• China’s Potential HIV Contamination Revives Drug Safety Fears

  Concerns about potentially HIV-tainted blood products produced by a state-backed company, followed by conflicting information from regulators, is undermining confidence in China’s drug indus

  2019-02-12

• Rogue Chinese Scientist Regrets Not Being Transparent, Peer Says

  Almost two months after He Jiankui retreated from view after shocking the world with claims he edited the genes of twin baby girls, the Chinese scientist told a Stanford University fellow re

  2019-02-12

• Merck Drug Found to Extend Lives of Brain-Cancer Patients

  Patients with the same aggressive brain cancer that killed U.S. Senator John McCain saw survival time double after being treated with Merck & Co.’s blockbuster immunotherapy drug Keytruda before s

  2019-02-12

• Tumours use a metabolic twist to make lipids

  To survive and divide, cancer cells need a constant supply of lipid molecules called monounsaturated fatty acids. Tumours can achieve this by an unsuspected route that harnesses a metabolic pathway also used in hair follicles.

  2019-02-12

• Analytical and clinical validation of a microbial cell-free DNA sequencing test for infectious disease

  Thousands of pathogens are known to infect humans, but only a fraction are readily identifiable using current diagnostic methods. Microbial cell-free DNA sequencing offers the potential to non-invasively identify a wide range of infections throughout the body, but the challenges of clinical-grade metagenomic testing must be addressed. Here we describe the analytical and clinical validation of a next-generation sequencing test that identifies and quantifies microbial cell-free DNA in plasma from 1,250 clinically relevant bacteria, DNA viruses, fungi and eukaryotic parasites. Test accuracy, precision, bias and robustness to a number of metagenomics-specific challenges were determined using a panel of 13 microorganisms that model key determinants of performance in 358 contrived plasma samples, as well as 2,625 infections simulated in silico and 580 clinical study samples. The test showed 93.7% agreement with blood culture in a cohort of 350 patients with a sepsis alert and identified an independently adjudicated cause of the sepsis alert more often than all of the microbiological testing combined (169 aetiological determinations versus 132). Among the 166 samples adjudicated to have no sepsis aetiology identified by any of the tested methods, sequencing identified microbial cell-free DNA in 62, likely derived from commensal organisms and incidental findings unrelated to the sepsis alert. Analysis of the first 2,000 patient samples tested in the CLIA laboratory showed that more than 85% of results were delivered the day after sample receipt, with 53.7% of reports identifying one or more microorganisms.

  2019-02-12

• Mathematical model can improve our knowledge on cancer

  Researchers have developed a new mathematical tool, which can improve our understanding of what happens when cells lose their polarity (direction) in diseases such as cancer. The result is advancing our understanding of how the fertilized egg cell develops into a complete organism. Biological shapes, like individual organs or an entire body, can be reproduced or maintained with great accuracy, just like in the embryonic development or during the adult stage.

  2019-01-17

• Why Chinese medicine is heading for clinics around the world

  Choi Seung-hoon thought he had an impossible assignment. On a grey autumn day in Beijing in 2004, he embarked on a marathon effort to get a couple of dozen representatives from Asian nations to boil d

  2019-01-17

• ECRAID Kick Off Meeting 17 January 2019

  Kicking off on January 17th 2019 with a high-level meeting in Brussels, PREPARE and COMBACTE will commence the development of the business plan for ECRAID, the European Clinical Research All

  2019-01-16