An experimental gene therapy administered to a small group of elderly patients with wet age-related macular degeneration has been shown to be safe, and showed promise as a long-term treatment option for the disease, according to a paper in The Lancet.
Two molecules previously thought to stimulate an aggressive form of leukaemia are now understood to do the opposite – inhibit it. The findings, by scientists at the University of Edinburgh, are expected to prompt new thinking about the mechanisms of the disease and ways to treat it.
Up to three-quarters of new diseases infecting humans come from animals, yet until recently scientists hadn’t identified the locations at greatest risk of transmission. Now researchers from the UK and US have produced a map identifying zoonotic hotspots.
A new device that uses the principle of birefringence, or the double refraction of light, can rapidly detect viral and bacterial pathogens as well as the parasite that causes malaria, according to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH).
Immunovia AB, a Swedish diagnostic company, has reported the results of a retrospective study of blood samples from patients with pancreatic cancer which was able to differentiate patients with early cancer from controls with 96% accuracy.
UK scientists have reported how cancer cells that migrate away from their primary tumours can establish themselves in a new micro-environment and flourish. The findings appeared online on 6 December in the journal Cell Reports.
A new venture capital company with financial backing from the European Investment Fund (EIF) has been launched in Belgium to support start-up and early-stage life science companies in Europe. V-Bio Ventures has raised €63 million in the first closing of its first fund.
Scientists at KU Leuven in Belgium have reported success in treating mice with cystic fibrosis with an experimental gene therapy, though they caution that it will be some time before the treatment is ready for human trials.
A team of scientists, led by investigators at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), have produced a theory as to why some experimental antibody therapies for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have failed to show efficacy in late-stage human trials.
Three scientists who successfully mapped the way in which cells repair damaged DNA and protect genetic information from disintegrating were awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They are Tomas Lindahl of the Francis Crick Institute in London, UK; Paul Modrich of Duke University School of Medicine, US and Aziz Sancar of the University of North Carolina, also in the US.