environmental benefits, is nonetheless daunting to some. On the one hand, gene drives could be used to eradicate disease such as malaria and yellow fever by controlling the mosquitoes that transmit them. On the other hand, critics fear that the technology will open a Pandoras Box; removing a species that theoretically could resultin what is popularly and controversially known as the butterfly effect.

As imagined by MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz 60 years ago, a tiny environmental changesay an extinction of a pestcould dramatically and unpredictably result in unpredictable or even catastrophic consequences (Lorenz imagined abutterflyflapping its wings and causing a typhoon).

In the last few years, various groups have called for a global moratorium on gene drives. Such attempts were resisted at the 2016 and 2018 United Nations Conventions on Biological Diversity, mainly due to the strong opposition of many scientists and sub-Saharan African nations hardest hit by disease-vectored pests. Nevertheless, gene drive opponents have gained traction and gene drive research and applications face significant regulatory obstacles across the world (see Genetic Literacys Global Gene Editing Regulation tracker for a country-by-country analysis).

What does the scientific evidence say about gene drives and their environmental consequences?

There are over 3,000 mosquito species, likely a fraction of the number of species that have existed over some 100 million years. A handful of these (Aedes, Anopheles, and Culex species) are disease vectors and transmit infections such as malaria, yellow fever, the West Nile virus, Zika, and dengue fever. Mosquito-borne disease account for more than 17% of all infectious diseases and cause more than 700,000 deaths every year. These mosquitoes are mostly invasive in their ecological distributions.

Ultimately, there seem to be few things that mosquitoes do that other organisms cant do just as wellexcept perhaps for one, reported Nature magazine ina 2010 article A World Without Mosquitoes.

They are lethally efficient at sucking blood from one individual and mainlining it into another, providing an ideal route for the spread of pathogenic microbes. The Nature article concluded that wiping out mosquitoes wouldnt be a badthing. In fact, they could restore rather than harm the ecosystem. The same can be inferred for most parasitic insects, which are specialized to a particular host and normally dont have an extended ecological interactions network.

Invasive species also cause significant environmental hazards. Cane toads, having no natural predators, are slowly taking over the Australian continent from the northeast. Invasive fish from the red sea are wrecking havoc in the Mediterranean marine ecosystems. Rodents have spread in every conceivable corner of the earth, displacing vulnerable local fauna.

Gene drives might be one of the only ways to contain their spread, protecting biodiversity. They can be a powerful conservation tool that targets only the organism of interest, unlike contemporary pest management techniques such as the use of insecticides that attack all insects indiscriminately, or introduction of natural predators from other ecosystems (that by default disturb the food chains and interactions network).

It is possible for a DNA sequence to jump from one species to the other through a process called horizontal gene transfer. This theoretically could happen between insects, which appears to lend support to the argument that there is at least a small chance for a gene drive to move from species to species with unforeseen consequences.

The truth is that gene drives can be designed to target a very specific area of the genome, unique for a species. The modern gene drives use the precise CRISPR base editing technologies to spread to the population. In the off chance that the DNA encoding the gene drive will enter the reproductive cells of an individual from the other species, the editing system will have no template to act upon and the gene will be lost. One may argue that CRISPR has a chance for off-target activity, but a gene drive needs maximum efficiency to act as a gene drive. If the CRISPR doesnt work at 100%, the DNA sequence will be subject to the typical laws of inheritance and will disappear from the genetic pool

The ability to introduce genetic information to a wild population, which will spread to every individual, is unfortunately a dual use technology. The technology can theoretically be exploited to make biological weapons, though theres no indication that such a weapon is or has been developed. As gene drives can work well across many generations and require a large amount of offspring, they are unable to directly harm humans, crops, and farm animals. But a gene drive could be used to enhance the fitness of a crop-eating insect or a disease-carrying rodent.

The solution to this potential hazard is more research (and definitely not a research moratorium). Anyone with the means (which are considerable, so no lone bioterrorists or rogue scientists) and intent to cause harm can already research into such applications and will ignore aUN-imposed technology ban. The research community needs to develop the means to detect and monitor any malicious gene drive release and counter any offensive use.

The question on who and how should approve gene drive projects isnt easy to answer. A gene drive isnt contained by country borders, and the outdated GMO regulation framework existing in most countries is scientifically outdated and practically inadequate to handle such applications.

Moreover, the technology cannot be monopolized by a few countries or private companies. Each project is different. The approval should be a result of consensus among numerous stakeholders. There should also be a defined way to monitor how the gene drive spreads and how to handle liability claims if there are negative effects.

With populism growing and fewer people willing to trust the judgment of regulators and scientists, the rhetoric around complex innovations has become increasingly polarized, with both sides stuck fighting a high-stakes battle for public opinion. The issue is complex, and any decisions cannot be left to scientists, state organizations, and companies alone. But it also cannot be left solely in the hands of environmental organizations with little or no understanding of the science and with an ideological agenda that doesnt necessarily serve the public.

Environmental groups have often resorted to hyperbole as the debate over gene drives has unfolded. At the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, in 2018, a coalition of activists compared gene drives to the atomic bomb and accused researchers of using malaria as a Trojan horse to cover up the development of agricultural gene drives for corporate profit.A handful of small NGOs in the US, collectively known as SynBioWatch, have taken to describing gene-drive researchers as a cabal. The Canadian anti-biotechnology organization ETC Group claims aggressively spreads misinformation on social media, including claims that gene-drive honeybees could supposedly be controlled with a beam of light.

Meanwhile, Florida Keys is experiencing the largest dengue fever outbreak in a decade, with close to 40 cases already documented. The outbreak has led the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District to enter a partnership with UK-based, US-owned Oxitec that could lead to the Keys becoming the first U.S. trial site for genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

With a technology that can prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths per year, it is unethical to peremptorily ban it because it doesnt fit a few peoples worldview of what is natural. One may argue that governments and regulators should have no say whether one species should go extinct or not. But one can also question why activist groups in North America or Europe should be able to insert themselves in life and death decisions, preventing initiatives across the globe that could save millions of lives and protect our populations health and crops, and promote biological diversity.

Kostas Vavitsas, PhD, is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Athens, Greece. He is also a steering committee member of EUSynBioS. Follow him on Twitter@konvavitsas

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Biotechnology Could Change the Cattle Industry. Will It Succeed? – Singularity Hub

Tuesday, August 18th, 2020

When Ralph Fisher, a Texas cattle rancher, set eyes on one of the worlds first cloned calves in August 1999, he didnt care what the scientists said: He knew it was his old Brahman bull, Chance, born again. About a year earlier, veterinarians at Texas A&M extracted DNA from one of Chances moles and used the sample to create a genetic double. Chance didnt live to meet his second self, but when the calf was born, Fisher christened him Second Chance, convinced he was the same animal.

Scientists cautioned Fisher that clones are more like twins than carbon copies: The two may act or even look different from one another. But as far as Fisher was concerned, Second Chance was Chance. Not only did they look identical from a certain distance, they behaved the same way as well. They ate with the same odd mannerisms; laid in the same spot in the yard. But in 2003, Second Chance attacked Fisher and tried to gore him with his horns. About 18 months later, the bull tossed Fisher into the air like an inconvenience and rammed him into the fence. Despite 80 stitches and a torn scrotum, Fisher resisted the idea that Second Chance was unlike his tame namesake, telling the radio program This American Life that I forgive him, you know?

In the two decades since Second Chance marked a genetic engineering milestone, cattle have secured a place on the front lines of biotechnology research. Today, scientists around the world are using cutting-edge technologies, from subcutaneous biosensors to specialized food supplements, in an effort to improve safety and efficiency within the $385 billion global cattle meat industry. Beyond boosting profits, their efforts are driven by an imminent climate crisis, in which cattle play a significant role, and growing concern for livestock welfare among consumers.

Gene editing stands out as the most revolutionary of these technologies. Although gene-edited cattle have yet to be granted approval for human consumption, researchers say tools like Crispr-Cas9 could let them improve on conventional breeding practices and create cows that are healthier, meatier, and less detrimental to the environment. Cows are also being given genes from the human immune system to create antibodies in the fight against Covid-19. (The genes of non-bovine livestock such as pigs and goats, meanwhile, have been hacked to grow transplantable human organs and produce cancer drugs in their milk.)

But some experts worry biotech cattle may never make it out of the barn. For one thing, theres the optics issue: Gene editing tends to grab headlines for its role in controversial research and biotech blunders. Crispr-Cas9 is often celebrated for its potential to alter the blueprint of life, but that enormous promise can become a liability in the hands of rogue and unscrupulous researchers, tempting regulatory agencies to toughen restrictions on the technologys use. And its unclear how eager the public will be to buy beef from gene-edited animals. So the question isnt just if the technology will work in developing supercharged cattle, but whether consumers and regulators will support it.

Cattle are catalysts for climate change. Livestock account for an estimated 14.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, of which cattle are responsible for about two thirds, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). One simple way to address the issue is to eat less meat. But meat consumption is expected to increase along with global population and average income. A 2012 report by the FAO projected that meat production will increase by 76 percent by 2050, as beef consumption increases by 1.2 percent annually. And the United States is projected to set a record for beef production in 2021, according to the Department of Agriculture.

For Alison Van Eenennaam, an animal geneticist at the University of California, Davis, part of the answer is creating more efficient cattle that rely on fewer resources. According to Van Eenennaam, the number of dairy cows in the United States decreased from around 25 million in the 1940s to around 9 million in 2007, while milk production has increased by nearly 60 percent. Van Eenennaam credits this boost in productivity to conventional selective breeding.

You dont need to be a rocket scientist or even a mathematician to figure out that the environmental footprint or the greenhouse gases associated with a glass of milk today is about one-third of that associated with a glass of milk in the 1940s, she says. Anything you can do to accelerate the rate of conventional breeding is going to reduce the environmental footprint of a glass of milk or a pound of meat.

Modern gene-editing tools may fuel that acceleration. By making precise cuts to DNA, geneticists insert or remove naturally occurring genes associated with specific traits. Some experts insist that gene editing has the potential to spark a new food revolution.

Jon Oatley, a reproductive biologist at Washington State University, wants to use Crispr-Cas9 to fine tune the genetic code of rugged, disease-resistant, and heat-tolerant bulls that have been bred to thrive on the open range. By disabling a gene called NANOS2, he says he aims to eliminate the capacity for a bull to make his own sperm, turning the recipient into a surrogate for sperm-producing stem cells from more productive prized stock. These surrogate sires, equipped with sperm from prize bulls, would then be released into range herds that are often genetically isolated and difficult to access, and the premium genes would then be transmitted to their offspring.

Furthermore, surrogate sires would enable ranchers to introduce desired traits without having to wrangle their herd into one place for artificial insemination, says Oatley. He envisions the gene-edited bulls serving herds in tropical regions like Brazil, the worlds largest beef exporter and home to around 200 million of the approximately 1.5 billion head of cattle on Earth.

Brazils herds are dominated by Nelore, a hardy breed that lacks the carcass and meat quality of breeds like Angus but can withstand high heat and humidity. Put an Angus bull on a tropical pasture and hes probably going to last maybe a month before he succumbs to the environment, says Oatley, while a Nelore bull carrying Angus sperm would have no problem with the climate.

The goal, according to Oatley, is to introduce genes from beefier bulls into these less efficient herds, increasing their productivity and decreasing their overall impact on the environment. We have shrinking resources, he says, and need new, innovative strategies for making those limited resources last.

Oatley has demonstrated his technique in mice but faces challenges with livestock. For starters, disabling NANOS2 does not definitively prevent the surrogate bull from producing some of its own sperm. And while Oatley has shown he can transplant sperm-producing cells into surrogate livestock, researchers have not yet published evidence showing that the surrogates produce enough quality sperm to support natural fertilization. How many cells will you need to make this bull actually fertile? asks Ina Dobrinski, a reproductive biologist at the University of Calgary who helped pioneer germ cell transplantation in large animals.

But Oatleys greatest challenge may be one shared with others in the bioengineered cattle industry: overcoming regulatory restrictions and societal suspicion. Surrogate sires would be classified as gene-edited animals by the Food and Drug Administration, meaning theyd face a rigorous approval process before their offspring could be sold for human consumption. But Oatley maintains that if his method is successful, the sperm itself would not be gene-edited, nor would the resulting offspring. The only gene-edited specimens would be the surrogate sires, which act like vessels in which the elite sperm travel.

Even so, says Dobrinski, Thats a very detailed difference and Im not sure how that will work with regulatory and consumer acceptance.

In fact, American attitudes towards gene editing have been generally positive when the modification is in the interest of animal welfare. Many dairy farmers prefer hornless cowshorns can inflict damage when wielded by 1,500-pound animalsso they often burn them off in a painful process using corrosive chemicals and scalding irons. In a study published last year in the journal PLOS One, researchers found that most Americans are willing to consume food products from cows genetically modified to be hornless.

Still, experts say several high-profile gene-editing failures in livestock and humans in recent years may lead consumers to consider new biotechnologies to be dangerous and unwieldy.

In 2014, a Minnesota startup called Recombinetics, a company with which Van Eenennaams lab has collaborated, created a pair of cross-bred Holstein bulls using the gene-editing tool TALENs, a precursor to Crispr-Cas9, making cuts to the bovine DNA and altering the genes to prevent the bulls from growing horns. Holstein cattle, which almost always carry horned genes, are highly productive dairy cows, so using conventional breeding to introduce hornless genes from less productive breeds can compromise the Holsteins productivity. Gene editing offered a chance to introduce only the genes Recombinetics wanted. Their hope was to use this experiment to prove that milk from the bulls female progeny was nutritionally equivalent to milk from non-edited stock. Such results could inform future efforts to make Holsteins hornless but no less productive.

The experiment seemed to work. In 2015, Buri and Spotigy were born. Over the next few years, the breakthrough received widespread media coverage, and when Buris hornless descendant graced the cover of Wired magazine in April 2019, it did so as the ostensible face of the livestock industrys future.

But early last year, a bioinformatician at the FDA ran a test on Buris genome and discovered an unexpected sliver of genetic code that didnt belong. Traces of bacterial DNA called a plasmid, which Recombinetics used to edit the bulls genome, had stayed behind in the editing process, carrying genes linked to antibiotic resistance in bacteria. After the agency published its findings, the media reaction was swift and fierce: FDA finds a surprise in gene-edited cattle: antibiotic-resistant, non-bovine DNA, read one headline. Part cow, part bacterium? read another.

Recombinetics has since insisted that the leftover plasmid DNA was likely harmless and stressed that this sort of genetic slipup is not uncommon.

Is there any risk with the plasmid? I would say theres none, says Tad Sonstegard, president and CEO of Acceligen, a Recombinetics subsidiary. We eat plasmids all the time, and were filled with microorganisms in our body that have plasmids. In hindsight, Sonstegard says his teams only mistake was not properly screening for the plasmid to begin with.

While the presence of antibiotic-resistant plasmid genes in beef probably does not pose a direct threat to consumers, according to Jennifer Kuzma, a professor of science and technology policy and co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University, it does raise the possible risk of introducing antibiotic-resistant genes into the microflora of peoples digestive systems. Although unlikely, organisms in the gut could integrate those genes into their own DNA and, as a result, proliferate antibiotic resistance, making it more difficult to fight off bacterial diseases.

The lesson that I think is learned there is that science is never 100 percent certain, and that when youre doing a risk assessment, having some humility in your technology product is important, because you never know what youre going to discover further down the road, she says. In the case of Recombinetics. I dont think there was any ill intent on the part of the researchers, but sometimes being very optimistic about your technology and enthusiastic about it causes you to have blinders on when it comes to risk assessment.

The FDA eventually clarified its results, insisting that the study was meant only to publicize the presence of the plasmid, not to suggest the bacterial DNA was necessarily dangerous. Nonetheless, the damage was done. As a result of the blunder,a plan was quashed forRecombinetics to raise an experimental herd in Brazil.

Backlash to the FDA study exposed a fundamental disagreement between the agency and livestock biotechnologists. Scientists like Van Eenennaam, who in 2017 received a $500,000 grant from the Department of Agriculture to study Buris progeny, disagree with the FDAs strict regulatory approach to gene-edited animals. Typical GMOs are transgenic, meaning they have genes from multiple different species, but modern gene-editing techniques allow scientists to stay roughly within the confines of conventional breeding, adding and removing traits that naturally occur within the species. That said, gene editing is not yet free from errors and sometimes intended changes result in unintended alterations, notes Heather Lombardi, division director of animal bioengineering and cellular therapies at the FDAs Center for Veterinary Medicine. For that reason, the FDA remains cautious.

Theres a lot out there that I think is still unknown in terms of unintended consequences associated with using genome-editing technology, says Lombardi. Were just trying to get an understanding of what the potential impact is, if any, on safety.

Bhanu Telugu, an animal scientist at the University of Maryland and president and chief science officer at the agriculture technology startup RenOVAte Biosciences, worries that biotech companies will migrate their experiments to countries with looser regulatory environments. Perhaps more pressingly, he says strict regulation requiring long and expensive approval processes may incentivize these companies to work only on traits that are most profitable, rather than those that may have the greatest benefit for livestock and society, such as animal well-being and the environment.

What company would be willing to spend $20 million on potentially alleviating heat stress at this point? he asks.

On a windy winter afternoon, Raluca Mateescu leaned against a fence post at the University of Floridas Beef Teaching Unit while a Brahman heifer sniffed inquisitively at the air and reached out its tongue in search of unseen food. Since 2017, Mateescu, an animal geneticist at the university, has been part of a team studying heat and humidity tolerance in breeds like Brahman and Brangus (a mix between Brahman and Angus cattle). Her aim is to identify the genetic markers that contribute to a breeds climate resilience, markers that might lead to more precise breeding and gene-editing practices.

In the South, Mateescu says, heat and humidity are a major problem. That poses a stress to the animals because theyre selected for intense productionto produce milk or grow fast and produce a lot of muscle and fat.

Like Nelore cattle in South America, Brahman are well-suited for tropical and subtropical climates, but their high tolerance for heat and humidity comes at the cost of lower meat quality than other breeds. Mateescu and her team have examined skin biopsies and found that relatively large sweat glands allow Brahman to better regulate their internal body temperature. With funding from the USDAs National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the researchers now plan to identify specific genetic markers that correlate with tolerance to tropical conditions.

If were selecting for animals that produce more without having a way to cool off, were going to run into trouble, she says.

There are other avenues in biotechnology beyond gene editing that may help reduce the cattle industrys footprint. Although still early in their development, lab-cultured meats may someday undermine todays beef producers by offering consumers an affordable alternative to the conventionally grown product, without the animal welfare and environmental concerns that arise from eating beef harvested from a carcass.

Other biotech techniques hope to improve the beef industry without displacing it. In Switzerland, scientists at a startup called Mootral are experimenting with a garlic-based food supplement designed to alter the bovine digestive makeup to reduce the amount of methane they emit. Studies have shown the product to reduce methane emissions by about 20 percent in meat cattle, according to the New York Times.

In order to adhere to the Paris climate agreement, Mootrals owner, Thomas Hafner, believes demand will grow as governments require methane reductions from their livestock producers. We are working from the assumption that down the line every cow will be regulated to be on a methane reducer, he told the New York Times.

Meanwhile, a farm science research institute in New Zealand, AgResearch, hopes to target methane production at its source by eliminating methanogens, the microbes thought to be responsible for producing the greenhouse gas in ruminants. The AgResearch team is attempting to develop a vaccine to alter the cattle guts microbial composition, according to the BBC.

Genomic testing may also allow cattle producers to see what genes calves carry before theyre born, according to Mateescu, enabling producers to make smarter breeding decisions and select for the most desirable traits, whether it be heat tolerance, disease resistance, or carcass weight.

Despite all these efforts, questions remain as to whether biotech can ever dramatically reduce the industrys emissions or afford humane treatment to captive animals in resource-intensive operations. To many of the industrys critics, including environmental and animal rights activists, the very nature of the practice of rearing livestock for human consumption erodes the noble goal of sustainable food production. Rather than revamp the industry, these critics suggest alternatives such as meat-free diets to fulfill our need for protein. Indeed, data suggests many young consumers are already incorporating plant-based meats into their meals.

Ultimately, though, climate change may be the most pressing issue facing the cattle industry, according to Telugu of the University of Maryland, which received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve productivity and adaptability in African cattle. We cannot breed our way out of this, he says.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Image Credit: RitaE from Pixabay

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Boundless Bio Announces Publication in Nature Genetics Detailing the Association Between Extrachromosomal DNA-Based Oncogene Amplification and Poor…

Tuesday, August 18th, 2020

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Boundless Bio, a company developing innovative new therapies directed to extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in aggressive cancers, today announced research published in the journal Nature Genetics that demonstrates that ecDNA-based oncogene amplification drives poor outcomes for patients across many cancer types.

The manuscript, Frequent extrachromosomal oncogene amplification drives aggressive tumors, was co-authored by Boundless Bio scientists Nam-phuong Nguyen, Ph.D., and Kristen Turner, Ph.D., and scientific founders Paul Mischel, M.D., Distinguished Professor at the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) School of Medicine and a member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research; Vineet Bafna, Ph.D., Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, UC San Diego; Howard Chang, M.D., Ph.D., Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Genomics and Genetics, Stanford University; and Roel Verhaak, Ph.D., Professor and Associate Director of Computational Biology, The Jackson Laboratory.

The researchers used intensive computational analysis of whole-genome sequencing data from more than 3200 tumor samples in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG), totaling over 400 TB of raw sequencing data, to observe the impact of ecDNA amplification on patient outcomes. The researchers observed that ecDNA amplification occurs in many types of cancers, but not in normal tissue or in whole blood, and that the most common recurrent oncogene amplifications frequently arise on ecDNA. Notably, ecDNA-based circular amplicons were found in 25 of 29 cancer types analyzed, and at high frequency in many cancers that are considered to be amongst the most aggressive histological types, such as glioblastoma, sarcoma, and esophageal carcinoma. In addition, patients whose cancers carried ecDNA had significantly shorter survival, even when controlled for tissue type, than patients whose cancers were not driven by ecDNA-based oncogene amplification.

The findings demonstrate that ecDNA play a critical role in cancer, providing a mechanism for achieving and maintaining high copy number oncogene amplification and genetic heterogeneity while driving enhanced chromatin accessibility and elevating oncogene transcription. ecDNA amplifications are associated with aggressive cancer behavior, potentially by providing tumors with additional routes to circumvent current treatments and other evolutionary bottlenecks. The shorter overall survival, even when stratified by tumor type, raises the possibility that cancer patients whose tumors are driven by ecDNA may not be as responsive to current therapies and may be in need of new forms of treatment.

This important study builds on our rapidly expanding knowledge about ecDNA, showing, for the first time, that ecDNA amplifications are present in a broad range of cancer tumor types, said Jason Christiansen, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer of Boundless Bio. These results point to the urgent need for therapies that can target ecDNA and interfere with their ability to drive aggressive cancer growth, resistance, and recurrence.

By detecting and characterizing the role that ecDNA play in driving hard-to-treat cancers, we are drawing a more accurate map of the cancer genome, said Dr. Mischel. It is our goal to take these findings and apply them to the development of powerful anti-cancer therapies for individuals with ecDNA-driven cancers.

About ecDNA

Extrachromosomal DNA, or ecDNA, are distinct circular units of DNA containing functional genes that are located outside cells chromosomes and can make many copies of themselves. ecDNA rapidly replicate within cancer cells, causing high numbers of oncogene copies, a trait that can be passed to daughter cells in asymmetric ways during cell division. Cancer cells have the ability to upregulate or downregulate oncogenes located on ecDNA to ensure survival under selective pressures, including chemotherapy, targeted therapy, immunotherapy, or radiation, making ecDNA one of cancer cells primary mechanisms of recurrence and treatment resistance. ecDNA are rarely seen in healthy cells but are found in many solid tumor cancers. They are a key driver of the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat cancers, specifically those characterized by high copy number amplification of oncogenes.

About Boundless Bio

Boundless Bio is a next-generation precision oncology company interrogating a novel area of cancer biology, extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA), to deliver transformative therapies to patients with previously intractable cancers.

For more information, visit http://www.boundlessbio.com.

Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About Boundless Bios Spyglass Platform

Boundless Bios Spyglass platform is a comprehensive suite of proprietary ecDNA-driven and pair-matched tumor models along with proprietary imaging and molecular analytical tools that enables Boundlesss researchers to interrogate ecDNA biology to identify a pipeline of novel oncotargets essential to the function of cancer cells that are enabled by ecDNA. The Spyglass platform facilitates Boundless innovation in the development of precision therapeutics specifically targeting ecDNA-driven tumors, thereby enabling selective treatments for patients whose tumor genetic profiles make them most likely to benefit from our novel therapeutic candidates.

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Unless true origin of coronavirus is identified, another Chinese pandemic is in the offing – WION

Tuesday, August 18th, 2020

To date, no one has stated the urgent universal need to aggressively investigate the true origin of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, better than Karl and Dan Sirotkin in their August 12, 2020 article Might SARSCoV2 Have Arisen via Serial Passage through an Animal Host or Cell Culture?

Despite claims from prominent scientists that SARSCoV2 indubitably emerged naturally, the etiology of this novel coronavirus remains a pressing and open question: Without knowing the true nature of a disease, it is impossible for clinicians to appropriately shape their care, for policymakers to correctly gauge the nature and extent of the threat, and for the public to appropriately modify their behaviour.

As the authors correctly note, serial passage, that is, the repeated re-infection within an animal or human population allows a virus to specifically adapt to the infected species.

That process occurs naturally in the wild, but it can be greatly accelerated in the laboratory by deliberate serial passaging of viruses in cell culture systems or animals, potentially leaving few or no traces as to whether the adapted viruses are naturally-occurring or laboratory-manipulated.

That type of "gain of function" experimentation can become particularly dangerous if viruses are adapted for human infection by serial passaging them through cell cultures and animal models that have been genetically-modified to express human receptors.

There are numerous scientific publications describing serial passaging of coronaviruses through humanised cell cultures and animal models, thus potentially creating a new coronavirus pre-adapted for human infection.

At present, the scientific consensus is that SARS-CoV-2 came from bats, but how it evolved to infect humans remains unknown.

China has claimed that a bat coronavirus named RaTG13 is the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2, but RaTG13 is not actually a virus because no biological samples exist. It is only a genomic sequence of a virus for which there are now serious questions about its accuracy.

In contrast, Dr Li-Meng Yan, a Chinese virologist and whistleblower, has implied that RaTG13 may have been used to divert the worlds attention away from the true source of the COVID-19 pandemic, a novel coronavirus that originated in military laboratories overseen by China's Peoples Liberation Army and created by the manipulation of Zhoushan coronaviruses ZC45 and/or ZXC21.

SARS-CoV-2 has signs of serial passaging and the direct genetic insertion of novel amino acids sequences for which no natural evolutionary pathway has been identified.

Although SARS-CoV-2 appears to have the backbone of bat coronaviruses, its spike protein, which is responsible for binding to the human cell and its membrane fusion-driven entry, has sections that do not appear in any closely-related bat coronaviruses.

SARS-CoV-2s receptor binding domain, the specific element that binds to the human cell, has a ten times greater binding affinity than the first SARS virus that caused the 2002-2003 pandemic.

Furthermore, SARS-CoV-2 appears to be pre-adapted for human infection and has not undergone a similar natural mutation process within the human population that was observed during the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak.

Those observations plus the inexplicable genetic distance between SARS-CoV-2 and any of its potential bat predecessors suggest an accelerated evolutionary process obtained by laboratory-based serial passaging through genetically-engineered mouse models containing humanised receptors previously developed by China.

The other unique feature of SARS-CoV-2 is a furin polybasic cleavage site that facilitates membrane fusion between the virus and the human cell and widely known for its ability to enhance pathogenicity and transmissibility, but also is not present in any closely related bat coronaviruses.

There are no readily-available animal models to produce a unique furin polybasic cleavage site by serial passaging, but techniques for the artificial insertion of such furin polybasic cleavage sites by genetic engineering have been used for over ten years.

To paraphrase Karl and Dan Sirotkin, unless the zoonotic hosts necessary for completing a natural jump from animals to humans are identified, the dualuse gainoffunction research practice of viral serial passage and the artificial insertion of unique viral features should be considered viable routes by which SARS-CoV-2 arose and the COVID-19 pandemic was initiated.

Lawrence Sellin, PhD is a retired US Army Reserve colonel. He has previously worked at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and conducted basic and clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry. His email address is lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL.)

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Unless true origin of coronavirus is identified, another Chinese pandemic is in the offing - WION

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SinoPharm’s Inactivated Coronavirus Vaccine | In the Pipeline – Science Magazine

Tuesday, August 18th, 2020

So now we have some clinical data on yet another category of vaccine: SinoPharms inactivated coronavirus candidate. This is one of the classic vaccine techniques, where an infectious virus is altered by some sort of protein-denaturing treatment (heating or reactive chemistry) to make it noninfectious. But such particles can retain enough of their protein surfaces to set off a useful immune response the tricky part is inactivating the virus enough so that it cant infect cells and replicate, but not so much that it presents totally different proteins to the immune system and raises a response that wont help against the real virus.

In SinoPharms case, they inactivated the coronavirus with beta-propiolactone, which is a classic protein-alkylating compound. BPL is a strained four-membered ring that is ready to be attacked and opened by pretty much any sort of nucleophile, including protein side chains from amino acids such as Cys or Lys. The compound is used for chemical disinfection (surgical instruments and the like), but thats not a casual application, because its carcinogenic by itself. It works out for such applications, though, because its very volatile (and thus easy to remove by vacuum or heating), much like another small reactive and toxi) strained ring compound, ethylene oxide. So theres no danger in using BPL to inactivate a virus the question, as mentioned, is going to be whether youve inactivated it too much.

Patients in the Phase I trial got 2.5, 5, or 10 micrograms of this agent at Day 0, Day 28, and a third time at Day 56. There were 24 patients in each group, plus an equal-sized placebo group that just got alum adjuvant injections. In the Phase II trial, the 5 microgram dose was chosen, and there were two groups: injection at Day 0 and Day 14, or injection at Day 0 and Day 21, with 84 patients in each group and a 28-patient placebo group for each. Median ages were around the early 40s, slightly more men than women. Adverse reactions appear to have been nothing remarkable pain at the injection site mostly, with very little systemic stuff like fever or fatigue, which certainly appears to be the mildest profile of the vaccines that weve seen so far.

As for neutralizing antibodies, it looks like the three-dose Phase I trial had an odd dose-response. The medium dose was actually slightly worse than either the low or high one. Meanwhile, in the Phase II, which was done with that medium five-microgram dose, the antibody response (measured two weeks after the second dose) was not as strong as with the full three-dose schedule, but the 0/21 day dosing schedule led to a better response than the 0/14 one. It appears from the Phase II data that one of the 42 patients who were tested for antibody response in that group did not seroconvert at all. The geometric mean titer values for the neutralizing antibodies (247 for the 0/21 group) appear to be in the range of other Phase I data reported, although its not easy to make a head-to-head comparison with any certainty. There is no comparison in the study with a convalescent plasma group, but as weve been seeing, those samples tend to be pretty variable themselves. There are also no data on T-cell responses.

So this is a rather preliminary report (as the authors themselves note), but its the first one we have on an inactivated vaccine. Like all of the others so far except the J&J Ad26 one, this candidate will also need a booster shot. The small and mild adverse-event reactions here are really the main thing that stands out if youre a glass half full person, then you can be glad about that, but if youre a glass-half-empty one, you might wonder about the overall robustness of the immune response. Were going to need more data to make any calls about that, and (just as with every other vaccine under development!) the real numbers were waiting on for efficacy. How many people will this (or any) vaccine protect, and how well? Stay tuned.

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Engineered COVID-19-Infected Mouse Bites Researcher Amid ‘Explosion’ of Risky Coronavirus Research – CounterPunch

Tuesday, August 18th, 2020

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

University researchers genetically engineer a human pandemic virus. They inject the new virus into a laboratory mouse. The infected mouse then bites a researcher..It is a plot worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster about risky coronavirus research.

But according to newly obtained minutes of the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) of the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, these exact events need not be imagined. They occurred for real between April 1st and May 6th this year.

The identity of the bitten coronavirus researcher has not been revealed except that they were working in a high security BSL-3 virus lab when the accident happened.

According to Richard Ebright, an epidemiologist from Rutgers University, the UNC incident underscores an important development in virus research since the pandemic began:

There has been an explosion of research involving fully infectious SARS-CoV-2 over the last six months.Research with infectious SARS-CoV-2 now is occurring in every, or almost every, BSL-3 facility in the US and overseas.

This strong upsurge is affirmed by Edward Hammond of Prickly Research, Austin, TX, former Director of the Sunshine Project, an NGO that tracked the post 9/11 expansion of the US Biodefense program.

It is evident that swarms of academic researchers with little prior experience with coronaviruses have leapt into the field in recent months.

For Hammond, this explosion represents a hazard:

We need to be clear headed about the risk. The first SARS virus was a notorious source of laboratory-acquired infections and there is a very real risk that modified forms of SARS-CoV-2 could infect researchers, especially inexperienced researchers, with unpredictable and potentially quite dangerous results. The biggest risk is the creation and accidental release of a novel form of SARS-CoV-2 a variant whose altered characteristics might undermine global efforts to stop the pandemic by evading the approaches being taken to find COVID vaccines and treatments.

And, continues Hammond: Each additional lab that experiments with CoV-2 amplifies the risk.

Richard Ebright concurs, telling Independent Science News in an email that this research is:

in many cases being performedbyresearchers who have no prior experience in BSL-3 operations and pathogens research, and who therefore pose elevated risk of laboratory accidents withBSL-3 pathogens.

Ebright is also concerned that some influential experimenters are now calling for reduced oversight:

The UNC incident also underscores that calls by some, notably Columbia University virologist Vincent Racaniello (Podcast at 01:35mins onwards), to allow virus-culture and virus-production research with fully infectious SARS-CoV-2 at BSL-2 are egregiously irresponsible and absolutely unacceptable.

Other researchers are also calling for restraint. In a paper titled Prudently conduct the engineering and synthesis of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, researchers from China and the US critiqued the synthesis in February of a full length infectious clone (Gao et al., 2020; Thao et al., 2020). And, in concluding, these researchers asked a question that is even more pertinent now than then Once the risks [of a lab escape] become a reality, who or which organization should take responsibility for them?

The accident at the University of North Carolina (UNC) is now in the public domain but only thanks to a FOIA request submitted by Hammond (in line with NIH guidelines) and shared with Independent Science News.

Despite the FOIA request, apart from the fact that UNC classified it as an official Reportable Incident, i.e. that must be reported to National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Washington DC, scarcely any information about the accident is available.

In part this is because the minutes of the relevant IBC meeting (May 6th, 2020, p109) are extremely brief. They do not provide any details of the fate of the bitten researcher. Nor do they state, for example, whether the researcher developed an active infection, nor whether they developed symptoms, nor if they transmitted the recombinant virus to anyone else. Neither do they reveal what kind of recombinant virus was being used or the purpose of the experiment.

To try to learn more, Independent Science News emailed the lab of Ralph Baric at UNC, which, based on their research history is the most likely coronavirus research group involved (Roberts et al., 2007; Menachery et al., 2015), the University Biosafety Officer, and UNC Media relations.

Only the latter replied:

The April 2020 incident referred to in the University Institutional Biosafety Committee meeting minutes involved a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV-2 strain used in the development of a mouse model system.

Ralph Baric UNC Gillings School of Public Health-web.

The researcher did not develop any symptoms and noinfection occurredas a result of the incident.

Our questions in full and the full UNC reply are available here.

The second reason for this lack of information is that the UNC redacted the names of Principal Investigators (PIs) whose research required biosafety scrutiny, along with many of the experimental specifics.

Nevertheless, unredacted parts of minutes from IBC meetings held in 2020 contain descriptions of experiments that potentially encompass the accident. They include:

Application 75223:

(a full-length infectious clone refers to a viable DNA copy of the coronavirus, which is ordinarily an RNA virus)

and

Application 73790:

and

Application 74962:

In all, any one of eight sets of different experiments approved by the UNC Chapel Hill IBC in 2020 proposed infecting mice with live infectious and mutant SARS-CoV-2-like coronaviruses under BSL-3 conditions and therefore could have led to the accident.

According to Hammond the lack of transparency represented by the sparse minutes and especially the redactions represent a violation of sciences social contract:

At the dawn of recombinant DNA, at the request of the scientific community itself, following the fabled Asilomar conference, the United States government took the position of not regulating genetic engineering in the lab. The deal that big science struck with the government was that, in return for not being directly regulated, principal investigators would take personal responsibility for lab biosafety, involve the public in decision-making, and accept public accountability for their actions.

The NIH Guidelines and Institutional Biosafety Committee system of self-regulation by researchers is founded upon the principal of personal responsibility of PIs and the promise of transparency. The redaction of the researchers identities from IBC meeting minutes, in order to hide the activities of researchers and avoid accountability for accidents, fundamentally contradicts the core principles of the US oversight system and violates the commitments that science made.

Richard Ebright goes further:

There is no justification for UNCs redactionof the names of the laboratory heads andthe identities of pathogens. UNCs redactions violate conditions UNC agreed to in exchange for NIH funding of UNCs research and, if not corrected, should result in the termination of current NIH funding, and the loss of eligibility for future NIH funding, of UNCs research.

Are universities doing too many risky experiments on coronaviruses?

The second concern of researchers contacted by Independent Science News is that unnecessary and dangerous experiments will be conducted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Richard Ebright:

The UNC incident shows that serious laboratory accidents with SARS-CoV-2can occur even in a lab having extremely extensive experience in BSL-3 operations and unmatched expertise in coronavirus research, and underscores the risks associated with uncontrolled proliferation of research on SARS-CoV-2, especially for labs lacking prior experience in BSL-3 operations and coronavirus research.

For this reason Ebright argues that:

It is essential that a national needs-assessment and biosafety assessment be performed for research involving fully infectious SARS-CoV-2. It also is essential that a risk-benefit review be performed before approving research projects involving fully infectious SARS-CoV-2something that currently does not occurto ensure that potential benefits to the public outweigh the real risks to laboratory workers and the public.

This concern over risks and benefits is shared by Edward Hammond. Using FOIA again he has further discovered that researchers at the University of Pittsburgh (whose identity is redacted) plan to make what Hammond calls Corona-thrax.

In short, according to its Institutional Biosafety Committee, Pittsburgh researchers intend put the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 (which allows the virus to gain entry into human cells) into Bacillus anthracis which is the causative agent of anthrax.

The anthrax strain proposed to be used for this experiment is disarmed but, Hammond agrees with Gao et al., (2020) that the balance of risks and benefits appears not to be receiving adequate consideration.

This experiment was nevertheless approved by the Institutional Biosafety Committee of the University of Pittsburgh. But by redacting the name of the laboratory from the minutes and also every name of the members of the committee which approved it, the University has supplied a de facto response to the final question posed by Gao et al.: who will take responsibility for risky coronavirus research?

References

Gao, P., Ma, S., Lu, D., Mitcham, C., Jing, Y., & Wang, G. (2020). Prudently conduct the engineering and synthesis of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.Synthetic and systems biotechnology,5(2), 59-61.Menachery, V. D., Yount, B. L., Debbink, K., Agnihothram, S., Gralinski, L. E., Plante, J. A., & Randell, S. H. (2015). A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence.Nature medicine,21(12), 1508-1513.Roberts, A., Deming, D., Paddock, C. D., Cheng, A., Yount, B., Vogel, L., & Zaki, S. R. (2007). A mouse-adapted SARS-coronavirus causes disease and mortality in BALB/c mice.PLoS Pathog,3(1), e5.Thao, T. T. N., Labroussaa, F., Ebert, N., Vkovski, P., Stalder, H., Portmann, J., & Gultom, M. (2020). Rapid reconstruction of SARS-CoV-2 using a synthetic genomics platform.BioRxiv.

This article first appeared in Independent Science News.

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Engineered COVID-19-Infected Mouse Bites Researcher Amid 'Explosion' of Risky Coronavirus Research - CounterPunch

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Protein Expression Technology Market is anticipated to record a CAGR of around 10% over the forecast period ie 2019-2027 – Scientect

Tuesday, August 18th, 2020

A new report published by Research nester, titledProtein Expression Technology Market: Global Demand Analysis & Opportunity Outlook 2027delivers detailed overview of the global protein expression technology marketin terms of market segmentation by expression system, by application, by end user and by region.

Based on expression systems, the global protein expression technology market is segmented into prokaryotic, insect, mammalian, yeast and others; by application into drug discovery, protein purification, protein-protein interaction, disease diagnostics & monitoring and others; by end user into pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, academic research and others.

The global protein expression technology market is anticipated to record a CAGR of around 10% over the forecast period i.e. 2019-2027.

Protein expression is among the most fundamental biological processes. It refers to processes which describe how living cells or organisms synthesize, modify and regulate proteins. Expression of a protein includes three processes, namely, transcription, translation and post-translational modification. These processes play a vital role in the expression of a gene and its regulation. Increasing investment for R & D development by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies along with rising demand for therapeutic proteins for the treatment of various ailments is anticipated to propel the growth of the market over the forecast period. Additionally, one major advantage of protein and gene expression is the ability to detect both hereditary and environmental abnormalities of a given disease, if linked to disease presentation. This is also projected to positively impact the growth of the market.

Furthermore, application of soluble receptors, monoclonal antibodies, engineered proteins, peptides, and their conjugates as drugs is expected to drive the growth of the market.

The Final Report will cover the impact analysis of COVID-19 on this industry (Global and Regional Market).

Request for a sample of this research report @https://www.researchnester.com/sample-request-679

On the basis of region, the global protein expression technology market is segmented into five major regions including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East & Africa region. The market in North America is anticipated to witness a significant growth during the forecast period on the back of technological advancements for the manufacturing and research of personalized medicine with the help of proteomics. Moreover, funding provided by various governmental and non-governmental organizations for research in this region is also expected to foster the growth of market. The market in Asia Pacific is also estimated to show a considerable growth over the forecast period owing to the increased prevalence of chronic diseases due to sedentary lifestyle of people.

The Final Report will cover the impact analysis of COVID-19 on this industry (Global and Regional Market).

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Application of Therapeutic Protein in Medicine

Most of the human diseases are in some way related to dysfunction of a specific protein. Therapeutic protein produced by the protein expression technology provides treatment for a variety of diseases, such as diabetes, cancer, hemophilia, infectious diseases, and anemia. These proteins formed by recombinant technology and genetic engineering have wide array of applications in medicine. A few common therapeutic proteins are FC fusion proteins, hormones, interleukins, enzymes, anticoagulants, and others. Thus, the application of these therapeutic protein in medicine for the remedy of the numerous diseases is anticipated to propel the growth of the market.

However, high cost involved with the research of expression proteins along with stringent regulation and policies for their approval as drugs are expected to operate as a key restraint to the growth of the global protein expression technology market over the forecast period.

Further, for the in-depth analysis, the report encompasses the industry growth drivers, restraints, supply and demand risk, market attractiveness, BPS analysis and Porters five force model.

This reportalso provides the existing competitive scenario of some of the key players of the global protein expression technology market which includes company profiling of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Merck KGaA, Promega Corporation, Agilent Technologies, GenScript, Takara Holdings Inc., Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc., Qiagen, Lonza and other prominent players. The profiling enfolds key information of the companies which encompasses business overview, products and services, key financials and recent news and developments. On the whole, the report depicts detailed overview of the global protein expression technology marketthat will help industry consultants, equipment manufacturers, existing players searching for expansion opportunities, new players searching possibilities and other stakeholders to align their market centric strategies according to the ongoing and expected trends in the future.

The Final Report will cover the impact analysis of COVID-19 on this industry (Global and Regional Market).

Request Report [emailprotected]https://www.researchnester.com/sample-request-679

About Research Nester

Research Nester is a leading service provider for strategic market research and consulting. We aim to provide unbiased, unparalleled market insights and industry analysis to help industries, conglomerates and executives to take wise decisions for their future marketing strategy, expansion and investment etc. We believe every business can expand to its new horizon, provided a right guidance at a right time is available through strategic minds. Our out of box thinking helps our clients to take wise decision so as to avoid future uncertainties.

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Make way for sustainable, healthy and delicious food! – Innovation Origins

Tuesday, August 18th, 2020

Vitamin B12 is only found in animal proteins, i.e. in meat and dairy. This is why vegans often take supplements in order to get the amount they need. A sustainable diet implies eating less animal protein, as the Netherlands Nutrition Centre (Stichting Voedingscentrum) also recommends. But how can we make sure that our sustainable food is both healthy and delicious?

According to Corn van Dooren, nutritionist and expert on sustainable eating at the Netherlands Nutrition Centre, this is the key question for the future. A liter of cola has less environmental impact than a liter of milk. Of course, that doesnt mean that you are better off drinking cola because it doesnt provide any nutrients. In Van Doorens opinion, you have to look at sustainable food in a variety of ways: You cant do without food, but you can do without flying. Get your food close to home and in season.

In 2018, Van Dooren earned his PhD on the topic of how sustainable (as in, environmental impact) and healthy (as in, nutritional quality) existing dietary patterns are. He devised the Sustainable Nutrient-Rich Food index, a mathematical model that offers nutritional advice. He divided products into four categories: red, white, brown, and green. Van Dooren: The green category comprising vegetables, mushrooms, legumes, soy products, and fruit, for example, scores the highest on both aspects sustainability and healthy nutritional value. The model also shows, in addition to the composition of a product, where it was grown and how its sustainability is assessed, Van Dooren explains.

The Wheel of Five is a guideline for healthy food in the Netherlands, but it does not yet include a sustainable index. The last update of the wheel was made in 2016. It stated: eat more vegetables (from 200 grams to 250 grams per day), less meat (maximum 500 grams per week), and eat more plant-based foods, such as a weekly portion of legumes and a handful of nuts every day. Those 500 grams could be discussed from a sustainability perspective, because in that case, perhaps meat once or twice per week would then be the most optimal option.

If you eat the maximum amount of 500 grams of protein per week, then the ratio of animal and vegetable protein is 50/50. If you eat almost no meat as part of the Wheel of Five, but you do eat dairy, egg, and fish, then you end up with a ratio of 40/60. On average, Dutch people now get 61% of their protein from animal sources and 39% from plant-based sources. According to the Dutch Council for the Environment and Infrastructure, RLi), this figure needs to be reversed by 2030. This means that the percentage of animal protein in our diet must then be reduced to 40% of our total protein consumption.

In that whole protein transition, as we like to call the offer of alternatives to meat, there was Finnish research into vitamin B12 that can, of course, help people take that step more easily. In any case, Van Dooren regards fermentation, which the Finnish researchers used, as an interesting and exciting innovative development: We should take a closer look into areas around small organisms, such as bacteria, fungi, yeasts, and algae, and see what can be gained from that.

Fermentation is by no means new. It is mainly known for ensuring that vegetables, fruit, fish, and dairy products have a longer shelf life. It is a natural process, also known as controlled fermentation, which can also provide new flavors and products that have plenty of nutritional value. For instance, microbiologist Professor. Dr. Eddy Smit at Wageningen University has cultured tempeh from fermented lupine beans. Apparently, there is as much vitamin B12 in that as there is in a piece of steak.

The greatest voyage of discovery to come lies in the combination of common nutrients with existing natural products, Van Dooren believes: What we know is that legumes and bacteria work together in removing nitrogen from the air. As a consequence, you would no longer need artificial fertilizer. It would be extremely interesting if you were able to combine those kinds of interactions with other plants.

That you can use that particular characteristic of legumes in other crops is also very exciting news for Van Dooren. You end up with a technology that is very far-reaching, albeit not universally accepted. It will have to be done using genetic engineering, which is something that a proportion of consumers will not accept.

Of course, the flavor is also important when it comes to gaining acceptance for meat and dairy substitutes, Van Dooren adds. Soy, for example, is the closest thing to dairy in terms of nutritional value, but it tastes completely different. The German company Made With Luve makes dairy substitutes using lupine. This is a crop that can grow very well in northwestern Europe, which is also a major advantage. Soy is difficult to grow here.

Step by step, sustainable and healthy food is coming ever-closer. Van Dooren considers that true change will still take some time: Now the main emphasis of current innovations is to ensure that meat substitutes are as similar in taste and texture to meat as possible. That they produce the same sensation as meat. The real innovation will be, of course, when a new generation comes along that spurs us on to forget about meat altogether. That is making products that are so special and which have a totally new flavor sensation that transcends the taste of meat.

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Make way for sustainable, healthy and delicious food! - Innovation Origins

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Novome Biotechnologies Expands Therapeutic Focus and Platform Capabilities with Acquisition of Preclinical Projects and Intellectual Property from…

Wednesday, August 12th, 2020

Transfer of Caribous novel microbial IP will enable new therapeutic opportunities for Novome

License to CRISPR-Cas9 intellectual property controlled by Caribou will accelerate the development of preclinical candidates built on Novomes proprietary synthetic biology platform

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Aug. 12, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Novome Biotechnologies, Inc., a biotechnology company engineering first-in-class, living medicines for chronic diseases, today announced that it has taken assignment to certain microbial intellectual property, and has non-exclusively licensed foundational CRISPR-Cas9 intellectual property controlled by Caribou Biosciences, a leading CRISPR genome editing company, to expand its therapeutic pipeline and platform capabilities.

This is an important milestone for Novome that should unlock new therapeutic avenues while we accelerate the pace of preclinical development at the company. The ability to leverage the efficient and flexible CRISPR-Cas9 system will allow us to rapidly iterate on GEMM strain designs to generate the most promising therapeutic candidates, said Blake Wise, Chief Executive Officer of Novome. Additionally, we are excited to leverage the progress made by Caribous microbial group and advance this promising science.

Under the terms of an assignment agreement, Novome acquired ownership of certain intellectual property and preclinical projects related to undisclosed therapeutic areas. Additionally, pursuant to a license agreement, Novome received a non-exclusive license to foundational CRISPR-Cas9 intellectual property controlled by Caribou for genetic modification of bacterial species for administration as therapeutics in humans. Terms of the agreements have not been disclosed. Novome will have full control of development, manufacturing, and commercialization of any product candidates covered by either the assignment agreement or the license agreement.

Novome developed the first platform for controlled and robust colonization of the human gut with engineered therapeutic bacteria, its Genetically Engineered Microbial Medicines (GEMMs) platform. The Company is focused on advancing its lead hyperoxaluria program through Phase 1 clinical proof-of-concept work and expanding its platform and pipeline to address additional disease indications.

Novome was founded in 2016 by scientists from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, based on research performed in the laboratory of Scientific Co-founder Dr. Justin Sonnenburg, Associate Professor, Stanford University. The founding team, Drs. Will DeLoache, Weston Whitaker, Zachary Russ, and Liz Shepherd, combines deep expertise in synthetic biology and the study of the gut microbiota. Their work has led to numerous peer-reviewed scientific publications, as well as the filing of a portfolio of patents, both developed at Novome and licensed exclusively from Stanford.

About Genetically Engineered Microbial MedicinesGenetically Engineered Microbial Medicines (GEMMs) are proprietary bacterial strains designed to colonize the gut at a controllable abundance and express therapeutic transgenes at clinically meaningful levels. Colonization is maintained using a daily dose of prebiotic polysaccharide that GEMMs are engineered to depend upon for their survival.

About NovomeNovome Biotechnologies, Inc. is a biotechnology company focused on engineering defined activities into the human gut microbiota to treat chronic diseases. The Company has developed the first-ever platform for controlled colonization of the gut with engineered bacteria, enabling first-in-class living therapeutics: Genetically Engineered Microbial Medicines (GEMMs). Novome is utilizing its proprietary GEMMs platform in its lead preclinical program in hyperoxaluria, which is focused on the development of a therapeutic strain of bacteria that degrades oxalate to prevent the formation of kidney stones. Efforts are also directed to the expansion of its proprietary synthetic biology platform into additional indications.

Source: Novome Biotechnologies, Inc.

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Scientists Gene-Hack Cotton Plants to Make Them Every Color of the Rainbow – Singularity Hub

Wednesday, August 12th, 2020

Imagine this: Youre on a drive through cotton country. The suns out, tops down. Its a beautiful, totally normal day. Only, what was once a sea of white puff balls has transformed into a multi-hued swirl. Lines of deep purple, bright yellow, midnight blue. All the colors in the rainbowand your t-shirt drawer, as it so happens.

Today, youd do well to check your water. But in the future, colorful cotton could be the normAustralian scientists are having early success genetically modifying the crop to make it multicolored. And although color is their latest project, theyre also working to make synthetic-like, stretchy cotton.

The team hopes their new cotton plants might eventually be grown widely and made into clothes, helping to displace the toxic dyes and synthetic materials used by the fashion industry.

And thats a worthy cause.

The numbers are hard to pin down exactly, but theres little doubt that how we make clothes could be more environmentally friendly. In textile manufacturing, which often takes place in developing countries, those harmful dyes can cause health problems for workers and do more damage as toxic runoff. Also, the life cycle of clothing isnt as long as it once was. While some items will get a second life by way of a thrift store, it all eventually makes its way to a landfill, where the synthetic materials in many clothes can take centuries to break down.

The holy grail then? Non-toxic, compostable clothing. And while its still early, the tools of synthetic biology and genetic engineering may well prove a big part of the solution.

To be totally clear, cotton doesnt only grow in one color. (This was news to me, so maybe it is to you too.) Some varieties, dating back millennia, are naturally dark chocolate, light brown, and even mauve. These were traditionally used in handwoven textiles, but with the Industrial Revolution, naturally pigmented cotton gave way to white cotton because it had longer, higher quality fibers, you could dye it any color on the cheap, and it didnt require specialized equipment or methods to harvest.

In the 80s and 90s, as people became more environmentally conscious, there was a revival of naturally pigmented cotton. You could make clothes from it without dye and suppliers were often small, organic farmers. There was even work to make it amenable to industrial looms. Sally Fox, for example, developed varieties with longer fibers in an array of colors.

Still, naturally colored cotton is generally more expensive to produce, the color range is limited, and the fiber quality is lower than white cotton.

Enter genetic engineering.

As far back as 1993, people were talking about adding color genes to cotton. Two biotech companies, Agracetus and Calgene, had plans to splice in genes from the indigo plant to make cotton for blue jeans. Of course it will work, Ken Barton, vice-president of research and development at Agracetus, said at the time. Give a scientist enough time and money and he can do anything. Of course, were still dying jeans 27 years laterbut maybe the time has come.

As with all things in the realm of biology, the devils in the details, but our tools for manipulating nature have advanced in the last few decades too.

An array of tiny, brilliantly colored buds of cotton tissue are sitting in a few dozen petri dishes in a Canberra greenhouse (check out images here). In one dish, the cotton is raspberry red; in the other its yellow like a mango. The tissue, which carries genes for color spliced in by scientists at Australias scientific research agency, CSIRO, is only the first step, but its a promising one. In the next few months, the team, led by senior research scientist, Colleen MacMillan, will coax the tissue into full-grown cotton plants.

If all goes to plan, the cotton fiber will be just as colorful as the petri dish tissue. The team points to splotches of color on leaves of tobacco plants carrying the cotton genes as likely evidence theyll take. If the leaves of the cotton plants are similarly colored, the cotton fiber will be too.

Weve seen some really beautiful bright yellows, sort of golden-orangey colors, through to some really deep purple, Filomena Pettolino, a scientist on MacMillans team, told Australias ABC News. The team is also working on black cotton, which would be a significant achievementblack dyes are notoriously the nastiest, most toxic of the lot. And the less dye the better.

Though theyre favored for speed and quality, synthetic dyes can include formaldehyde and heavy metals which stain the skin and cause cancer. That early-90s dream to make jeans with blue cotton? Its just as relevant today. In the Chinese province of Xintang, where 300 million pairs of jeans are dyed each year, the toxic runoff flows into rivers by the gallon.

In parallel to their work in multicolored cotton, the team has a longer-term project to make synthetic-like cotton. Synthetics like polyester and nylon make their way into the environment from washing machineswhich pull off and flush microfibers from the fabricand of course, they also line landfills. The team is screening thousands of plants, hunting for proteins with just the right properties: stretchy, wrinkle-free, and maybe even waterproof.

Were looking into the structure of cotton cell walls and harnessing the latest tools in synthetic biology to develop the next generation cotton fiber, CSIRO scientist Dr Madeline Mitchell said. Weve got a whole bunch of different cotton plants growing; some with really long thin fibers, others like the one we call Shaun the Sheep, with short, woolly fibers.

It remains to be seen whether this next-gen cotton can keep up with fashions insatiable demand for new huesthough black is never out of styleif it can yield as much as a standard cotton plant, and what it will cost farmers.

First, though, this team (or another) will need to prove they can grow the stuff and produce seeds at scale. But if it works, you or someone you know may one day rock a pair of fully compostable, bright purple yoga pants of gene-hacked cotton.

Image credit: Crystal de Passill-Chabot / Unsplash

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Baseceuticals Offers Oncolytic Virus Services to Accelerate the Development in Gene Therapy – Press Release – Digital Journal

Wednesday, August 12th, 2020

Baseceuticals recently announced its release of the oncolytic virus service aiming to accelerate the development of gene therapy.

New York, USA - August 12, 2020 - Baseceuticals, the major division of Creative Biogene, mainly targets on gene therapy to provide various services for researchers and institutes to develop new drugs, including genetic modification, gene delivery systems and preclinical trials, recently announced its release of the oncolytic virus service aiming to accelerate the development of gene therapy.

As a global leader in the field of gene therapy, Baseceuticals provides high-quality oncolytic virus services based on an excellent and mature platform. Relying on the most advanced technology and the most advanced equipment, the experienced technical team has successfully completed many oncolytic virus projects, including oncolytic virus construction, engineering and verification. After communicating and analyzing the specific situation, Baseceuticals can propose the best strategy for the project to meet specific needs.

Oncolytic viruses have been used for treatment in clinical trials, and an oncolytic virus product T-VEC has been approved by the FDA. Oncolytic virus therapy has been recognized as a promising and effective cancer treatment method. Compared with radiotherapy and chemotherapy, it is easier to destroy tumor cells.

Oncolytic viruses (OV) are a group of tumor-killing viruses with replication ability that can effectively multiply in cancer cells without damaging healthy cells. According to development, oncolytic viruses can be divided into two categories, namely natural viruses and genetically modified viruses. Among them, natural viruses include broad and natural variants of weak viruses. The main advantage of oncolytic viruses is that they can quickly produce virus particles and genetically engineer other genes to enhance anti-tumor immunity, increase tumor cell sensitivity and improve patient safety. Oncolytic virus services provided by Baseceuticals include oncolytic virus construction, oncolytic virus engineering, oncolytic virus verification, and development of disease-specific oncolytic virus therapy.

Highlights of Oncolytic Virus Service in Baseceuticals:

1. Years of rich experience in oncolytic virus services2. Leading equipment and first-class technology3. Fast turnaround time and reliable results4. A variety of oncolytic viruses are available5. Reasonable price and quality service6. Customize services to meet specific requirements through feasible suggestions

"Baseceuticals provides high-quality oncolytic virus services, our technical research team specializes in efficient systems and procedures in projects related to oncolytic viruses," said Marcia Brady, she also claimed, "Our oncolytic virus service starts with free communication and then feasible suggestions to meet your specific needs. We are confident to provide the best oncolytic virus service at an affordable price and reliable results."

About Baseceuticals

With years of experience and advanced technologies, Baseceuticals provides worldwide customers with innovative products and services to greatly enhance the clinical application and drug launches. As a division of Creative Biogene, Baseceuticals has become a well-recognized industry leader to support scientists from research institutes, government, pharmaceutical companies, diagnosis industries and testing laboratories.

Media ContactCompany Name: Creative BiogeneContact Person: Marcia BradyEmail: Send EmailPhone: 1-631-619-7922Country: United StatesWebsite: https://baseceuticals.creative-biogene.com

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Baseceuticals Offers Oncolytic Virus Services to Accelerate the Development in Gene Therapy - Press Release - Digital Journal

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Top 5 Investors That You Should Certainly Know About in 2020 – Kev’s Best

Wednesday, August 12th, 2020

2020 will be remembered as the year the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill, as national lockdowns were instituted across the globe. As sectors of the global economy have endured lockdown, curfews and structural changes to combat the virus, global businesses have been forced to adapt and overcome unforeseen challenges and circumstances.

Despite such fundamental changes, some of the brightest minds in the investment world have carried on with their innovations, whether it be in fintech, space exploration, biomedical research or other sectors.

After extensive research and evaluation, here is our list outlining the top 5 investors making the biggest impact in 2020:

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) was founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Based in Silicon Valley, the company has been massively successful under the leadership of Marc and Ben. Ben has overseen investment across several industry sectors, including crypto, fintech, healthcare and consumer goods. With respect to crypto, a16z has made a large bet on Ripple, which with the sole exceptions of Bitcoin and Ethereum, is the most valuable crypto by market capitalization. Bens firm currently manages over $12 billion in assets and continues to grow rapidly. As if that wasnt enough, Ben is now a New York Times best-selling author. 2020 has not slowed Ben or a16z down, and Ben continues to be one of the leading investors in the world.

Peter Thiel is number 2 on the list, and he is known as a prolific entrepreneur and venture capitalist with an estimated worth of $2.3 billion USD. He is a co-founder of PayPal, and also took the company public after leading it as CEO. He also serves as chairman of Palantir Technologies which, alongside PayPal and Facebook, is rumoured to be the main source of his current wealth. His is a partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Founders Fund and has a passion for investing in startups that he sees potential in. He is also a New York Times bestselling author for his books How to Build the Future and Zero to One: Notes on Startups.

Coming in at number 3 on our list is Dylan Taylor, who is an active pioneer in the super-hot industry of space exploration. Taylor is regarded as a super angel investor in the NewSpace industry but more recently, he has turned his attention to controlling interest investments. Taylor is the CEO and Chairman of Voyager Space Holdings, which is an international corporation focused on acquiring and integrating space exploration enterprises on a global level. Earlier in 2020, Dylan was awarded the space industrys top honour by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation for his contributions to business and finance.

Number 4 on our list, Laura Deming is a New Zealand born venture capitalist who has focused her investments on biological research with the aim of reversing, or at least reducing, the effects of aging. At a very young age, she showed interest in the possibilities of genetic engineering to extend lifespans, and she was accepted into MIT at the age of 14 to study physics. She dropped out of MIT after receiving a $100,000 investment from Peter Thiel (number 2 on our list) to start her own venture capital firm, The Longevity Fund. As the name implies, The Longevity Fund is focused on investments in aging and life extension, and as its founder, Laura is considered a leader in the anti-aging field and has been a keynote speaker on the topic.

Lee Fixel is an American venture capitalist who has had a range of outstanding successes. He joined Tiger Global in March 2006 and established himself as one of the pre-eminent investors in software and internet-based companies. Fixel has backed companies like Flipkart and Peloton, both of which have been incredibly successful and have achieved unicorn status. After leaving Tiger Global in 2019, Fixel has set his sights on a new target, having spent much of his recent time away from the public eye. Whether this is because of COVID-19 or personal reasons remains to be seen; however, Fixel has announced the formation of a multi-stage venture capital firm called Addition. The VC firm has already raised more than $1.3 billion and is backing well-known companies like Fauna.

Cameron Dickerson is a seasoned journalist with nearly 10 years experience. While studying journalism at the University of Missouri, Cameron found a passion for finding engaging stories. As a contributor to Kevs Best, Cameron mostly covers state and national developments.

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Letter: A hardy group of concerned Islanders remain at the forefront against herbicides – Manitoulin Expositor

Wednesday, August 12th, 2020

No rest until the government bans the use of glyphosate in all its forms

To the Expositor:

Islanders rightly oppose use of glyphosate-based herbicides, but this is a world-wide problem.

Over the last two years, a small group of concerned Islanders have often felt like mosquitoes trying to sting a corporate elephant. This powerful corporationoriginally Monsantonow part of an even larger corporationBayeris worth around $100 billion!

Originally, their focus was local, urgent and modest in scope. Some Island residents (Zak Nichols, Petra Wall, myself and Pat Hess) had seen statutory notices published in our local media informing the Manitoulin public that Hydro One was planning to spray a herbicide (glyphosate-based Garlon) in sections of its rights of ways on the Island, and they were opposed to this.

They approached several Island municipal councils to get their support for trying to stop this. That support was eventually given, though not without some resistance.

In parallel, the group set up petitions to approach the Ontario governments Minister of Environment asking for the legislation governing pesticide use (Pesticides Act) to be changed. Between the two, they collected well over 1,000 signatures from Islanders who shared their concern about the use of glyphosates. MPP Michael Mantha presented the petitions to the Ontario legislature and to the appropriate minister. Unfortunately, all the group got back were perfunctory replies.

The Expositor and Recorder have done a wonderful job in the past reporting on the groups efforts to highlight the questionable use of pesticides on the Island.

Glyphosate-based products have been around for several decades. They became controversial in the early 2000s when Monsanto packaged glyphosate for residential use as Roundup targeted for spraying dandelions on home lawns and driveways (generally referred to as cosmetic use).

Local municipalities responded to citizens of the day with local bylaws that covered the full spectrum of limitations and bans. By 2009, this had become such an irritant to the government that the then-minister, John Gerretsen, enacted the Cosmetic Pesticides Act which took away all authority from the municipal level to enact further bylaws, and rendered all those that existed as retroactively inoperative, leaving municipalities with few tools in their toolbox to respond to citizens concerns.

Zak Nichols and myself got hundreds of signatures on a petition a couple of years ago. Petra Wall got a similar number so Manitoulin residents and other Ontarians agree there are concerns. Mike Mantha carried the petitions to Queens Park and sent them to the then Minister of the Environment, but since then there have been three changes of minister (maybe fourits getting hard to keep count). Several Manitoulin municipalities were formally supportive of our efforts but couldnt pass bylaws on this because the Ontario government took away their authority to do that.

So, what has happened since then? Well, the pesticides in question, glyphosates, found in products like Garlon and Roundup, has been proven to be cancer-causing. The manufacturer, Bayer-Monsanto, has been losing court cases in the US so fast it is now contemplating make a $12 billion offer to all litigants so it can get on with the rest of its business.

Meanwhile, many other jurisdictions have begun to phase out use of glyphosates. The latest is Mexico, which announced in June that it will be ordering the phasing out of glyphosate use by 2024. Canada currently appears to be ignoring what is happening in the rest of the world. If anything, the current Ontario government appears to be loosening the rules for use of pesticides generally.

So, what is the group looking for now? First, they would like the government of Ontario (and ideally the government of Canada) to ban use of glyphosate in all its forms. That would address their immediate concern which is the use of this poisonous product for vegetation management alongside roads by the utility companies and the contractors they use. Some of them are frankly careless in the way they use the product and several Islanders have reported incidents they have observed where the spraying is taking place. There are specialized contractors on the Island. We understand that they are conscientious and use great care, but they are using glyphosate products (Roundup) and should prepare to change. Second, they want authority to manage these kinds of threats to be passed back to the municipalities which are answerable to their populations. As climate change continues, it will have different impacts in local zones and it is vital that local authorities have all the tools they need to manage problems that could occur.

And the mosquito and the elephant? They have had experiences of both government (specifically environment) and corporate entities (Hydro One) increasingly ignore them even though what they were asking for was reasonable to they hope glyphosates will be banned here sooner or later. Hydro One has been implying recently that they are now a private sector entity and not subject to Access to Information requirements. Well, these mosquitoes will not be brushed off and will find ways to penetrate the hides.

Of course, the cosmetic use of glyphosate products is just the tiniest tip of the smallest market for this pesticide. For the real part of glyphosate use, you have to look at agriculture (incidentally one of the four areas of exception in the Pesticides Act following enactment of the Cosmetic Pesticides Act).

Worldwide, glyphosate based products total up to an estimated 8.6 billion kilograms annually (the figures for Canada not available at time of going to press). Not bad for a chemical which in its early days couldnt find a use!

But for a general herbicide that kills on a broad spectrum, not exactly useful in agriculture until someone in Monsanto thought now genetic engineering is well understood. If we could genetically engineer crop seeds to be resistant to glyphosate, we could have a lock on the market both coming and going so voila, along came GMO seeds and the rest is history.

Paul Darlaston

Kagawong

More:
Letter: A hardy group of concerned Islanders remain at the forefront against herbicides - Manitoulin Expositor

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CRISPR Gene-Editing Market Future Growth Analysis, Business Demand and Opportunities to 2027 | Applied StemCell, ACEA BIO, Synthego, Thermo Fisher…

Wednesday, August 12th, 2020

Global CRISPR Gene-Editing Market report performs systematic gathering, recording and analysis of data about the issues related to the marketing of goods and services and serves the businesses with an excellent market research report. The report provides intelligent solutions to complex business challenges and commences an effortless decision-making process. The report analyses and evaluates the important industry trends, market size, market share estimates, and sales volume with which industry can speculate the strategies to increase return on investment (ROI). In the Global CRISPR Gene-Editing Market document, the statistics have been represented in the graphical format for an unambiguous understanding of facts and figures.

CRISPR gene-editing marketis rising gradually with a healthy CAGR of 23.35 % in the forecast period of 2019-2026. Growing prevalence of cancer worldwide and expanding the application of CRISPR technology by innovative research from the different academic organizations are the key factors for market growth.

Get a Sample Copy of the Report @ (Use Corporate email ID to Get Higher Priority) @https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/request-a-sample/?dbmr=global-crispr-gene-editing-market

Key Market Players:

Few of the major competitors currently working in the global CRISPR gene-editing market are Applied StemCell, ACEA BIO, Synthego, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc, GenScript, Addgene, Merck KGaA, Intellia Therapeutics, Inc, Cellectis, Precision Biosciences, Caribou Biosciences, Inc, Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals, Inc, OriGene Technologies, Inc, Novartis AG, New England Biolabs among others

Market Dynamics:

Set of qualitative information that includes PESTEL Analysis, PORTER Five Forces Model, Value Chain Analysis and Macro Economic factors, Regulatory Framework along with Industry Background and Overview.

Global CRISPR Gene-Editing Market By Therapeutic Application (Oncology, Autoimmune/Inflammatory), Application (Genome Engineering, Disease Models, Functional Genomics and Others), Technology (CRISPR/Cas9, Zinc Finger Nucleases and Others), Services (Design Tools, Plasmid and Vector, Cas9 and g-RNA, Delivery System Products and Others), Products (GenCrispr/Cas9 kits, GenCrispr Cas9 Antibodies, GenCrispr Cas9 Enzymes and Others), End-Users (Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical Companies, Academic & Government Research Institutes, Contract Research Organizations and Others), Geography (North America, South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2026

Global CRISPR Gene-Editing Research Methodology

Data Bridge Market Research presents a detailed picture of the market by way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. The data thus presented is comprehensive, reliable, and the result of extensive research, both primary and secondary. The analysts have presented the various facets of the market with a particular focus on identifying the key industry influencers.

Major Drivers and Restraints of the CRISPR Gene-Editing Industry

High prevalence of cancer worldwide is driving the growth of this marketJoint ventures by biotechnical companies for the advancement of genetic engineering for the development of CRISPR worldwide can also boost the market growthExpanding the application of CRISPR technology by innovative research from the different academic organizations also enhances the market growth

High finance in research and development also acts as a driving factor in the growth of this marketProbable mistreatment of CRISPR gene editing device and CRISPR/Cas genome editing device is restricting the growth for the marketScientific and major technical challenges for the production of disease specific novel CRISPR gene editing can also hamper the market growthLack of healthcare budget in some middle-income countries restricts the market growth

Complete report is available (TOC) @https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/toc/?dbmr=global-crispr-gene-editing-market

The titled segments and sub-section of the market are illuminated below:

By Therapeutic

OncologyAutoimmune/Inflammatory

By Application

Genome EngineeringDisease ModelsFunctional GenomicsOthers

By Technology

CRISPR/Cas9Zinc Finger NucleasesOthers

By Services

Design ToolsPlasmid and VectorCas9 and g-RNADelivery System ProductsOthers

By Products

GenCrispr/Cas9 kitsGenCrispr Cas9 AntibodiesGenCrispr Cas9 EnzymesOthers

By End-Users

Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical CompaniesAcademic & Government Research InstitutesContract Research OrganizationsOthers

Top Players in the Market are:

Few of the major competitors currently working in the global CRISPR gene-editing market are Applied StemCell, ACEA BIO, Synthego, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc, GenScript, Addgene, Merck KGaA, Intellia Therapeutics, Inc, Cellectis, Precision Biosciences, Caribou Biosciences, Inc, Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals, Inc, OriGene Technologies, Inc, Novartis AG, New England Biolabs among others

How will the report help new companies to plan their investments in the CRISPR Gene-Editing market?

The CRISPR Gene-Editing market research report classifies the competitive spectrum of this industry in elaborate detail. The study claims that the competitive reach spans the companies.

The report also mentions about the details such as the overall remuneration, product sales figures, pricing trends, gross margins, etc.

Information about the sales & distribution area alongside the details of the company, such as company overview, buyer portfolio, product specifications, etc., are provided in the study.

Any query? Enquire Here For Discount Or Report Customization: @https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/inquire-before-buying/?dbmr=global-crispr-gene-editing-market

Some of the Major Highlights of TOC covers:

Chapter 1: Methodology & Scope

Definition and forecast parameters

Methodology and forecast parameters

Data Sources

Chapter 2: Executive Summary

Business trends

Regional trends

Product trends

End-use trends

Chapter 3: CRISPR Gene-Editing Industry Insights

Industry segmentation

Industry landscape

Vendor matrix

Technological and innovation landscape

Chapter 4: CRISPR Gene-Editing Market, By Region

Chapter 5: Company Profile

Business Overview

Financial Data

Product Landscape

Strategic Outlook

SWOT Analysis

Thanks for reading this article, you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.

Contact:

Data Bridge Market Research

US: +1 888 387 2818

UK: +44 208 089 1725

Hong Kong: +852 8192 7475

[emailprotected]

About Data Bridge Market Research:

An absolute way to forecast what future holds is to comprehend the trend today!Data Bridge set forth itself as an unconventional and neoteric Market research and consulting firm with unparalleled level of resilience and integrated approaches. We are determined to unearth the best market opportunities and foster efficient information for your business to thrive in the market. Data Bridge endeavors to provide appropriate solutions to the complex business challenges and initiates an effortless decision-making process.

Link:
CRISPR Gene-Editing Market Future Growth Analysis, Business Demand and Opportunities to 2027 | Applied StemCell, ACEA BIO, Synthego, Thermo Fisher...

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Novavax to Host Conference Call to Discuss Second Quarter Financial and Operating Results on August 10, 2020 – GlobeNewswire

Wednesday, August 12th, 2020

GAITHERSBURG, Md., Aug. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Novavax, Inc. (Nasdaq: NVAX), a late stage biotechnology company developing next-generation vaccines for serious infectious diseases, today announced it will report its second quarter 2020 financial and operating results following the close of U.S. financial markets on Monday, August 10, 2020.

Conference call details are as follows:

Conference call and webcast replay:

About Novavax

Novavax, Inc. (Nasdaq:NVAX) is a late-stage biotechnology company that promotes improved health globally through the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative vaccines to prevent serious infectious diseases. Novavax is undergoing clinical trials for NVX-CoV2373, its vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. NVXCoV2373 was generally well-tolerated and elicited robust antibody responses numerically superior to that seen in human convalescent sera in its Phase 1 portion of the Phase 1/2 clinical trial. NanoFlu, its quadrivalent influenza nanoparticle vaccine, met all primary objectives in its pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial in older adults. Both vaccine candidates incorporate Novavax proprietary saponin-based Matrix-M adjuvant in order to enhance the immune response and stimulate high levels of neutralizing antibodies. Novavax is a leading innovator of recombinant vaccines; its proprietary recombinant technology platform combines the power and speed of genetic engineering to efficiently produce highly immunogenic nanoparticles in order to address urgent global health needs.

For more information, visit http://www.novavax.com and connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

InvestorsSilvia Taylor and Erika Trahanir@novavax.com240-268-2022

MediaAmy Speakamy@speaklifescience.com617-420-2461

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Novavax to Host Conference Call to Discuss Second Quarter Financial and Operating Results on August 10, 2020 - GlobeNewswire

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Israel seeks edge at intersection of biology with engineering, AI – The Times of Israel

Sunday, July 12th, 2020

Israel is setting up a new NIS 13.5 million ($3.9 million) program to boost the nations edge in the intersection of biology with other sciences for medical purposes.

The Israel Innovation Authority, in charge of the nations technology policies, said Thursday it is calling on researchers in the academia, hospitals and commercial firms to submit proposals to get funding for the development of bio-convergence programs.

Bio-convergence is a growing industry that integrates biology with additional disciplines from engineering such as electronics, AI, physics, computer science, nanotechnology, material science, and advanced genetic engineering, in a bid to meet global health challenges.

Get The Start-Up Israel's Daily Start-Up by email and never miss our top storiesFree Sign Up

The idea is to boost the commercial applications of bio-convergence technologies, said Aharon Aharon, the CEO of the Israel Innovation Authority, in a statement on Thursday, as he announced the nations first such program in the field.

Given that bio-convergence is still a burgeoning technological field, most relevant expertise in the area remains concentrated in academic institutions, Aharon said. This synthesis of academia and industry is part of an overall attempt to develop an innovative ecosystem that will be an engine of growth for Israeli industry.

The funding will be given to multidisciplinary teams working on projects that include researchers from the field of life sciences, engineering, computer sciences, math, or physics.

Bio-convergence has immense potential to transform technology and industry, the statement said, and seeing that Israels ecosystem is strongly positioned in these fields, the nation can leverage its research capabilities to build a leading competitive international cluster, the statement said.

The call for proposals from academia and industry aims to set up the conditions to foster the growth of the field in Israel, and to build a competitive, world-leading industry with significant economic impact.

The proposals must be submitted by September 21, 2020, at 12 p.m. Israel time, the statement said.

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Israel seeks edge at intersection of biology with engineering, AI - The Times of Israel

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CRISPR Genome Editing Market Size By Product Analysis, Application, End-Users, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies And Forecast Up To 2026 – 3rd…

Sunday, July 12th, 2020

New Jersey, United States,- Latest update on CRISPR Genome Editing Market Analysis report published with extensive market research, CRISPR Genome Editing Market growth analysis, and forecast by 2026. this report is highly predictive as it holds the overall market analysis of topmost companies into the CRISPR Genome Editing industry. With the classified CRISPR Genome Editing market research based on various growing regions, this report provides leading players portfolio along with sales, growth, market share, and so on.

The research report of the CRISPR Genome Editing market is predicted to accrue a significant remuneration portfolio by the end of the predicted time period. It includes parameters with respect to the CRISPR Genome Editing market dynamics incorporating varied driving forces affecting the commercialization graph of this business vertical and risks prevailing in the sphere. In addition, it also speaks about the CRISPR Genome Editing Market growth opportunities in the industry.

CRISPR Genome Editing Market Report covers the manufacturers data, including shipment, price, revenue, gross profit, interview record, business distribution etc., these data help the consumer know about the competitors better. This report also covers all the regions and countries of the world, which shows a regional development status, including CRISPR Genome Editing market size, volume and value, as well as price data.

CRISPR Genome Editing Market competition by top Manufacturers:

CRISPR Genome Editing Market Classification by Types:

CRISPR Genome Editing Market Size by End-user Application:

Listing a few pointers from the report:

The objective of the CRISPR Genome Editing Market Report:

Cataloging the competitive terrain of the CRISPR Genome Editing market:

Unveiling the geographical penetration of the CRISPR Genome Editing market:

The report of the CRISPR Genome Editing market is an in-depth analysis of the business vertical projected to record a commendable annual growth rate over the estimated time period. It also comprises of a precise evaluation of the dynamics related to this marketplace. The purpose of the CRISPR Genome Editing Market report is to provide important information related to the industry deliverables such as market size, valuation forecast, sales volume, etc.

Major Highlights from Table of contents are listed below for quick lookup into CRISPR Genome Editing Market report

About Us:

Market Research Intellect provides syndicated and customized research reports to clients from various industries and organizations with the aim of delivering functional expertise. We provide reports for all industries including Energy, Technology, Manufacturing and Construction, Chemicals and Materials, Food and Beverage, and more. These reports deliver an in-depth study of the market with industry analysis, the market value for regions and countries, and trends that are pertinent to the industry.

Contact Us:

Mr. Steven Fernandes

Market Research Intellect

New Jersey ( USA )

Tel: +1-650-781-4080

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CRISPR Genome Editing Market Size By Product Analysis, Application, End-Users, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies And Forecast Up To 2026 - 3rd...

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