Yann Joly, Research Director of the Centre of Genomics and Policy

Research Director of the Centre of Genomics and Policy and Associate Professor at the Department of Human Genetics, Yann Joly is a Lawyer Emeritus from the Quebec Bar and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. He is currently a member of the Quebec task force on theCOVID-19 Biobank.

Last week, Joly and his collaborators from 16 countries announced the establishment of the international Genetic Discrimination Observatory (GDO). A world first, the GDO is an online platform committed to preventing the misuse of a patients genetic information. This is particularly important within the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic when researchers are collecting samples and data from patients in order to better understand this new disease and develop effective vaccines or therapeutics.

In this Q&A, Joly gives readers more information on genetic discrimination and what is being done to combat it.

Genetic discrimination (GD) means treating people differently from the rest of the population or unfairly profiling them based on actual or presumed genomic and other predictive medical data. The genetic information contained in an individuals DNA can uniquely identify or provide some information about a person, including future probabilities that this individual will develop diseases. Other predictive health information, such as biomarkers, can also be used to discriminate and should also be considered under the GD heading.

This information can be of interest to third parties like insurers, employers, or government officials. Like sexual, ethnic or disability-based discrimination, genetic discrimination is a source of exclusion and can limit the social and professional opportunities of a person thus becoming a source of psychological distress.

There are documented cases of GD reported in studies carried out in a limited number of countries based on predictive test results and family history for a handful of severe single-gene conditions in the context of life insurance or employment. The available evidence is fragmentary, and the methodology used in many studies is inconsistent.

The Genetic Non-Discrimination Act (hereinafter S-201) was passed in April 2017 and is currently applicable in Canada. While it does not solve all the challenges posed by genetic discrimination, it is an important first step. The Act generally makes it a criminal offense to require a person to undergo a genetic test or to report the results as a condition precedent to the provision of goods and services. However, the Quebec Court of Appeal recently declared that the core elements of S-201 were not constitutionally valid.

This decision was appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada and we are currently waiting for their decision on the matter. In the meantime, S-201 continue to be applied. If the Supreme Court is of a similar opinion to that of the Court of Appeal, it could be invalidated.

In addition to the protection provided by S-201, Canadian privacy laws would fully apply to genetic data, which is considered personal information.

Genetic information is increasingly shared across national borders or transcending them, thus limiting the effectiveness of protections built solely around national approaches. Strictly legal solutions, because they tend to be static, are also challenged to keep pace with rapidly evolving science such as genetics.

At its core discrimination is a social phenomenon that needs to be addressed collaboratively and internationally by all stakeholders. The GDO will provide the platform to undertake this important work, which will include documenting instances of genetic discrimination, identifying most effective preventing measures and conveying information, tools and good practices to all stakeholders including the public.

COVID-19 presents Quebecers with an unprecedented health threat that requires us to stand together as a society and take action to protect one another and help find medical solutions to the disease. The COVID-19 Biobank provides us a unique opportunity to learn more about the biological foundations of the disease, individuals at risk and preventive solutions.

The risk of discrimination associated with providing a biological sample and medical information to the Biobank is very small. The data provided is research information that is not clinically validated and should be of no interest to most third parties. Moreover, the collected information is coded, and protected by confidentiality laws and robust security measures. Furthermore, data access will be subject to ethics approval and in some cases controlled access measures.

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Yann Joly on the fight against genetic discrimination - McGill Reporter

Humanity really has only two options to confront the coronavirus pandemic currently sweeping the planet. The first is to mount a rolling program of lockdowns and other drastic social distancing strategies to restrain the pace of the virus epidemic, with a view to gradually building up natural herd immunity among the human population.

That strategy, especially if combined with successful anti-viral drug treatments and a massively upscaled testing effort, should give some relief. But it would come at the likely cost of many millions of deaths and incalculable worldwide economic damage, hitting especially hard in countries with little resilience and limited healthcare infrastructure.

The second approach is to develop a vaccine, and to do so as rapidly as possible. A fully effective vaccine would not just tame COVID-19 but possibly eradicate it altogether as the world successfully did with smallpox and is on the verge of doing with polio (both also viral diseases).

These two approaches will most likely be concurrent: the first will buy us time, while the second provides an exit strategy from a constant pattern of repeating lockdowns and travel restrictions that could otherwise go on for years.

With the current total of confirmed cases rapidly closing in on one million worldwide, the true picture is most likely that many tens of millions of people have already caught COVID-19. Humanitys most desperate challenge, therefore, is to find an effective vaccine.

Fortunately, science is already stepping up. History was made on March 16, when the first clinical trial volunteer was injected with an investigational vaccine for coronavirus at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.

The volunteer was mother-of-two Jennifer Haller, a 43-year-old Seattle resident who told National Public Radio that she wanted to do something because theres so many Americans that dont have the same privileges that Ive been given.

The vaccination was produced by Moderna, with the first batch being delivered to the US National Institutes of Health a remarkable 42 days after the viral genome was first sequenced in China.

This Phase 1 trial does not yet test the efficacy of the vaccine against COVID-19. Carried out over six weeks among a group of 45 healthy adult volunteers aged between 18 and 55, it will test the basic safety of the proposed vaccine and its ability to stimulate an immune response in the human body.

Although the Phase 1 trial will continue with the Seattle-area recruits being monitored for a whole year, the urgency of the global situation means that the collaborators will likely rush to Phase 2 at the same time, testing the ability of the vaccine to prevent infection by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19.

The Moderna vaccine trial is a world first not just for the particular disease target but because it is one of a whole new potential class of vaccines that employ messenger RNA (mRNA) to program human cells to produce the viral proteins that trigger an immune response, rather than injecting proteins or viral particles directly, as have most previous vaccines.

This natural role of mRNA is why Modernas approach is so quick. Normal vaccines have to be produced from actual viruses, which are grown within chicken eggs and then refined into sufficient quantities to be directly injected once weakened or killed into the human body. This takes months, at a minimum, and is difficult to scale quickly.

For the mRNA approach, all that was needed was the correct viral genetic sequence, which in the case of SARS-CoV-2 encodes for the spike proteins that enable the virus to gain entry into human respiratory cells. This genetic sequence for the viral protein can then be encoded into mRNA synthetically generated in a lab a rapid process that is easy to scale.

Thats the good news. The bad news is that the mRNA approach, while undoubtedly quick and versatile, is so new that it has yet to be fully proven in any vaccine in either humans or animals. Some tests have shown efficacy against rabies, for example, but others have shown little lasting immune response.

The mRNA approach is therefore a moon-shot rather than a marathon. Even so, Moderna is optimistic enough to already be making plans to produce millions of doses intended for health workers initially as early as this fall.

Other companies and partnerships are also racing to develop a vaccine using the same mRNA approach. One of these, the German firm CureVac, generated so much interest that President Trump reportedly tried to acquire it in order to ensure any potential vaccine would be available to Americans first.

Like Moderna, CureVacs efforts are supported financially by CEPI the international Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which has raised over $700 million from governments around the world and philanthropic foundations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which also supports the Cornell Alliance for Science) and Wellcome.

While Moderna has been able to restart vaccine projects originally intended for MERS and SARS, CureVac has already achieved some success with an mRNA vaccine against rabies virus in humans. In a Phase 1 trial doses as low as a millionth of a gram of mRNA vaccine were sufficient to fully protect humans against rabies, it reported in January.

Such small doses offer major promise for immunizing huge numbers of people if CureVac is able to achieve the same success with SARS-CoV-2 as it has with rabies and move rapidly into Phase 2 trials to further demonstrate real efficacy.

Also in Germany, BioNTech and Pfizer are racing to shift their mRNA vaccine work from influenza to SARS-CoV-2, and are aiming to start clinical trials as soon as April. As part of a broader collaboration, BioNTech has already demonstrated that an mRNA vaccine protected mice and non-human primates against Zika virus, raising hopes for similar effectiveness against COVID-19.

RNAs double-stranded cousin, DNA, is also being deployed in a novel but equally promising vaccine system against the coronavirus. The approach is related, but rather than injecting mRNA directly into cells so that it can produce viral proteins, DNA is inserted, which in turn produces mRNA inside cells to do the same job.

This DNA is not intended to integrate into the genome of the target cell in humans indeed if this happens, damaging mutations might occur. Instead, DNA is formed into circular plasmids which operate separately to the integral genetic material inside a cells nucleus. Like genomic DNA however, these plasmids are read and transcribed via mRNA into viral proteins which can then prime the bodys immune system against a later invasion by the real virus.

The US-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals announced on 12 March that it had received a grant of $5 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to accelerate the testing of a DNA vaccine for COVID-19, with a view to starting Phase 1 clinical trials in April.

Inovio has another advantage: its DNA vaccine INO-4700 was the only vaccine candidate against MERS to progress to Phase 2 trials demonstrating, at least initially, the potential feasibility of the DNA approach. The US Department of Defense with an eye to protecting its military personnel all over the world against COVID-19 has pumped another $11.9 million into INO-4800. The company has also demonstrated protection in early trials using its DNA vaccine against Chikungunya, Zika and influenza viruses.

CEPI is not putting all its eggs in one basket, however. As well as DNA and RNA systems, another promising approach for a COVID-19 vaccine is to use a genetically engineered measles vaccine a strategy supported by a $5 million CEPI grant split between collaborating institutions Themis in Vienna, Institut Pasteur in France and the University of Pittsburghs Center for Vaccine Research.

This takes the live attenuated measles virus vaccine a vaccine with a long history of safe use, having been used to immunize billions of children over the last 40 years and uses reverse genetics technology to insert new genes coding for proteins expressed by other viruses. These then induce an immune response against the new virus whose genetic material has been introduced.

The research team aims to have a COVID-19 candidate vaccine ready for animal testing as soon as April, with wider tests in human volunteers by the end of the year.

Measles virus is not the only candidate for the vector approach. Chinese scientists have reported that they are about to proceed to Phase I human trials with a vaccine candidate starting at the pandemics epicenter in Wuhan. The scientists have genetically engineered a replication-defective adenovirus type 5 (Ad5) as a vector to express the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, with the resulting vaccine candidate named Ad5-nCoV.

This is perhaps the easiest approach, as all that has to happen is for the engineered harmless adenovirus to infect patients in order to trigger the production of antibodies which should be effective against invading novel coronavirus too. The Chinese company CanSion Biologics has successfully demonstrated this approach with another fully completed vaccine against Ebola, Ad5-EBOV, which is already on the market in China.

A more tried-and-tested approach already widely used to produce flu vaccines is to grow viral proteins directly: these are then injected as a vaccine into human patients so that the immune system is already primed against the real pathogen when it attempts to infect the body. Usually chicken eggs are used, but to speed things up insect cell lines are becoming the preferred option for the coronavirus pandemic.

Here genetics is again an important component: the company Novavax uses a baculovirus vector to genetically engineer an insect cell line originally isolated decades ago from the ovaries of the fall armyworm. The baculovirus transports genes into the insect cells, which program them to manufacture viral proteins that are correctly folded and biologically active, more reliably enabling the human immune system to produce antibodies against them.

According to Novavax, its resulting recombinant protein nanoparticles then self-assemble into a structure that approximates the actual virus, helping enhance the immune response. It claims to have already tested this system in RSV virus, a recalcitrant pathogen that has so far resisted attempts at a vaccine. This approach looks promising enough that CEPI has pumped $4 million in so far with a view to launching Phase I trials by late spring 2020.

In a similar way, the company Sanofi is taking a snippet of genetic code from SARS-CoV-2 and splicing it also via baculovirus into insect cell lines. Its advantage, made in a pitch to the US government that resulted in a big cash injection, is that it already has an FDA-approved facility that could make 600 million doses a year of any resulting vaccine.

Plants can also be engineered to produce viral proteins. The company Medicago is working with genetically modified tobacco plants with this aim in mind. To speed things up, instead of adding new genes to the nucleus of cells and regenerating entire plants from these single cells (as happens with conventional plant genetic engineering), it uses the Agrobacterium vector in a vacuum to transfer recombinant DNA directly into the nucleus of fully-grown leaf cells. This DNA enables the production of the desired viral proteins without ever being integrated into the genome, enabling proteins to be harvested from transformed leaves within a matter of days.

Using this system, Medicago claims to have produced a virus-like particle of the coronavirus within just 20 daysof the SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence becoming available. The government of Canada quickly put millions of dollars behind the effort as a result.

Astonishingly, given that the coronavirus pandemic is now threatening to devastate societies and economies around the planet on a scale second only to a world war, this effort is still short of cash. CEPI has issued an urgent call for funding, seeking to raise $2 billion: it says just $375 billion by the end of March would enable four-to-six vaccine candidates to move rapidly towards phase 2/3 trials.

Scientists are also hoping desperately that SARS-CoV-2 does not rapidly mutate as influenza viruses tend to do, which would likely reduce the effectiveness of any single vaccine. So far, according to researchers studying 1,000 samples of the virus from around the world, this seems not to be the case.

This means that the race to find a vaccine, and to do so in sufficient time to salvage the situation before the world tips into an economic depression and millions of people die, has a decent chance of success and that any successful vaccine would likely confer lasting immunity.

Meanwhile, all of humanity is waiting. And if the scientists do succeed in this urgent challenge, it will very likely be due to modern genetics. Though genetic engineering was once a dirty word, it now could literally help save the world.

This article originally ran at theCornell Alliance for Scienceand has been republished here with permission. Follow the Alliance for Science on Twitter @ScienceAlly. Follow Mark Lynas on Twitter @mark_lynas

The rest is here:

Science to the rescue? How modern genetics could help save the world from coronavirus - Genetic Literacy Project

Haaretz.com

***

Researchers have recovered the oldest human genetic information to date from two prehistoric teeth, one 1.77 million old and the other 800,000 years in age. The remains are so old they belong to a time that precedes the evolution of modern humans, i.e. Homo sapiens, so technically they are human only in the sense that they belong to some of our predecessors in the Homo evolutionary tree.The older of the two teeth was found in Dmanisi cave in Georgia and belonged to Homo erectus, the first hominin group known to have left Africa and spread throughout Eurasia.The second tooth was unearthed at a prehistoric site in Spains Atapuerca Mountains and belonged to a Homo antecessor, an enigmatic early human with a penchant for cannibalism whose evolutionary relationship to us has been the subject of much debate.The new research published Wednesday in Nature and led by scientists from the University of Copenhagen has provided a partial answer to that question, revealing that Homo antecessor was not a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, as had been surmised by some.Both the analyzed samples precede by hundreds of thousands of years what was until now the oldest sequenced human genome, the 430,000-year-old DNA extracted from the remains of an early Neanderthal that was also found at Atapuerca.To achieve this huge leap forward or actually, backwards in the study of evolutionary genetics, the scientists used a new method that doesnt reconstruct ancient DNA but sequences proteins, in this case those found in the dental enamel, the hardest and most durable part of the human body.The Gran Dolina site in the Atapuerca Mountains , the only source of Homo antecessor boneAriel DavidSince proteins are built by our cells based on instructions from our nuclear DNA, the amino acid chains that form them represent a sort of mirror image of the nucleotides that form constitute our genetic code, explains Dr. Frido Welker, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Copenhagen.Breaking news and analyses in your inboxThank you for signing up.Weve got more newsletters we think youll find interesting.Click hereOops. Something went wrong.Please try again later.Try againThank you,The email address you have provided is already registered.CloseJust like DNA sequences, these protein sequences will be slightly different between different people, populations and species in a manner that is determined by their evolution, Welker tells Haaretz. So by comparing sequences from different prehistoric and modern populations, experts can approximate how closely related these ancient groups are to each other.The advantage of hunting for proteins instead of DNA is that the latter molecule tends to degrade faster, says Enrico Cappellini a professor at the University of Copenhagen and one the lead authors on the Nature study.Until now, the oldest animal DNA sequenced has been that of a 700,000-year-old horse and that was only because its remains had been preserved by Canadas permafrost. By using palaeoproteomics (the study of ancient proteins), the same Danish team has published protein sequences from a 1.77-million-year-old rhino found at Dmanisi, as well as a 1.9-million-year old Gigantopithecus, an extinct great ape from China.Of course, even this new approach has limits. So if you have nightmares about being chased by a velociraptor in a Jurassic-Park-like scenario, then know we are still very far away from sequencing the proteins let alone the DNA of dinosaurs who went extinct 65 million years ago.In fact, even the 1.77-million-year old protein sequence belonging to the Homo erectus from Dmanisi was too short and damaged to be of much use to the authors of the new study, Welker says. It still stands as the oldest genetic information we have gathered on a human ancestor, but it cannot tell us anything about the evolutionary link between erectus and sapiens.Digital reconstruction of specimen ATD6-69 from the Homo antecessor collection. Computerized microtomography techniques were used to perform this reconstructionProf. Laura Martn-FrancsClose, but no ancestorThe study of the Homo antecessor tooth was, on the other hand, much more revealing.Remains of this hominin have been found only at that one site in Spains Atapuerca Mountains, though some prehistoric stone tools unearthed in France and Britain suggest it may have been present there too between 1.2 and 0.8 million years ago. Very little is known about their behavior, apart from the fact that some of their bones were skillfully butchered, which has been interpreted as the earliest evidence of human cannibalism.Still, some scholars have theorized that antecessor may have played an outsize role in our evolution.As hinted by its Latin name, which means predecessor or ancestor, the hypothesis is that this elusive hominin was the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neanderthal and Denisovan, the main hominin groups that inhabited the Earth over the last half-million years. The theory is based on the fact that antecessor shares some features with later hominins, especially a relatively modern-looking face. Also, the time span of antecessors existence fits well with other studies suggesting that the lineages that eventually led to the evolution of Neanderthals, sapiens and Denisovans split off some time before 750,000 years ago.But the Nature study, titled The dental proteome of Homo antecessor, does not support this theory. Once the recovered protein sequences were compared to those of other hominins, it became apparent that antecessor could only be a sister group of that mysterious common ancestor we share with Neanderthals and Denisovans.The Gran Dolina site in the Atapuerca Mountains , the only source of Homo antecessor bonesAriel DavidThe caveat is that it is difficult to establish how closely related they were to the common ancestor, Welker tells Haaretz. In other words, we are relatives, but antecessor is not on the same branch as us in the evolutionary tree.Personally, I am glad that our ancestors did not diverge from a group of cannibals, jokes Prof. Israel Hershkovitz, a physical anthropologist from Tel Aviv University.The recovery of the protein sequences from the erectus and antecessor teeth is an impressive technical feat, says Hershkovitz, who did not take part in the study.Palaeoproteomics allows us to gain insights about earlier times than by using DNA, but it is also a more limited tool that, as the authors stated, can only give us a best guess as to the placement of Homo antecessor in relation to later hominin groups, he cautions.The studys conclusion that antecessor was a parallel group to one of our distant ancestors does contribute to the growing evidence suggesting that human evolution is anything but a straight line in which one type of hominin evolves into the next one, Welker notes. Research over the last years has shown that our evolutionary history resembles more a tangled bush in which different populations evolved in parallel, coexisted and mixed continuously.Many questions remain unanswered, such as the identity of that missing link between us and our closest evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, Welker says. But the newfound ability to glean at least some genetic material from hominin remains that are millions of years old does hint that maybe we will be able to crack that mystery soon, as well as other open questions about our distant origins.The Sima de los Huesos, or Bone pit in the Atapuerca Mountains, where dozens of Neanderthal bodies were foundAriel DavidThe Sima de los Huesos, or Bone pit in the Atapuerca Mountains, where dozens of Neanderthal bodies were foundAriel David

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Oldest human genetic data gleaned from 1.8-million-year-old tooth Haaretz - News Collective

Humanity really has only two options to confront the coronavirus pandemic currently sweeping the planet. The first is to mount a rolling program of lockdowns and other drastic social distancing strategies to restrain the pace of the virus epidemic, with a view to gradually building up natural herd immunity among the human population.

That strategy, especially if combined with successful anti-viral drug treatments and a massively upscaled testing effort, should give some relief. But it would come at the likely cost of many millions of deaths and incalculable worldwide economic damage, hitting especially hard in countries with little resilience and limited healthcare infrastructure.

The second approach is to develop a vaccine, and to do so as rapidly as possible. A fully effective vaccine would not just tame COVID-19 but possibly eradicate it altogether as the world successfully did with smallpox and is on the verge of doing with polio (both also viral diseases).

These two approaches will most likely be concurrent: the first will buy us time, while the second provides an exit strategy from a constant pattern of repeating lockdowns and travel restrictions that could otherwise go on for years.

With the current total of confirmed cases rapidly closing in on one million worldwide, the true picture is most likely that many tens of millions of people have already caught COVID-19. Humanitys most desperate challenge, therefore, is to find an effective vaccine.

Fortunately, science is already stepping up. History was made on March 16, when the first clinical trial volunteer was injected with an investigational vaccine for coronavirus at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.

The volunteer was mother-of-two Jennifer Haller, a 43-year-old Seattle resident who told National Public Radio that she wanted to do something because theres so many Americans that dont have the same privileges that Ive been given.

The vaccination was produced by Moderna, with the first batch being delivered to the US National Institutes of Health a remarkable 42 days after the viral genome was first sequenced in China.

This Phase 1 trial does not yet test the efficacy of the vaccine against COVID-19. Carried out over six weeks among a group of 45 healthy adult volunteers aged between 18 and 55, it will test the basic safety of the proposed vaccine and its ability to stimulate an immune response in the human body.

Although the Phase 1 trial will continue with the Seattle-area recruits being monitored for a whole year, the urgency of the global situation means that the collaborators will likely rush to Phase 2 at the same time, testing the ability of the vaccine to prevent infection by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19.

The Moderna vaccine trial is a world first not just for the particular disease target but because it is one of a whole new potential class of vaccines that employ messenger RNA (mRNA) to program human cells to produce the viral proteins that trigger an immune response, rather than injecting proteins or viral particles directly, as have most previous vaccines.

This natural role of mRNA is why Modernas approach is so quick. Normal vaccines have to be produced from actual viruses, which are grown within chicken eggs and then refined into sufficient quantities to be directly injected once weakened or killed into the human body. This takes months, at a minimum, and is difficult to scale quickly.

For the mRNA approach, all that was needed was the correct viral genetic sequence, which in the case of SARS-CoV-2 encodes for the spike proteins that enable the virus to gain entry into human respiratory cells. This genetic sequence for the viral protein can then be encoded into mRNA synthetically generated in a lab a rapid process that is easy to scale.

Thats the good news. The bad news is that the mRNA approach, while undoubtedly quick and versatile, is so new that it has yet to be fully proven in any vaccine in either humans or animals. Some tests have shown efficacy against rabies, for example, but others have shown little lasting immune response.

The mRNA approach is therefore a moon-shot rather than a marathon. Even so, Moderna is optimistic enough to already be making plans to produce millions of doses intended for health workers initially as early as this fall.

Other companies and partnerships are also racing to develop a vaccine using the same mRNA approach. One of these, the German firm CureVac, generated so much interest that President Trump reportedly tried to acquire it in order to ensure any potential vaccine would be available to Americans first.

Like Moderna, CureVacs efforts are supported financially by CEPI the international Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which has raised over $700 million from governments around the world and philanthropic foundations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which also supports the Cornell Alliance for Science) and Wellcome.

While Moderna has been able to restart vaccine projects originally intended for MERS and SARS, CureVac has already achieved some success with an mRNA vaccine against rabies virus in humans. In a Phase 1 trial doses as low as a millionth of a gram of mRNA vaccine were sufficient to fully protect humans against rabies, it reported in January.

Such small doses offer major promise for immunizing huge numbers of people if CureVac is able to achieve the same success with SARS-CoV-2 as it has with rabies and move rapidly into Phase 2 trials to further demonstrate real efficacy.

Also in Germany, BioNTech and Pfizer are racing to shift their mRNA vaccine work from influenza to SARS-CoV-2, and are aiming to start clinical trials as soon as April. As part of a broader collaboration, BioNTech has already demonstrated that an mRNA vaccine protected mice and non-human primates against Zika virus, raising hopes for similar effectiveness against COVID-19.

RNAs double-stranded cousin, DNA, is also being deployed in a novel but equally promising vaccine system against the coronavirus. The approach is related, but rather than injecting mRNA directly into cells so that it can produce viral proteins, DNA is inserted, which in turn produces mRNA inside cells to do the same job.

This DNA is not intended to integrate into the genome of the target cell in humans indeed if this happens, damaging mutations might occur. Instead, DNA is formed into circular plasmids which operate separately to the integral genetic material inside a cells nucleus. Like genomic DNA however, these plasmids are read and transcribed via mRNA into viral proteins which can then prime the bodys immune system against a later invasion by the real virus.

The US-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals announced on 12 March that it had received a grant of $5 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to accelerate the testing of a DNA vaccine for COVID-19, with a view to starting Phase 1 clinical trials in April.

Inovio has another advantage: its DNA vaccine INO-4700 was the only vaccine candidate against MERS to progress to Phase 2 trials demonstrating, at least initially, the potential feasibility of the DNA approach. The US Department of Defense with an eye to protecting its military personnel all over the world against COVID-19 has pumped another $11.9 million into INO-4800. The company has also demonstrated protection in early trials using its DNA vaccine against Chikungunya, Zika and influenza viruses.

CEPI is not putting all its eggs in one basket, however. As well as DNA and RNA systems, another promising approach for a COVID-19 vaccine is to use a genetically engineered measles vaccine a strategy supported by a $5 million CEPI grant split between collaborating institutions Themis in Vienna, Institut Pasteur in France and the University of Pittsburghs Center for Vaccine Research.

This takes the live attenuated measles virus vaccine a vaccine with a long history of safe use, having been used to immunize billions of children over the last 40 years and uses reverse genetics technology to insert new genes coding for proteins expressed by other viruses. These then induce an immune response against the new virus whose genetic material has been introduced.

The research team aims to have a COVID-19 candidate vaccine ready for animal testing as soon as April, with wider tests in human volunteers by the end of the year.

Measles virus is not the only candidate for the vector approach. Chinese scientists have reported that they are about to proceed to Phase I human trials with a vaccine candidate starting at the pandemics epicenter in Wuhan. The scientists have genetically engineered a replication-defective adenovirus type 5 (Ad5) as a vector to express the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, with the resulting vaccine candidate named Ad5-nCoV.

This is perhaps the easiest approach, as all that has to happen is for the engineered harmless adenovirus to infect patients in order to trigger the production of antibodies which should be effective against invading novel coronavirus too. The Chinese company CanSion Biologics has successfully demonstrated this approach with another fully completed vaccine against Ebola, Ad5-EBOV, which is already on the market in China.

A more tried-and-tested approach already widely used to produce flu vaccines is to grow viral proteins directly: these are then injected as a vaccine into human patients so that the immune system is already primed against the real pathogen when it attempts to infect the body. Usually chicken eggs are used, but to speed things up insect cell lines are becoming the preferred option for the coronavirus pandemic.

Here genetics is again an important component: the company Novavax uses a baculovirus vector to genetically engineer an insect cell line originally isolated decades ago from the ovaries of the fall armyworm. The baculovirus transports genes into the insect cells, which program them to manufacture viral proteins that are correctly folded and biologically active, more reliably enabling the human immune system to produce antibodies against them.

According to Novavax, its resulting recombinant protein nanoparticles then self-assemble into a structure that approximates the actual virus, helping enhance the immune response. It claims to have already tested this system in RSV virus, a recalcitrant pathogen that has so far resisted attempts at a vaccine. This approach looks promising enough that CEPI has pumped $4 million in so far with a view to launching Phase I trials by late spring 2020.

In a similar way, the company Sanofi is taking a snippet of genetic code from SARS-CoV-2 and splicing it also via baculovirus into insect cell lines. Its advantage, made in a pitch to the US government that resulted in a big cash injection, is that it already has an FDA-approved facility that could make 600 million doses a year of any resulting vaccine.

Plants can also be engineered to produce viral proteins. The company Medicago is working with genetically modified tobacco plants with this aim in mind. To speed things up, instead of adding new genes to the nucleus of cells and regenerating entire plants from these single cells (as happens with conventional plant genetic engineering), it uses the Agrobacterium vector in a vacuum to transfer recombinant DNA directly into the nucleus of fully-grown leaf cells. This DNA enables the production of the desired viral proteins without ever being integrated into the genome, enabling proteins to be harvested from transformed leaves within a matter of days.

Using this system, Medicago claims to have produced a virus-like particle of the coronavirus within just 20 daysof the SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence becoming available. The government of Canada quickly put millions of dollars behind the effort as a result.

Astonishingly, given that the coronavirus pandemic is now threatening to devastate societies and economies around the planet on a scale second only to a world war, this effort is still short of cash. CEPI has issued an urgent call for funding, seeking to raise $2 billion: it says just $375 billion by the end of March would enable four-to-six vaccine candidates to move rapidly towards phase 2/3 trials.

Scientists are also hoping desperately that SARS-CoV-2 does not rapidly mutate as influenza viruses tend to do, which would likely reduce the effectiveness of any single vaccine. So far, according to researchers studying 1,000 samples of the virus from around the world, this seems not to be the case.

This means that the race to find a vaccine, and to do so in sufficient time to salvage the situation before the world tips into an economic depression and millions of people die, has a decent chance of success and that any successful vaccine would likely confer lasting immunity.

Meanwhile, all of humanity is waiting. And if the scientists do succeed in this urgent challenge, it will very likely be due to modern genetics. Though genetic engineering was once a dirty word, it now could literally help save the world.

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Science to the rescue? How modern genetics could help save the world from coronavirus - Alliance for Science - Alliance for Science

BOSTON, April 1, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Stealth Biotherapeutics Corp (NASDAQ: MITO), a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of novel therapies for diseases involving mitochondrial dysfunction, today reported financial results for the year ended December 31, 2019 and announced recent business highlights.

"We are off to a strong start in 2020, having honed our focus on Barth and our planned expansion into other rare metabolic cardiomyopathies, while continuing to execute on the significant promise of our ophthalmic and other pipeline programs. By decisively reducing expenses in January, our cash and cash equivalents are sufficient through key Barth regulatory interactions in the second half of 2020, bringing us closer to a potential approval with an opportunity for a rare pediatric voucher and expedited regulatory review," said Reenie McCarthy, Chief Executive Officer at Stealth. "We hope to complete enrollment of our Phase 2b study in dry AMD during the second half of this year, keeping us on-track for a second half of 2021 top-line read-out. We are actively planning development initiatives in other rare metabolic cardiomyopathies, on which we hope to engage with the FDA this year. We are also rapidly advancing our pipeline of novel mitochondrial medicines, with SBT-272 being assessed in a Phase 1 clinical trial, preclinical data read-outs expected this year for SBT-272 in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and multiple system atrophy and SBT-259 in Charcot-Marie-Tooth, and lead optimization underway for our SBT-550 series, targeting the ferroptosis pathway of cell death implicated in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's."

Fourth Quarter 2019 and Recent Highlights

Key Upcoming Milestones

2019 Financial Results

Revenue: In 2019, the Company recognized $21.1 million in revenue associated with the Alexion arrangement. The revenue represents the portion of the non-refundable upfront payments that were recognized in full upon the delivery of the topline data for the Company's MMPOWER-3 trial. Alexion terminated the arrangement and as such, no additional revenue will be recognized.

Research and Development (R&D) Expenses:R&D expenses decreased by $8.5 million to $44.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2019, from $53.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2018. This decrease was primarily from a net decrease of $8.5 million in clinical trial costs due to the timing of trials that ended in 2018, a $2.8 million decrease in contract manufacturing, and a $0.9 million decrease in discovery related expenses due to timing of activities. These decreases were offset in part by increases of $3.6 million in employee and consultant related expenses driven by continued build-out of clinical, medical affairs and regulatory functions and $0.1 million in other costs.

General and Administrative (G&A) Expenses: G&A expenses increased by $0.1 million to $22.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2019, from $22.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2018. The increase was primarily attributable to a net $2.3 million increase in pre-commercial activities including building market disease awareness, a $1.8 million increase in professional services for activities attributable to operating as a public company, an increase of $3.2 million in employee related costs offset by a decrease of $6.7 million in costs associated with 2018 financing efforts and a decrease in IP legal fees of $0.5 million.

Other Expenses: Other expenses increased by $4.5 million to $25.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2019 from $21.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2018. The increase in other expenses is primarily attributable to a $22.7 million loss on extinguishment of debt recorded with respect to convertible debt conversion into ordinary shares in conjunction with the Company's 2019 initial public offering and a $0.7 million change period over period in the fair value adjustments of the warrant liability. These increases were offset by a $3.4 million change in period over period fair value adjustments of the derivative liability associated with the convertible debt, a decrease in interest expense mostly related to the convertible debt of $14.7 million and an increase in interest income of $0.8 million.

Cash Position: Cash and cash equivalents were $50.8 million at December 31, 2019, compared to $10.9 million at December 31, 2018.

Conference Call

Management will host a conference call today at8:30 am ETto discuss the financial results and provide a general business update. The call can be accessed by dialing (877) 407-0989 or (201) 389-0921 (international) and referencing conference ID 13701108. A live audio webcast of the event can be accessed by visiting the Investors & News section of Stealth's Investor website,https://investor.stealthbt.com/. A replay of the webcast will be archived on Stealth's website for 30 days following the event.

About Stealth

We are a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of novel therapies for diseases involving mitochondrial dysfunction. Mitochondria, found in nearly every cell in the body, are the body's main source of energy production and are critical for normal organ function. Dysfunctional mitochondria characterize a number of rare genetic diseases and are also involved in many common age-related diseases, typically involving organ systems with high energy demands such as the heart, the eye, and the brain. We believe our lead product candidate, elamipretide, has the potential to treat both rare metabolic cardiomyopathies, such as Barth, Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophies and Friedreich's ataxia, as well as ophthalmic diseases entailing mitochondrial dysfunction, such as dry age-related macular degeneration and Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy. We are evaluating our second-generation clinical stage candidate, SBT-272, for rare neurodegenerative disease indications following promising preclinical data in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. Our pipeline compounds include SBT-259, which we are evaluating for rare peripheral neuropathies, and the SBT-550 series of compounds, which we plan to evaluate for rare neurodegenerative and ophthalmic indications. We have optimized our discovery platform to identify novel mitochondria-targeted compounds, which may be nominated as therapeutic product candidates or utilized as scaffolds to deliver other compounds to mitochondria. We have assembled a highly experienced management team, board of directors and group of scientific advisors to help us achieve our mission of leading mitochondrial medicine.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements include those regarding Stealth BioTherapeutics' plans, strategies and expectations for its preclinical and clinical advancement of its drug development programs, including its ongoing clinical trials of elamipretide and planned clinical trial of SBT-272; the potential benefits of Stealth BioTherapeutics' product candidates; its key milestones for 2020; its plans regarding future data presentations; and its financial guidance regarding the period in which it will have capital available to fund its operations. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about Stealth BioTherapeutics' beliefs, plans and expectations, are forward-looking statements. The words "anticipate," "expect," "hope," "plan," "potential," "possible," "will," "believe," "estimate," "intend," "may," "predict," "project," "would" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Stealth BioTherapeutics may not actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in these forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Actual results or events could differ materially from the plans, intentions and expectations disclosed in the forward-looking statements as a result of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors, including: Stealth BioTherapeutics' ability to obtain additional funding and to continue as a going concern; the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; the ability to successfully demonstrate the efficacy and safety of Stealth BioTherapeutics' product candidates and future product candidates; the preclinical and clinical results for Stealth BioTherapeutics' product candidates, which may not support further development and marketing approval; the potential advantages of Stealth BioTherapeutics' product candidates; the content and timing of decisions made by the U.S. FDA, the EMA or other regulatory authorities, investigational review boards at clinical trial sites and publication review bodies, which may affect the initiation, timing and progress of preclinical studies and clinical trials of Stealth BioTherapeutics product candidates; Stealth BioTherapeutics' ability to obtain and maintain requisite regulatory approvals and to enroll patients in its planned clinical trials; unplanned cash requirements and expenditures; competitive factors; Stealth BioTherapeutics' ability to obtain, maintain and enforce patent and other intellectual property protection for any product candidates it is developing; and general economic and market conditions. These and other risks are described in greater detail under the caption "Risk Factors" included in the Stealth BioTherapeutics' most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), as well as in any future filings with the SEC. Forward-looking statements represent management's current expectations and are inherently uncertain. Except as required by law, Stealth BioTherapeutics does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements made by us to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

Investor RelationsStern Investor RelationsLauren Stival, 212-362-1200IR@StealthBT.com

STEALTH BIOTHERAPEUTICS CORP

Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets

(inthousands)

December 31,

December 31,

2019

2018

Assets

Current assets:

Cash and cash equivalents

$ 50,768

$ 10,855

Prepaid expenses and other current assets

1,630

2,438

Total current assets

52,398

13,293

Property and equipment, net

345

499

Deferred offering costs

1,325

Other non-current assets

406

Total assets

$ 52,743

$ 15,523

Liabilities, convertible preferred shares andshareholders' equity (deficit)

Current liabilities:

Accounts payable

$ 9,520

$ 11,023

Accrued expenses and other current liabilities

8,495

13,826

Accrued interest payable

1,219

7,297

Current portion of long-term debt

14,716

8,465

Total current liabilities

33,950

40,611

Long-term debt, less current portion

1,526

10,317

Convertible notes payable

103,257

Derivative liability

36,567

Warrant liability

100

Total liabilities

35,476

190,852

Series A convertible preferred shares

211,377

Total shareholders' equity (deficit)

17,267

(386,706)

Total liabilities, convertible preferred shares andshareholders' equity (deficit)

$ 52,743

$ 15,523

STEALTH BIOTHERAPEUTICS CORP

Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations

(inthousands,exceptshareandpersharedata)

Year Ended December 31,

2019

2018

Revenue

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Stealth BioTherapeutics Reports Fiscal Year 2019 Financial Results And Recent Business Highlights - BioSpace

The Department of Molecular & Human Genetics has claimed that it has discovered a new technology to test COVID-19 virus and give accurate results within 5-6 hours.

Sangeeta NairMar 31, 2020 14:04 IST

The Department of Molecular & Human Genetics at the Banaras Hindu University has claimed that it has discovered a new technology to test the COVID-19 virus and give accurate results within 5-6 hours.

The departments Associate Professor Dr. Geeta Rai stated that the department had tried to target a protein sequence present only in the COVID-19 virus. We've tried to target a protein sequence present only in COVID19 & not present in any other viral strain, she said.

Dr. Rai added saying, We're hopeful when testing is done it will only detect COVID19 presence, so there'll be less chance of false detection.

The new technology has been developed by an all-women team of BHUs Department of Molecular & Human Genetics. The team includes four researchers- Dr. Geeta Rai, Dolly Das, Khushbupriya and Hiral Thakar.

The research team had filed a patent on March 27, 2020. However, it needs to be validated by the Indian virology research institute- The National Institute of Virology in Pune and after that it would require approval from the Indian Council of Medical Research.

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BHU department claims to have discovered new technology to test COVID-19 - Jagran Josh

Universityof Toronto researcherSachdev Sidhuand his collaborators are engineering antibody molecules that can neutralize the novel coronavirus in the body before it invades cells.

Sidhu (left) already leads a differentteam that received supportin the first round of federal funding. The goal of that project is to design antiviral medicines that block viral replication.

With our two funded projects, we are working to develop molecules that can target the virus both inside human cells and on the outside to prevent it from getting in, says Sidhu, who is a professor of molecular genetics in the Faculty of Medicine.

Other teams in Canada, as well as in the U.K. and U.S., are looking to infuse Covid-19 survivors blood plasma containing antibodies into patientsto aid their recovery. Plasma transfusion, however, is fraught with challenges, including variability in efficacy between different donors and risk of disease transmission. Synthetic antibodies, on the other hand, represent a defined drug in terms of molecular content, efficacy and dosing regimen.

Rini has previously helped to determine how antibodies bind to and inactivate the SARS virus, the coronavirus that caused the outbreak in Asia more than 15 years ago. Also on the team isAlan Cochrane, a professor in the department of molecular genetics and an HIV virologist with expertise in viral RNA processing.

The antibodies will be engineered to block the so-called S-protein that forms spikes on the virus's surface. The spikes lock on to a protein called ACE2 on the surface of human cells to gain entry. Coating viral particles with synthetic antibodies should prevent the spikes from binding to ACE2.

Sidhu and Rini will also engineer antibodies that bind ACE2 to make it inaccessible to the virus. This type of engineered immunity surpasses the capacity of the bodys natural immune system since antibodies that react against self-proteins have been filtered out. If successful, the approach may obviate worries about viral mutations that can render drugs ineffective to new emerging viral strains becausethe host protein ACE2 does not change over time.

Sidhus team has advanced a technology called phage display to rapidly create and select human antibodies with desired biological properties, including blocking the virussspike protein. Over the last decade, his team has created hundreds of antibodies with therapeutic potential some of which are in clinical development through spin-off companiesand large pharmaceutical firms.

The group has demonstrated success with both approaches for inhibiting viral entry, having developed neutralizing antibodies that target the Ebola virus as well as antibodies that target the human host receptor of hantavirus or hepatitis C. Moreover, other research has shown that antibodies targeting SARS, a related virus whose genetic material is over 80 per cent identical to the one causing COVID-19, can clear infection in cells and mice.

Using phage display, in which tiny bacterial viruses called phages are instructed to create vast libraries of diverse antibodies, the team will select the antibodies that can kill the virus in human cells before testing them on mice and, eventually, patients. Experiments on mice could start within three to six months, Sidhu says.

In addition to creating antibodies tailored to the new virus from scratch, the researchers will also modify existing SARS-blocking antibodies so that they attack COVID-19 and provide an additional route to the development of a therapeutic.

Given the global spread of the virus, its possible that it will become endemic and circulate in the population like seasonal flu. And, like the flu, it could mutate into new strains that will evade acquired immunity and the vaccines that are being developed. By generating a panel of different antibodies, the researchers aim to stay one step ahead of the virus.

Our advances in antibody engineering technologiesand access to the complete genomes of the COVID-19 virus and its relatives provides us with an opportunity to create tailored therapeutic antibodies at a scale and speed that was not possible even a few years ago, says Sidhu.

Ultimately, we aim to optimize methods to the point where the evolution of new drugs will keep pace with the evolution of the virus itself, providing new and effective drugs in response to new outbreaks.

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Researchers at U of T developing antibodies to 'neutralize' novel coronavirus before it invades cells - News@UofT

Coronavirus. Just the word strikes fear into our hearts.

Novel coronavirus is the proper term for this brand-new virus wreaking havoc on our unprepared world.

But you can also call this nasty villain by its scientific name: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2 for short.

Becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 can trigger a potentially deadly respiratory disease called Covid-19, an illness which presents with three main acute symptoms: fever, a deep, dry cough and a shortness of breath which can become quickly life-threatening. Other symptoms can mimic a cold or the flu.

Covid-19 seems to strike the elderly and immunocompromised the hardest, along with any of us with underlying health conditions such as diabetes, heart and lung disease. But the young shouldnt take anything for granted there have been numerous deaths among people aged 20 to 50, as well as a very few among children.

Covid-19 can also present with mild symptoms very similar to a typical cold or flu or no symptoms at all, which makes controlling the spread of the virus causing Covid-19 very difficult.

All viruses are like zombies they try to take over peoples bodies but they arent really alive. Outside the hosts body they are dormant, surviving without living. Once touched or inhaled and brought inside, their ancient machinery springs into action, using proteins to latch onto and invade human cells.

There they set up shop, producing millions of copies of themselves and causing those cells to rupture. Like the famous scene from the movie Alien, the viral offspring shoot out into the bloodstream, with the goal of invading more and more cells.

As they multiply, humans began to spit them out into the universe with each exhalation, making us contagious days before we begin to cough, sneeze or have diarrhea all symptoms the virus creates to ensure it can leap from human to human, thus ensuring its survival.

This virus zombie invasion comes in all sort of shapes, sizes and genetic strategies. All coronaviruses are covered with pointy spires of protein, giving them the appearance of having a crown or corona hence the name. Coronaviruses use these spikes to latch onto and pierce our cells.

Coronaviruses are part of the RNA brigade of viruses, which are much less stable than their DNA-based comrades. Why is that important? Because instability leads to mistakes in copying genetic code.

That leads to mutations thousands, millions, billions of mutations. Sooner or later, one mutation hits pay dirt and allows the virus to cross the great divide between different species. A few million/billion/trillion more mistakes creates another mutation that allows that virus to spread easily. Now the virus is both in its new host and it is contagious.

Its that type of mutation which gives humanity viruses like SARS-CoV-2.

The animal kingdom is teeming with coronaviruses. They are found in cats and dogs, pigs and cattle, turkey and chickens, mice, rats, rabbits and of course, humans. Insects too.

Some of those coronviruses can cross species, such as between pigs, cats and dogs, but for the most part coronaviruses stay loyal to their original hosts. Until, of course, they become that lucky mutation.

Usually viruses from one animal really dont effectively transmit to other animal species or even to people, said Dr. John Williams, chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Childrens Hospital of Pittsburgh.

So usually if a virus goes from an animal to a human, its sort of dead end. That person gets sick but it doesnt spread further, said Williams, who has studied coronaviruses for decades.

Besides the newly hatched novel coronavirus, there are actually six additional coronaviruses that infect humans four of them cause the common cold.

Two more can be deadly. MERS-CoV is the villian behind Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, which has killed over 800 people worldwide since it first appeared in 2012.

SARS-CoV causes a serious form of pneumonia that can also be life-threatening. Globally, it killed 774 people between 2002 and 2004. No other cases have been reported worldwide since. {To put that into context, the death toll of the novel coronavirus since it burst on the scene in December is approaching 40,000).

The coronaviruses that cause MERS and SARS are though to have crossed from mammals to humans, where they mutated to become contagious. MERS-CoV first appeared in Jordon and Saudi Arabia in 2012 and its thought to have crossed over to humans from dromedary camels in Africa, the Middle East and southern Asia.

MERS is extremely deadly, about 30% of people who are infected with MERS will die, Williams said. So the virus got over one of the barriers its able to infect humans, grow in them and cause disease but thankfully it really doesnt spread well person to person, other than very, very close contacts.

SARS has been more difficult to pin down.

Because one of the most common carriers for coronaviruses are bats, its thought that the virus may have started there. Then it supposedly mutated to the masked palm civet, a small cat-like mammal eaten in some parts of China. But even that theory is disputed.

SARS caused death in about 10% of people that became infected and it did spread person to person but not super effectively, Williams said. There werent many people walking around without symptoms or with mild symptoms, who could be spreading it.

This new virus, SARS-CoV-2, has overcome more barriers, Williams added. It spreads easily person to person and a lot of people can have either mild disease or they might not even have symptoms, yet they can have the virus and spread it.

The novel coronavirus appears to have originated in bats. A study published in February found the coronavirus found in bats shared 96% of the same genetic makeup as the novel coronavirus. But it wasnt a direct link, so the bat had to have infected another species, which then infected humans.

Early reports pointed to snakes bought at a wet market in China were people buy live animals to eat. A recent report of the initial cases of coronavirus in China debunks the snake flu theory, reporting that in 13 of the 41 early cases the infected patients had no link to the wet market.

A recent hypothesis claimed the intermediate host was the pangolin, an endangered scaly, ant-eating creature beloved for its meat and scales, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine. But critics have been skeptical, sending genetic scientists back to their labs to continue the search.

At this time, scientists dont know where the novel coronavirus began.

These things are more difficult than [identifying] dinosaurs, because theres no fossil record of a virus, Williams said. For example, the main virus I study, human metapneumovirus, is clearly a virus that has circulated in humans for decades if not a few centuries.

However, when you look at the genetics of the virus, its closest genetic relative is a bird virus, he added. So, did that virus jump to humans way back and become established? Thats what we think. But it isnt impossible that a human virus jumped to birds and became established there.

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What is coronavirus and Covid-19? An explainer - KTVZ

An erudite report of a worldwide Plasmid Market is recently published by Absolute Markets Insights. The statistical report offers an appropriate analysis of recent trends and technological advancements in global regions such as North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Africa, and India. The data further also applies useful tools, methodologies and standard operating procedures carried out by top-level industries to support its analysis. Moreover, it also applies other effective exploratory techniques such as primary and secondary research techniques.

A plasmid is a small, circular piece of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which is all the genetic material found in an organisms chromosomes and replicates independently of chromosomal DNA. Worldwide rising awareness levels about gene therapy across the globe in recent years is fostering the market growth. According to an article published by Human Gene Therapy, the adoption of gene therapy for chronic diseases, which include Alzheimer Disease is high around the world as compared to less severe diseases, namely, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Gene therapy is a promising treatment option for various diseases such as inherited disorders, some types of cancer, and certain viral infections; and most commonly, gene therapy is an approach to treat the genetic disorders. Rising number of clinical trials related to gene therapy coupled with increasing funding for research and development activities is likely to nourish the global plasmid market during the forecast period. Surging waves of advanced genetic information have marked the advent of gene therapy revolution in the recent decade. The profound knowledge about gene therapy has accelerated the potential of human genetics and disease, therefore paving the way for gene therapy in pharmaceuticals in the 21st century.

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Plasmid Market was Valued at US$ 89.52 million in 2018 and is Estimated to Reach US$ 447.68 Million by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 19.5% over the...