SAN FRANCISCO, March 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Invitae (NYSE: NVTA), a leading medical genetics company today announced its partnership with the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) to offer sponsored, no-charge genetic testing to patients through the Detect Muscular Dystrophy program in MDA's care center network, a network of clinics at more than 150 of the nation's top healthcare institutions.

Research has shown no-charge testing programs help increase utilization of genetic testing, which can shorten the time to diagnosis by as much astwo years in some conditions. Accurate diagnoses enable clinicians to focus on providing disease-specific care sooner, helping reduce costs and improve outcomes.

"Muscular dystrophy consists of many disorders with overlapping symptoms that often make diagnosis more challenging. Genetic testing can help accelerate diagnosis and treatment of conditions such as Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy or Becker Muscular Dystrophy which enables clinicians to begin identifying treatment options sooner," said Lynn O'Connor Vos, President and CEO of Muscular Dystrophy Association. "By bringing this program to our care centers, we can make it easier for patients to get tested, moving them one step closer to the care they need."

Muscular dystrophy refers to a group of disorders characterized by progressive muscle weakness and loss of muscle tissue. Muscular dystrophies affect 1 out of every 4,000 to 5,000 people with varying severity and presentation, often affecting skeletal muscle and ambulation, and in some forms involving cardiac, respiratory, swallowing muscles or other organs and tissues. Genetic testing has been proven to shorten the time to diagnosis and prevent misdiagnosis. Accurate and early identification of affected individuals allows for improved clinical outcomes.

In addition to genetic testing, the Detect Muscular Dystrophy program offers post-test genetic counseling to help patients understand test results and make more informed decisions about their health and follow-up care. Detect Muscular Dystrophy also offers genetic testing to family members of patients with genetic variants associated with disease to better understand their own disease risks.

"Genetic testing can expedite making an accurate diagnosis, facilitate earlier interventions, allow genetic counseling of family members, and support clinical research into muscular dystrophies, including Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophies, and also many other forms of muscular dystrophy," said Robert Nussbaum, M.D., chief medical officer of Invitae. "We're proud to work with MDA to increase access to early genetic testing among patients suspected of having muscular dystrophy. Their network of care centers offers patients expert care and easier access to genetic testing to inform that care."

Additional details, terms and conditions of the programs can be found at Detect Muscular Dystrophy (www.invitae.com/DetectMD). For more information on partnering with Invitae, visit http://www.invitae.com/biopharma.

Invitae sponsored testing programs are designed to increase access to genetic testing, particularly in conditions where earlier testing can improve diagnosis and treatment yet testing remains underutilized. Patients enroll in Invitae's sponsored testing programs through their clinician. Learn more atwww.invitae.com/sponsored-testing.

About Muscular Dystrophy Association Since 1950, the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) has been committed to transforming the lives of people affected by muscular dystrophy, ALS and related neuromuscular diseases. We do this through innovations in science and innovations in care. As the largest source of funding for neuromuscular disease research outside of the federal government, MDA has committed more than $1 billion since our inception to accelerate the discovery of therapies and cures. Research we have supported is directly linked to life-changing therapies across multiple neuromuscular diseases. MDA's Neuromuscular ObserVational Research (MOVR) data hub gathers longitudinal clinical data for multiple neuromuscular diseases to improve health outcomes and accelerate therapy development. MDA supports the largest network of multidisciplinary clinics providing best in class care at more than 150 of the nation's top medical institutions, and our national resource center serves the community with one-on-one specialized support and we offer educational conferences, events, and materials for families and healthcare providers. Each year thousands of children and young adults learn vital life skills and gain independence at summer camp and through recreational programs, at no cost to families. For more information visit mda.org.

About InvitaeInvitae Corporation(NYSE: NVTA) is a leading medical genetics company, whose mission is to bring comprehensive genetic information into mainstream medicine to improve healthcare for billions of people. Invitae's goal is to aggregate the world's genetic tests into a single service with higher quality, faster turnaround time, and lower prices. For more information, visit the company's website atinvitae.com.

Safe Harbor StatementThis press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements relating to the benefits of genetic testing and information; and the design and benefits of the company's sponsored testing and Detect programs. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: the company's history of losses; the company's ability to compete; the company's failure to manage growth effectively; the company's need to scale its infrastructure in advance of demand for its tests and to increase demand for its tests; the company's ability to use rapidly changing genetic data to interpret test results accurately and consistently; security breaches, loss of data and other disruptions; laws and regulations applicable to the company's business; and the other risks set forth in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the risks set forth in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof, and Invitae Corporation disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Contact:Laura D'Angelo[emailprotected](628) 213-3283

SOURCE Invitae Corporation

http://invitae.com

Go here to read the rest:

Invitae and Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Expand Access to No-Charge Genetic Testing in the US and Canada - PRNewswire

Dr. Segun Fatumo is a computer scientist with specialization in bioinformatics with keen interest in the genetic impact of non-communicable diseases in Africa and bioinformatics capacity building in Africa. He has been involved in various genetic projects including analysing a large-scale genomic dataset from Ugandan population. During his PhD, he was able to identified twenty-two (22) potential novel drug targets against malaria. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (University of London). Genetic Literacy Project (GLP) interviewed him to shed more light on the importance, challenges and future direction of a recent genetic research that he was a leading author.

As one of the lead authors of your recently published paper, what motivated this research project?

Precision medicine is fundamentally going to change healthcare. Genomic medicines is a key component of precision medicine with enormous potential to inform clinical medicine. One potential limitation to genomic medicine is the underrepresentation of African and other populations in genomics research. Previous studies have warned that a much broader range of populations should be investigated to avoid genomic medicine being of benefit merely to a privileged few. This is especially problematic, as previous studies have shown that Africa studies contribute an outsized number of associations relative to studies of similar sizes in Europeans. To demonstrate the potential of African genomes as a great resource for genomic medicine, we collected and analyzed genome-wide data from 6,407 individuals from Uganda.

What is the value of collecting more genomic data from African populations which are badly underrepresented in genomic databases.

Our findings from even modest side studies highlight the importance and usefulness of examining genetically diverse populations within Africa. Findings from large-scale studies from Africa may foster the development of new treatments that will benefit people living in Africa as well as people of African descent around the world.

What sort of challenges did you face in the study, and how did you overcame them?

So many challenges including community engagement, ethics, recruitment, etc. Globally, genomics research and specifically recruitment of participants regardless of the continent is always challenging. However, 60% of Africans live in rural areas. Prospective participants are more likely to be poor and to have limited access to healthcare and education. This means that the carrying out of research in these settings invariably presents challenges of a different order to those in higher income countries. Researchers should not exploit these challenges.

Is the value of this research project beyond Uganda and why?

Yes. Findings from our study may foster the development of new treatments that will benefit people living in Africa as well as people of African descent around the world.

What were the responses that you have received so far about the findings?

Enormous responses. I find it difficult to attend to all media requests.

What is the future direction of the research?

While there is an urgent need to perform large-scale genomic research in Africa, several ongoing initiatives such as H3Africa and the Nigerian 100K Non-Communicable Diseases Genetic Heritage Study (NCD-GHS) could provide the data to improve the evidence base and make genome medicine useful to diverse populations.

How do you see the future of genetics and bioinformatics in Africa?

I think we are now on the right track. We have established the Nigerian Bioinformatics and Genomics Network (NBGN). There are also other initiatives. We are now focusing on building capacity in Africa.

Olumide Odeyemi is a research scientist with a doctoral degree from the University of Tasmania, Australia. His areas of expertise and interest include food microbiology, microbial food safety and quality, aquaculture microbiology and research communication. Follow him on Twitter @olumide_odeyemi

Dr. Segun Fatumo is an assistant professor of genetic epidemiology and bioinformatics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Follow him on Twitter @SFatumo

Follow this link:

Studying the African genome could yield new medical treatments for everyone - Genetic Literacy Project

The Human Genetics Market report shows a brilliant presentation of regional growth, competition and provides accurate statistics with the price and gross margin and other essential factors to grow in the Human Genetics market. The Human Geneticsmarketreportdigs deep intoessentialaspectsof key subjects which help market players to make appropriate changes in their approach and help you craft better strategies. Thereportis made with amixtureof detailedrecordsrelyingupon the importantinformationresearchedviaour analysts.

Get Sample Copy of this Report @ https://www.reportsintellect.com/sample-request/781006

Major Key Players in Human Genetics Market: QIAGEN, Agilent Technologies, Illumina, Promega, Thermo Fisher Scientific, LabCorp, GE.

Our analysts used advanced primary and secondary research techniques and tools to compile this report using top-down and bottom-up approaches. Our research sources and tools are extremely reliable. The report offers effective guidelines and recommendations to players to ensure a strong position in the Human Genetics market. We provide a full competitive analysis that includes the detailed profile of the main players, a study on the nature and characteristics of the supplier landscape and other important studies.

Human Genetics Market report provides competitive analysis which helps clients to become aware of the unique characteristics of crucial factors impacting the market competition and hence changing their growth potential by manifold. Human Genetics market report provides correct data, market dynamics, and key segments.

Segmentation by product type: breakdown data from 2014 to 2019 in Section 2.3; and forecast to 2024 in section 10.7.CytogeneticsPrenatal GeneticsMolecular GeneticsSymptom Genetics

Segmentation by application: breakdown data from 2014 to 2019, in Section 2.4; and forecast to 2024 in section 10.8.Research CenterHospitalForensic Laboratories

Get Discount on this Report @ https://www.reportsintellect.com/discount-request/781006

Table of Contents:-

Highlights of the worldwide Human Genetics Market Report:

About us:

Reports Intellect provides research reports for everything related to market research and market intelligence. We understand the importance of the market with its needs in todays competitive world.

Ourteamwork toobtainthemostauthenticstudiesreports,accompaniedbyperfectinformationfigures which guaranteesupereffectsfor you and yourcompanyeachtime.

Ourteamis thereto help youin thefirst-classfeasibleway, whetherit isthe latestreportfrom the researchers ora personalizedrequirement, donow nothesitate tocontactus.

Contact us:

Sales@reportsintellect.com

PH + 1-706-996-2927

US Address:

225 Peachtree Street NE,

Suite 400,

Atlanta, GA 30303

Go here to see the original:

Human Genetics Market Higher Growth Rate / CAGR over the Forecast Period to 2026 by Key Players like QIAGEN, Agilent Technologies, Illumina - New Day...

Older adults appear to be more severely at risk from the new coronavirus, while young children seem to be largely spared and understanding why could be crucial to treating people with the illness it causes, according to scientists.

Much remains unknown about COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus that is rapidly spreading around the world, but researchers have seized on a factor that seems to influence the severity of infections: the patient's age.

People over age 60, and particularly those with pre-existing health conditions, appear to be most vulnerable to the virus, which has spread to more than 110,000 people in at least 97 countries.

While that is not particularly surprising, the statistics show that young children have made up very few of the confirmed cases so far, a divergence that isn't true for every illness.

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

While the immune systems of older people are typically not as robust as those of younger people, leaving them more vulnerable to a wide variety of illnesses, scientists say they can't definitively say why the coronavirus has been harder on people of advanced ages.

"We're trying to figure out why age is a primary feature of this infection, but from a biological perspective, we don't have that answer," said Dr. Srinivas Murthy, a clinical associate professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Understanding that question could help researchers figure out how to treat the illness, particularly in the older populations that appear to be more susceptible to it.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams, speaking Monday afternoon at a news conference, confirmed that the virus had been more severe for older people based on the data currently available.

The first death in the U.S. from COVID-19 was that of a Washington state man in his 50s with underlying health conditions. Since then, the state's health officials have also been battling the spread of the respiratory illness at a nursing facility in Kirkland, where 19 people have died.

Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.

In China, where the coronavirus first emerged, early research also suggests that the coronavirus may pose a graver risk to some populations over others. In a report released last month by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, an analysis of 1,023 deaths out of 44,672 confirmed cases diagnosed through Feb. 11 found that 21.9 percent of deaths occurred among patients who were over 80 years old.

Download the NBC News app for full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

Most people who have been infected have experienced mild to moderate symptoms, which Murthy said likely means either that the virus is not penetrating beyond the upper respiratory tract or that patients' immune systems are preventing it from reaching deep into the lungs.

It's thought that the virus spreads through close contact, traveling through tiny droplets and secretions when a patient coughs, sneezes or breathes.

Typically, when a virus infects a cell in the human body, the cell's so-called innate immune system kicks in if foreign genetic material is detected. This is considered the body's first line of defense against invading pathogens. The second line of defense is known as the adaptive immune system, which first has to detect foreign invaders before producing antibodies and T cells to counteract the infection.

But as people age, both of those systems can break down.

"We don't truly know why, but as you get older, the functionality of the innate immune system and adaptive immune system wanes," said Timothy Sheahan, an epidemiologist at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina.

The rest is here:

Coronavirus is hard on older people and scientists aren't sure why - NBCNews.com

University of Minnesota researchers are looking at cardiac conditions in racehorses to point toward a solution for both horses and humans.

Researchers are examining the effects of irregular heartbeats in racehorses, which are more frequently affected than average horses. Many racehorses die suddenly on the racetrack for unexpected reasons that may be due to irregular heartbeats, known broadly as arrhythmias. Researchers said they can examine which arrhythmias cause disease and which ones are specific to horses or humans.

The prevalence in horses is not common, but in racehorses with poor performances, its about 2%, said Sian Durward-Akhurst, lead author of the study and a University graduate student. Atrial fibrillation is the most common form of irregular heartbeat in horses.

The researchers examined the genes of 534 horses and found greater variations of disease in them, she said. Researchers are analyzing the disease-causing variants identified in both horses and humans.

Its something thats really interesting because why is it causing disease in humans, but not in horses? Durward-Akhurst said.

They will test these variants in more horses this summer and aim to produce a research paper by next year. Earlier this month, the researchers presented their recent findings at the Santa Anita racetrack in Los Angeles, California.

Atrial fibrillation is the most abnormal heart rhythm in humans, in cattle, in dogs. Its actually an interesting disease because of its impact on multiple species, including us, said Molly McCue, the principal investigator of the research and the associate dean of research in the Universitys College of Veterinary Medicine.

The irregular heartbeats of atrial fibrillation are sometimes referred to as a quivering heart due to how they affect the heartbeats pace. According to a veterinarian from the Paulick Report, the irregular heartbeat sounds like shoes in a dryer.

Racehorses are bred to have higher functioning cardiovascular systems than other horses, McCue said. Because of this, racehorses are expected to have a higher capacity for exercise.

They have this really frequent occurrence of arrhythmia, she said. The issue now is to figure out why. Then researchers can determine if arrhythmias are contributing to why racehorses are dying on the race track and if they can prevent it.

James Mickelson, a University professor in the Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, has studied the genetics of diseases in various animals for more than 20 years.

The condition of atrial fibrillation and heart arrhythmias is very likely responsible for sudden death of horses on race tracks, just like similar conditions in people, in human athletes, are responsible for sudden fatal deaths as well, he said.

If researchers can find a new mutation in horse genetics, they can use that to see if the same gene is responsible for any of the human cases, Mickelson said.

Lynn Hovda, chief commission veterinarian for the Minnesota Racing Commission, said horses dont have heart attacks like humans do because of their different cardiovascular systems.

[Horses] have cardiac rhythm disturbances, most often atrial fibrillation, that may result in sudden death. I say may as we dont really know yet, she said.

Originally posted here:

Researchers study irregular horse heartbeats, hoping to find a cure - Minnesota Daily

The Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation is seeking to fund community-based organizations throughout Miami-Dade County with grants up to $50,000 each. Qualified tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations conducting grass-roots work that improves, preserves, or restores the health and healthcare of local area citizens have until April 15 to apply.

Since 1992, the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation has responded to identified community needs, said Aldo C. Busot, Chairman of the Coral Gables-based nonprofit foundation. Our board is appreciative of the work being done by our grant recipients throughout the community. The Board of Directors remains committed to sustaining its support in meeting the needs of our local community-based organizations. Busot is a senior vice president and financial advisor with Busot Group at Morgan Stanley in Coral Gables, and a graduate of the University of Miami.

From its earliest days, the foundation board wanted the foundation to serve the immediate grassroots needs of both children and adults and has successfully done so by awarding 468 grants to more than 300 community-based organizations over the years.

According to Charles Dunn, M.D., Chairman of the Community Grants Committee, The Community Grants program is the backbone of the foundation. The local organizations that receive funding are providing much-needed services and contribute to the well-being of our community. A graduate of University of Miami School of Medicine, Dr. Dunn is a long-established family medicine practitioner in Coral Gables.

Local organizations that qualified last year for the first-time, during the foundations 2019-20 funding cycle, included Friendship Circle of Miami offering behavioral physical and occupational therapies for children with special needs in Miami-Dade County; and Iam Able, with a county-wide reach for its Able 2 Adapt program that provides mentoring and exercise-based therapy for individuals with paralysis.

Whispering Manes Therapeutic Riding Center also has been funded in past years to support scholarships and new equipment for their equine-assisted program for special needs children all across the county.

Other award recipients include Wounded Veterans Relief Fund, , Fishing With Americas Finest, Miami Lighthouse for the Blind, Canine Assisted Therapy, Good Hope Equestrian Training Center, the Coral Gables Womens Club Childrens Dental Clinic, and Epilepsy Foundation of Florida, among many others.

In addition to community grants, the foundation also has undertaken three signature initiatives in conjunction with UMs Miller School of Medicines Dept. of Pediatrics with the establishment of the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation School Health Initiative, the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Dept. of Human Genetics, and the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Biomedical Nanotechnology Institute.

According to the Foundations Managing Director John Edward Smith, Since its inception as a grant-making institution, the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation has invested some $48 million into our community. Foundation grants serve as recognition of the admirable work so many community-based organizations are doing across the county to improve the quality of life for citizens.

The Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation is accepting letters of inquiry for the 2020-21 grant cycle now through April 15, 2020. Funding priorities include:

Projects that promote health education and prevention, and early detection of disease;

Health related projects that assist children and the economically disadvantaged; and

Projects that target medical care.

Qualified organizations that propose to conduct projects or programs related to the health needs of the citizens of Miami-Dade County, and are seeking funding support from the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation, should first submit a letter of inquiry. Programs and projects are funded depending upon the budget in the $5,000 $50,000 range. Applications are available online at http://www.JTMacdonaldFDN.org.

ABOUT THE FOUNDATION

With a long legacy of service to the local community, Doctors Hospital in Coral Gables is the genesis of todays Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation. The foundation grew from the sale of the hospital in 1992. Starting as a grant-making institution with an initial fund balance of $12 million, over the course of the past 20 years, the foundations fund balance has appreciably grown. Today, the foundation continues funding and invest in the healthcare and medical needs of the local community.

The Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation is located at 1550 Madruga Ave., Suite 215, Coral Gables, FL 33146. For information, call 305-667-6017 or send an e-mail to info@jtmacdonaldfdn.org.

Connect To Your Customers & Grow Your Business

Read the original:

Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation seeking to fund community-based organizations with major grant dollars - Miami's Community Newspapers

How to Argue with a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality

Adam Rutherford

Weidenfeld, pp. 206, 12.99

In the award-winning musical Avenue Q, filthy-minded puppets sang about schadenfreude, internet porn, loud sex, the uselessness of an English literature degree and racism. Or, more specifically, they sang about the ubiquitous human habit of

stereotyping people by race:

Everyones a little bit racist, sometimes.

The puppets were right: everyone makes judgments based on race. Humans are lazy creatures who like mental short cuts. Thinking in shades of grey is more effortful than thinking in black and white. Evaluating a new person afresh, based on their unique characteristics, is slower than falling back on a ready made judgment. If youve spent time with a two-year-old, or if youve used psychedelic drugs, you might have glimpsed what its like to see an individual blade of grass as itself, and not just as an exemplar of the category grass. Its exhausting.

In How to Argue with a Racist, Adam Rutherford uses his expertise in genetics to try to get us to see people the way a person on LSD might see a field of grass. That is, he wants us to see individual humans as themselves, rather than as exemplars of racial categories. Overcoming deeply ingrained patterns of mind, while also providing a crash course in genetic biology, is a tall order for any book, particularly one so brief. To accomplish his goal, Rutherford has densely packed each section of his book with scientific and historical details, all of which converge on a central theme its wickedly complicated.

Part I begins by challenging the apparent simplicity of racial distinctions based on skin colour or other observable physical characteristics. Consider, for instance, that two Africans, who would both be assigned the same race based on their skin colour, might be more different genetically than the Scots are from the Japanese.

Part II then challenges the idea of racial purity, the fiction that there are groups of people (like the Scots or the Japanese) who can trace their blood to just one set of ancestors living in one particular place. No such pure bloodlines exist; there really is no true Scotsman. Because people have had sex wherever and whenever they could, we dont have to go back too far in history to find a time when everyone alive then was the ancestor of everyone alive now. You and your immigrant neighbour are all part of the same family tree.

Next, parts III and IV challenge the idea that some racial groups are naturally more athletic, more musical or more intelligent. Do African-Americans dominate certain track and field events because they have a speed gene? Are the genetic diseases more common in Ashkenazi Jews evidence of selection for high intelligence? One by one, Rutherford picks up an apparently neat story about racial differences and turns it this way and that, exposing its holes and flaws and tattered seams.

Some of the science here has been explained in other books, including Rutherfords own A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, and more recently, David Reichs Who We Are and How We Got Here. What makes the organisation of the scientific material different in this book is right there in the opening sentence: This book is a weapon. Rutherford continues: These pages ... will provide a foundation to contest racism. Yet despite its confident title, How to Argue with a Racist is not entirely sanguine about the power of scientific argument. Arguing with racists, Rutherford says, is a fairly fruitless endeavour, and exhausting and he quotes Jonathan Swift: Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.

Rutherfords uncertainty regarding how useful science is for combatting racism reflects a deeper uncertainty about what, exactly, is the relationship between sciency-sounding ideas about biological differences between racial groups and the violence and vitriol that he calls avowed or overt or extreme racism. After all, as the puppets of Avenue Q cheerfully protested, the use of racial judgments doesnt mean we go around committing hate crimes.

But ideas about racial difference can, indeed, incite violence. Consider Dylann Roof, who gunned down nine black parishioners in a Charleston, South Carolina church after being radicalised on the internet. Before the massacre, Roof penned a racist screed that asked the exact same question about racial differences that How to Argue with a Racist considers at length: How could our faces, skin, hair and body structure all be different, but our brains be exactly the same?

It is tempting to answer that incendiary question by insisting that everyones brains really are exactly the same. As the great evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky observed back in the 1960s, if you maintain that people should be equal, then it is convenient to argue that the differences between them are accidental and trivial. This, for instance, is the argument that Ibram Kendi made in his similarly titled How to Be an Antiracist. An anti-racist is someone who is expressing the idea that races are meaningfully the same in their biology.

Rutherford avoids the temptation of insisting that everyone is the same. Instead, he presents a more difficult but more accurate argument, describing both the reality of human genetic variation and the fiction of racial purity. Yes, genetic differences between people are important, not just for their bodies, but also for their brains and behaviours. But the physical characteristics that we use to lump people together into races are terrible indicators of how genetically similar those people are. And when considering achingly complex domains of human achievement, such as music, sport, art and science, it has proved nearly impossible to separate out genetics from the messiness of human history, from colonialism and culture.

Rereading How to Argue with a Racist a second time, I began to imagine it as a letter, directed to one racist in particular to a younger Dylann Roof, as he was being drawn into the darker corners of the internet, before he picked up a gun to commit mass murder. Could science and history, clearly presented, have cut through the thicket of poisonous ideas that ultimately choked off Roofs capacity for the most basic human empathy? Could arguing with that particular racist about genetics have saved lives? That possibility, slim as it might be, is why How to Argue with a Racist is an important book.

Read more here:

A book that could save lives: Adam Rutherford's How to Argue with a Racist reviewed - Spectator.co.uk

The following are the top rated Healthcare stocks according to Validea's Small-Cap Growth Investor model based on the published strategy of Motley Fool. This strategy looks for small cap growth stocks with solid fundamentals and strong price performance.

ZYNEX INC. (ZYXI) is a small-cap growth stock in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry. The rating according to our strategy based on Motley Fool is 76% based on the firms underlying fundamentals and the stocks valuation. A score of 80% or above typically indicates that the strategy has some interest in the stock and a score above 90% typically indicates strong interest.

Company Description: Zynex, Inc. operates through the Electrotherapy and Pain Management Products segment. The Company conducts its business through its subsidiaries and the operating subsidiary is Zynex Medical, Inc. (ZMI). Its other subsidiaries include Zynex Monitoring Solutions, Inc. (ZMS) and Zynex Europe, ApS (ZEU). ZMI designs, manufactures and markets medical devices that treat chronic and acute pain, as well as activate and exercise muscles for rehabilitative purposes with electrical stimulation. ZMS is in the process of developing its blood volume monitoring product for non-invasive cardiac monitoring. ZEU intends to focus on sales and marketing its products within the international marketplace, upon receipt of necessary regulatory approvals. It markets and sells Zynex-manufactured products and distributes private labeled products. Its products include NexWave, NeuroMove, InWave, Electrodes and Batteries. ZMI devices are intended for pain management to reduce reliance on drugs and medications.

The following table summarizes whether the stock meets each of this strategy's tests. Not all criteria in the below table receive equal weighting or are independent, but the table provides a brief overview of the strong and weak points of the security in the context of the strategy's criteria.

For a full detailed analysis using NASDAQ's Guru Analysis tool, click here

CHINA BIOLOGIC PRODUCTS HOLDINGS INC (CBPO) is a mid-cap growth stock in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. The rating according to our strategy based on Motley Fool is 72% based on the firms underlying fundamentals and the stocks valuation. A score of 80% or above typically indicates that the strategy has some interest in the stock and a score above 90% typically indicates strong interest.

Company Description: China Biologic Products Holdings, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company. The Company is principally engaged in the research, development, manufacturing and sales of human plasma-based biopharmaceutical products in China. It operates through the manufacture and sales of human plasma products segment. China Biologic has a product portfolio with over 20 various dosage forms of plasma products and other biopharmaceutical products across nine categories.The Company's products include human albumin, human immunoglobulin, immunoglobulin for intravenous injection (IVIG), human hepatitis B immunoglobulin, human rabies immunoglobulin, human tetanus immunoglobulin, placenta polypeptide, Factor VIII and human prothrombin complex concentrate (PCC).

The following table summarizes whether the stock meets each of this strategy's tests. Not all criteria in the below table receive equal weighting or are independent, but the table provides a brief overview of the strong and weak points of the security in the context of the strategy's criteria.

For a full detailed analysis using NASDAQ's Guru Analysis tool, click here

MEDPACE HOLDINGS INC (MEDP) is a mid-cap growth stock in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. The rating according to our strategy based on Motley Fool is 72% based on the firms underlying fundamentals and the stocks valuation. A score of 80% or above typically indicates that the strategy has some interest in the stock and a score above 90% typically indicates strong interest.

Company Description: Medpace Holdings, Inc. is a clinical contract research organization. The Company provides clinical research-based drug and medical device development services. The Company partners with pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies in the development and execution of clinical trials. The Company's drug development services focus on full service Phase I-IV clinical development services and include development plan design, coordinated central laboratory, project management, regulatory affairs, clinical monitoring, data management and analysis, pharmacovigilance new drug application submissions, and post-marketing clinical support. The Company also provides bio-analytical laboratory services, clinical human pharmacology, imaging services, and electrocardiography reading support for clinical trials. The Company's operations are principally based in North America, Europe, and Asia.

The following table summarizes whether the stock meets each of this strategy's tests. Not all criteria in the below table receive equal weighting or are independent, but the table provides a brief overview of the strong and weak points of the security in the context of the strategy's criteria.

For a full detailed analysis using NASDAQ's Guru Analysis tool, click here

FULGENT GENETICS INC (FLGT) is a small-cap growth stock in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry. The rating according to our strategy based on Motley Fool is 69% based on the firms underlying fundamentals and the stocks valuation. A score of 80% or above typically indicates that the strategy has some interest in the stock and a score above 90% typically indicates strong interest.

Company Description: Fulgent Genetics, Inc. is a technology company. The Company offers genetic testing to provide physicians with clinically actionable diagnostic information to improve quality of patient care. The Company has developed a technology platform that integrates data comparison and suppression algorithms, adaptive learning software, advanced genetic diagnostics tools and integrated laboratory processes. As of December 31, 2015, the Company's test menu includes approximately 18,000 single-gene tests and over 200 pre-established, multi-gene, disease-specific panels that collectively test for approximately 7,500 genetic conditions, including various cancers, cardiovascular diseases and neurological disorders. The Company's gene probes are specifically engineered to generate genetic data that is optimized for its software, which enables to rapidly incorporate new genes into its test menu, develop new panels of disease-specific tests and customize tests for its customers.

The following table summarizes whether the stock meets each of this strategy's tests. Not all criteria in the below table receive equal weighting or are independent, but the table provides a brief overview of the strong and weak points of the security in the context of the strategy's criteria.

For a full detailed analysis using NASDAQ's Guru Analysis tool, click here

MASIMO CORPORATION (MASI) is a large-cap growth stock in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry. The rating according to our strategy based on Motley Fool is 68% based on the firms underlying fundamentals and the stocks valuation. A score of 80% or above typically indicates that the strategy has some interest in the stock and a score above 90% typically indicates strong interest.

Company Description: Masimo Corporation is a medical technology company that develops, manufactures and markets a range of non-invasive patient monitoring technologies. The Company's business is Measure-through Motion and Low Perfusion pulse oximetry monitoring, known as Masimo Signal Extraction Technology (SET) pulse oximetry. Its product offerings include non-invasive monitoring of blood constituents with an optical signature, optical organ oximetry monitoring, electrical, brain function monitoring, acoustic respiration monitoring and exhaled gas monitoring. In addition, the Company has developed the Root patient monitoring and connectivity platform, the Radical-7 bedside and portable patient monitor, and the Radius-7 wearable wireless patient monitor. It offers Patient SafetyNet remote patient surveillance monitoring system, which allows patients to be monitored through a personal computer-based monitor or by care providers through their pagers, voice-over-Internet Protocol (IP) phones or smartphones.

The following table summarizes whether the stock meets each of this strategy's tests. Not all criteria in the below table receive equal weighting or are independent, but the table provides a brief overview of the strong and weak points of the security in the context of the strategy's criteria.

For a full detailed analysis using NASDAQ's Guru Analysis tool, click here

Since its inception, Validea's strategy based on Motley Fool has returned 413.50% vs. 172.71% for the S&P 500. For more details on this strategy, click here

About Motley Fool: Brothers David and Tom Gardner often wear funny hats in public appearances, but they're hardly fools -- at least not the kind whose advice you should readily dismiss. The Gardners are the founders of the popular Motley Fool web site, which offers frank and often irreverent commentary on investing, the stock market, and personal finance. The Gardners' "Fool" really is a multi-media endeavor, offering not only its web content but also several books written by the brothers, a weekly syndicated newspaper column, and subscription newsletter services.

About Validea: Validea is an investment research service that follows the published strategies of investment legends. Validea offers both stock analysis and model portfolios based on gurus who have outperformed the market over the long-term, including Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Peter Lynch and Martin Zweig. For more information about Validea, click here

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

View post:

Validea's Top Five Healthcare Stocks Based On Motley Fool - 3/15/2020 - Nasdaq

The rapid and frightening spread of the coronavirus has sparked a battle thats drawing on a host of emerging technologies. Government, industry and academic researchers are scrambling to improve our ability to diagnose, treat and contain a virus thats threatening to reach pandemic status.

This isnt the first time researchers have faced off against a dangerous member of this family of viruses. But it is the first time theyve done it with a toolbox that includes the gene-editing tool CRISPR and the emerging field of synthetic biology.

Indeed, weve known about coronaviruses for nearly 60 years. But for several decades, they attracted little attention, causing symptoms similar to the common cold.

That changed in 2003, when a deadly member of the coronavirus family, SARS-COV, spread to 29 countries, killing 774 people. Suddenly, a coronavirus found previously in animals had managed to jump to humans, where it killed nearly 10 percent of those infected. The virus sparked fear across the globe, but was brought under control within a year. Only a small number of cases have been reported since 2004.

Then in 2012 came MERS-COV. The virus emerged in Saudi Arabia, jumping from camels to humans. The virus has never caused a sustained outbreak, but with a mortality rate of35 percent, it has killed 858 people so far. Infections have been reported in 27 countries, with most in the Middle East. The virus is considered by the World Health Organization to be a potential epidemic threat.

Interestingly, neither of these previous coronavirus threats were stopped by a cure or a vaccine. MERS still lurks in the background, while SARS was contained by what amounts to old-school practices, according to a 2007 article in Harvard Magazine:

Ironically, in this age of high-tech medicine, the virus was eventually brought under control by public-health measures typically associated with the nineteenth centuryisolation of SARS patients themselves and quarantine of all their known and suspected contactsrather than a vaccine.

There currently is no cure for this new wave of coronavirus infections (the resulting disease is called Covid-19), even though some antiviral therapies are being tested and one experimental vaccine is ready for testing in humans. The virus genome has been sequenced and its genetic code may shed light on how the disease starts and spreads, as well as inform on potential pharmaceutical targets for drug development. The Covid-19 virus similarity to the SARS-COV may mean that cures developed for one strain may prove effective for the other. The Canadian company AbCellera plans to test its antibody technology, already tried against MERS-COV, to neutralize the Covid-19 viral bodies.

What is really encouraging is the level of international collaboration aimed to fight this health emergency. Funding bodies, scientific societies and scientific journals have signed a joint statement, agreeing to openly share research findings with the global research community as soon as they are available. The very quick information dissemination gave scientists around the globe several RNA sequences of the virus genome. And these sequences can be used to better understand the epidemiology and origins of the virus. Moreover, the advancements in DNA technology let research groups in academia and industry synthesize the viral genetic material to use in the two areas of focus: detection of virus and vaccine development.

One of the trickiest things about the coronavirus is its speculated transmission by asymptomatic patients. This increases the number of infections and makes containment measures less effective, spreading fears that the virus may establish a permanent presence in some areas. There are also fears that many incidents lie undetected, spreading the virus under the radar. As of March 9, the virus has infected more than 110,000 people, killing nearly 4,000, in 97 countries.

Several biotech companies have scrambled to provide kits and resources for early and reliable detection of the new coronavirus. Mammoth Bioscience, a San Francisco-based startup, is already working on a detection assay using their CRISPR technology. The DNA technology companies IDT and Genscript already distribute PCR-based kits for detection for research purposes. The Chinese companies BGI and Liferiver Biotech use the same PCR technology for the kits they provide to their countries health authorities.

The French-British biotech Novacyt announced the launch of a diagnostic kit for clinical use in middle February. The kit will also use quantitative-PCR, developed by their sister company Primerdesign. Its high specificity will reduce the analysis time to less than two hours. The companys CEO Graham Mullis told Reuters that each kit will cost around $6.50, and that they have already received more than 33,000 orders.

The only way to effectively control and even eliminate the outbreak is to develop a vaccine. Unfortunately, the new outbreak hasnt attracted the attention of the lead vaccine manufacturers. Non-profit organizations, such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), have jumped in to fill the gap. But despite the emergency, a vaccine may be several years away from being available

The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, announced that theyre working on a coronavirus vaccine which they hope to have ready within the next few months. The molecular clamp approach the Australian researchers have developed is designed to boost the immune system response and work against several viral infections. GlaxoSmithKline has offered its adjuvant technology adjuvants are added to vaccines to boost their efficiency to speed up the process.

The Cambridge, MA-based Moderna uses a different approach to make vaccines. Their mRNA technology is modular and very adaptable to use for a new disease or when the epitope (the vaccines target) mutates. The company says its vaccine is ready for human trials.

The Covid-19 outbreak has rightly gained the attention of health authorities and the media. If the virus were to reach countries with weaker healthcare systems than Chinas, the number of deaths will rise significantly and containment will be even harder. Moreover, the long incubation time of the disease, combined with the asymptomatic spread, make quarantine and isolation measures less effective. The biggest risk is for the new coronavirus to become endemic in certain areas, where the disease is never truly extinct and displays seasonal outbreaks. We dont want the Covid-19 to become a new flu.

The health authorities of 2020, the biotech industry, and the society in general are better prepared for a coronavirus outbreak than a few years ago. The situation is less risky than MERS and SARS, though the new virus is harder to contain. This outbreak offers a chance for everyone to become more aware of viral infections, the appropriate precautions and get vaccinated according to the official recommendations. And keep in mind that the best way to stay informed is through official sources, such as the WHO and the CDC.

As for the biotech industry, are they playing their part? The answer is a partial yes; there are several companies that immediately scrambled to help the situation. But the big players within the field could be doing more.

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

Continue reading here:

Fighting the coronavirus outbreak with genetic sequencing, CRISPR and synthetic biology - Genetic Literacy Project

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif., Feb. 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) will present at theCowen 40th Annual Healthcare Conference at11:20a.m.ET onMonday,March2,2020 in Boston. Peter H. Griffith, executive vice president and chief financial officer, and Murdo Gordon, executive vice president of Global Commercial Operations at Amgen will present.Live audio of the presentation can be accessed from the Events Calendar on Amgen's website,www.amgen.com, under Investors.A replay of the webcast will also be available on Amgen's website forat least90 days following the event.

About AmgenAmgen is committed to unlocking the potential of biology for patients suffering from serious illnesses by discovering, developing, manufacturing and delivering innovative human therapeutics. This approach begins by using tools like advanced human genetics to unravel the complexities of disease and understand the fundamentals of human biology.

Amgen focuses on areas of high unmet medical need and leverages its expertise to strive for solutions that improve health outcomes and dramatically improve people's lives. A biotechnology pioneer since 1980, Amgen has grown to beone ofthe world'sleadingindependent biotechnology companies, has reached millions of patients around the world and is developing a pipeline of medicines with breakaway potential.

For more information, visitwww.amgen.comand follow us onwww.twitter.com/amgen.

CONTACT: Amgen, Thousand OaksMegan Fox, 805-447-1423 (media)Trish Hawkins, 805-447-5631(media)Arvind Sood, 805-447-1060 (investors)

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/amgen-to-present-at-the-cowen-40th-annual-healthcare-conference-301013130.html

SOURCE Amgen

Read the rest here:

Amgen To Present At The Cowen 40th Annual Healthcare Conference - BioSpace

I love working with people, says Allison Werner-Lin of the School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2). Werner-Lins office overlooking Locust Walk is homey and lamp-lit, with student gifts sharing space with scholarly tomes. This is just one of her workspaces, however. Recently returned from sabbatical, Werner-Lin has been working with the National Cancer Institute (NCI), as well as out of her home in upstate New York, which doubles as a private practice for families seeking bereavement therapy. The divide between academia and clinical practice suits her. I feel like I have one foot in each world and in a very positive way, Werner-Lin says.

Werner-Lin has extensive clinical and research experience and uses both to inform her work, which centers on heritable cancers. She began her academic work studying young adults with mutations in genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2. Recently, her work with the NCI has branched out to the study of Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS). Patients with LFS have a mutation in a tumor-suppression gene, resulting in a high incidence of cancer starting in childhood, and 50% of LFS patients develop cancer by age 40. Both patient populations make life-altering decisions based upon their family histories and medical diagnoses.

Dr. Werner-Lins groundbreaking research merges science with social work at the intersection of qualitative health research, the structure and evolution of genes, hereditary cancer, and how it impacts individuals and families at various stages of life, says SP2 Dean Sara Sally Bachman. Each day, Allison is pushing the frontiers of genomic study and oncological social work while also mentoring other social change agents who will undoubtedly make a difference locally, nationally, and internationally.

For more than a decade, Werner-Lin has worked in the Clinical Genetics Branch of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics of the NCI organizing the human side of research. Patients come annually to the NCI to receive full-body MRI cancer screenings and participate in data collection that covers everything from cancer history to family communication to risk management. Werner-Lin mentors an interdisciplinary team of predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows to explore how these families understand and cope with genetic information. Her work is used to train providers in delivering holistic medical and psychological care.

We talk with families about their experiences communicating cancer-risk information with loved ones, making reproductive decisions, and managing the endless cycle of screening, Werner-Lin says. She has seen patterns in how families share cancer-risk information and seek support, noting that information travels based on relationship patterns and emotional closeness, not necessarily degree of risk.

People with LFS have limited options for cancer prevention, and expectations for a cancer diagnosis and early death are common. Were seeing a lot of physical loss, where amputations and other changes in physical function are common consequences of treatment.

Many of the people Werner-Lin speaks with are looking at different pathways to parenthood or are choosing not to have children at all, she says. Grief becomes a chronic part of their lives, and those kinds of sustained of losses can connect individuals in and across families.

Former SP2 graduate student Catherine Wilsnack is a Cancer Research Training Award Fellow at the NCI, doing qualitative research as part of Werner-Lins team. Wilsnack first met Werner-Lin while in her second year at SP2 and calls the encounter transformative. Werner-Lin is a phenomenal mentor in every way, says Wilsnack, who earned her masters in social work (MSW) in 2019. She always goes above and beyond for her students. I would not be where I am today if it were not for her and her guidance, so I just feel extremely lucky.

Now in midcareer, Werner-Lin is taking the time to mentor younger generations. There are so many opportunities to focus on other peoples career development without such a bounded focus on my own professional needs, she says, crediting her own mentors with the ability to achieve professional success.

At Penn, Werner-Lin is involved in the Cancer Moonshot initiative led by Katherine Nathanson and Steve Joffe, an effort designed to accelerate cancer research aimed at prevention, detection, and treatment. Werner-Lins aspect of the project, based at the Abramson Cancer Center at Penn Medicine, involves issues surrounding genetic testing in people aged 18 through 40. Susan Domchek, executive director of the Basser Center for BRCA, says, Allisons work in terms of the psychosocial implications of having a BRCA mutationhow an individual can come to terms with that and how that information gets disseminated between familieshas been extremely helpful. She has a deep expertise on helping families navigate these situations.

Approximately 1 in 400 people carry mutated breast cancer genes, though mutations are more common in certain groups of people. The gene mutations are passed in an autosomal dominant pattern, meaning each parent with a mutation has a 50% chance of passing it on. Children of a BRCA-positive parent can pursue genetic testing to learn if they carry the mutation, adding pressure to family planning.

Werner-Lin was one of these children. Her mother has a BRCA1 mutation. She recovered from colon cancer when Werner-Lin was in college and is currently in remission from a rare ovarian cancer. When I was 23 and was thinking about having kids, I couldnt figure out how to do it, Werner-Lin says. I started talking to people, talking to other women, and that became my dissertation.

This curiosity and compassion led Werner-Lin to operate a private therapy practice out of her home, where she exclusively sees children and young adults with a deceased parent. People often dont see how therapy is connected to the genetics part of my work, but for me they are inseparable, Werner-Lin says. In my cancer work, parents often die young, leaving small children. Frequently, the children of cancer patients conflate their parents lives with their own, not seeing options, degrees of freedom, or technological innovation.

Working together with an MSW student, Werner-Lin does whole family-therapy, from diagnosis to end-of-life, through the grieving process. She helps to facilitate goodbyes, talks about legacy building, and makes the concept of death more concrete for young people.

The language adults use to talk about death is often confusing and shrouded in existential concepts, Werner-Lin says, citing references to angels or going to a better place. Young kids dont necessarily understand time or geography, she says. If were in New York, and Mommy went to the other side, is that a better place?

Instead, she says, we talk about the brain being a light switch, and once you turn it off you cant turn it on again. We talk about how the heart stops beating and the eyes stop seeing. These practical realities are important, Werner-Lin says. Kids need to understand the way the world is predictable, especially when people they love and need can fall off the earth at any moment.

Now back on campus, Werner-Lin is focusing on teaching and engaging with her graduate students. Acting in service to her patients, her students, and her colleagues is a core part of Werner-Lins brand of academia. If you tell her that you want to do something, Wilsnack says, she will go out of her way to help.

Originally posted here:

Working on 'the human side' of heritable cancers - Penn: Office of University Communications

On stage at the Miss America 2020 pageant, Svati Shah looked into the camera and delivered her important message.

It wasnt merely that heart disease and stroke kill more women than all forms of cancer combined. Or that cardiovascular diseases are largely preventable.

It was telling the television audience of over 3.6 million people there are clear ways to change that ways that go far beyond the usual advice of diet and exercise.

By urging more women to take up careers in science and medicine, she said. By ensuring women are included in medical research. By empowering women to change the fact that women living 20 miles apart can have a 20-year difference in lifespan.

When women come together to demand change, change happens.

Dr. Svati Shah is an associate dean in the Duke University School of Medicine and, Im proud to say, a volunteer for my organization, the American Heart Association. I asked her to speak on our behalf at the Miss America pageant because of the passion and spirit she brings to this fight, and to emphasize that women are helping lead the way.

I hope girls who watched were as inspired by Svati as they were by any of the women on that stage. Whats really inspiring is everything that led Svati to that moment.

Her parents fled India in the early 1970s to escape poverty and disease, and so their children could lead happier, healthier lives. Her dad arrived in the United States with $8 and no job. The grit and dedication she saw from her parents especially her mom has turned her into the person she is today: doctor, scientist, wife, mother and so much more.

***

Her story begins in Ahmedabad, India, where her father was born into a home without running water or electricity. As the oldest child, he upheld the custom of helping raise his five siblings.

Her mother also was an oldest child. She had seven siblings; five died before age 5. Sadly, that was somewhat common. Even more sadly, they died of conditions that couldve been treated with antibiotics and fluid hydration.

In his 20s, her dad plunked his life savings into a plane ticket to London and, thus, to a new, more prosperous life. Upon landing at Heathrow Airport, rules required him to take a tuberculosis test. He tested positive. A false positive. Regardless, he was sent back to India, penniless.

Once he earned enough for another ticket, although this time to New York. During the flight, he stepped out of the bathroom and saw a gun pointed at his head. Hijackers. His emigration was rerouted through Cuba, eventually, safely delivering passengers to their intended destination.

Working as an engineer, he was able to bring over his wife a year later. In another year and a half, they had their first child. Svati.

***

The first home Svati remembers was a very small, very nasty apartment across from Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

Her dad worked days as a civil engineer. Her mom worked nights as a punch-card operator for a bank. In the middle of every night, dad woke up and went to the subway stop to escort mom home.

Between her parents opposite schedules and their challenge of raising another younger daughter, Svati began walking to school alone at an early age. She encountered things no child should see. Like someone getting shot on the subway.

She was 9 when her dad got a job in Richland, Washington, the town where the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was built. He became an engineer at the nuclear plant and her mom became a secretary there. The family bought a small house.

Then, when Svati was in seventh grade, her parents divorced. Her dad moved away, leaving her mom to raise two teen girls on $19,000 a year.

Although their community included many Indian families, the stigma of divorce made this family outcasts in that community. Food and staples were sometimes bought with food stamps. The thermostat was kept at 55 to save money.

***

Halfway through her senior year of high school, Svati wondered whether she could get into an elite college.

Problem was, shed missed the application deadline. Except for one: Johns Hopkins University.

All she knew was that it was a good school. She got in and, most importantly, earned enough scholarships to make it affordable.

Once on campus, she made a powerful discovery. Hopkins was the perfect school for someone who aimed to wipe out preventable diseases.

That had become Svatis goal because of the horror stories shed heard just from her family.

In addition to the deaths of her moms siblings decades before, both of her fathers parents had gone blind because of cataracts and one of her uncles died from a fever, leaving behind four young children.

I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be in health care, she said. And I just loved science.

***

Svati trained in biostatistics, coding, epidemiology and clinical research on her way to earning a masters degree at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

The plan was to go into public health. Instead, she opted for medical school. Affordability lured her back toward her mom and sister: the University of Washington.

Her ability to code and work with statistics made her in high demand among researchers. Between her desire to do everything and a work ethic forged by her parents and her own hardscrabble youth, she dove into every project she could.

I wasnt the smartest medical school student, but I worked really, really hard, she said. Taking care of patients was fun. It was a constant academic assault: reading about them, figuring out whats wrong and then trying to solve that puzzle.

She did so well that she landed her top choice for an internal medicine residency. Harvard.

***

While in Boston, she decided to focus on cardiology because of the variety. She could interact with patients, perform procedures in the catheterization lab and do research.

Then cardiologist Pat OGara asked what specific area of cardiology she wanted to study.

Stumped, she said, Dr. OGara, if you were me, what would you do?

Genetic epidemiology, he said.

Genetics was emerging as the future of research. Learning how a persons hardwiring could put them at risk for a disease seemed exciting, especially when paired with heart disease, the deadliest of them all. Plus, improving risk prevention seemed like a straight shot to the family history that lured her into medicine.

Svati had never considered it.

Until now.

That sounds great, she told him.

***

Her next stop was a fellowship at Duke, where she aimed to do clinical research through the schools renowned institute.

Then she learned that Duke recently started a Center for Human Genetics. And that one of its main studies involved seeking the genes that cause early onset heart disease in 1,000 families. She gladly joined that team.

The human genome has 3 billion letters and we were looking at 420, she said. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

They found several needles.

Soon after, in April 2003, a consortium of scientists completed the Human Genome Project, which then led to major technology advances.

That rocked my world and exploded it, she said. Now we could measure 500,000 letters across the genome.

Out of 3 billion, thats still a tiny amount: 1/6,000.

Again, Svati and her Duke colleagues picked the right haystack.

We found the first gene that causes heart disease, she said. Its actually not in a gene its on the outside of a gene on chromosome 9p21. Its the most consistent risk factor for heart disease, and its held true decades later.

***

Because she continues to have a variety of interests, the focus of her work has shifted many times. One thing shes dug into is the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, a federally funded program that seeks to solve rare, mysterious conditions that afflict families, and she started a genetics clinic at Duke to take care of patients and their families who have genetic heart disorders.

Meanwhile, Svati started her own family. She married another Duke cardiologist, Patrick Hranitzky, and had two sons.

Four years ago, when their oldest son, Kieran, was 5, he was hospitalized because of a severe gastrointestinal bleed. Months later, doctors found the source. One of those rare diseases.

Its called Factor VII deficiency. Its caused by a lack of a protein needed for blood to clot. Screening showed that her younger son, Kellan, has it, too.

We think of different conditions as rare diseases, but in aggregate, they actually affect a lot of people about 1 in 40, she said.

Among the ways to fight it? Genomics.

Last summer, Svati was named director of the Duke Precision Genomics Collaboratory and associate dean of genomics.

Because theres a convergence of data science, electronic health records, population health and a deeper understanding of the genome, we can actually screen people for diseases and identify who is at risk, she said. Theres a long way to go, but this is an exciting time.

***

Its also an exciting time for women in science.

Thats why the American Heart Association partnered with the Miss America pageant.

Thats why Svati stood on stage delivering our message.

Thats why shes sharing her story here.

Many of us were told we cant do everything. We can, she said. Were capable of being great mothers, great scientists, great doctors. You can do it all.

I want women to hear that message, but I also want all people considering this career to know: You can do it all.

Read the original post:

Her parents taught her grit, caring for others. She's using those traits to fight heart disease. - Thrive Global

In 2017, near Perth in Scotland, road workers found an ancient monolith which has a carved curious-looking figure of a human with a spear. It was found 300 feet underground while new roads were under construction. The rock measures about six and one third feet by two feet wide and weighs almost a ton. While the carving is hard to see in some places, 3D photography has brought the image out so it can be better studied.

The figure is obviously a warrior wearing a helmet; he was sturdy and stocky with a slightly protruding belly and a doorknob or pronounced butt, according to Cambridge Core. The rock, dubbed the Tulloch Stone, is dated to the first millenium and was found near a ring ditch which may have been a burial ground that was destroyed in the 1980s when a new stadium was built.

The figure is believed to have been carved by someone from the Pict Tribe, the earliest inhabitants of Scotland. Pictish folklore says they were descended from the Celtic goddess Brighid with the lineage following the maternal line. Supposedly, Brighid was descended from an ancient fairy race of Ireland, the Tuath de Danaan. According to The Scotsman, her name was the foundation of the name of Britain.

The warrior carved onto the Tulloch Stone wields a spear with a kite-shaped blade and a doorknob-style butt. (University of Aberdeen)

Not much of the Picts history is known other than names of the kings dating back to about 300 AD. The Picts were strong enough to fight off the Romans but had repeated battles with the Angles. When King Kenneth I took power in 848 AD, he had the Pictish King Drust IX and his noblemen done away with, effectively wiping out the Picts.

After several generations, the Pictish church, language, and culture had all but disappeared. According to Medievalist.net, Dr. Jim Wilson, of the University of Edinburghs Usher Institute and MRC Human Genetics Unit, has created a map of the genetics of Scotland and has determined that at least ten percent of the males of Scotland carry Pictish DNA.

Depiction of an ancient Pict from present-day Scotland

While there are plenty of examples of Anglo-Saxon burials with weapons that attest to a warrior type culture, Dr. Mark Hall, archaeological curator at the Perth Museum on Smithsonian Magazine, believes that type of culture didnt evolve in the same way in Scotland until after the Romans attempted conquest. The continual conflict appears to have influenced the Pict culture and led to the more hierarchical, warrior focused social organization of the latter Pict period.

Warrior Pict

There are several other Pictish stones found in Scotland. Undiscovered Scotland describes three that were found in Aberdeenshire in the small village of Rhynie. The largest, at just over four feet tall depicts the head of an animal, most likely a seal or otter, along with a symbol found to be common among Pictish stones, a double disk and a Z-rod.

It also has several abstract symbols and a carving of a mirror. The smallest stone may be a piece broken off of a larger stone and displays carvings of a beast, a comb, and part of a curvy symbol. A few yards up a hill the Craw Stone can be found, and the most famous Pictish stone, the Rhynie Man, is located at the headquarters of Aberdeenshire Council on the edge of Aberdeen. More stones are in the garden of Leith Hall, a country estate in Kennethmont built in 1650.

The Tulloch Stone is reminiscent of two other carvings in particular, according to Cambridge Core. The Rhynie Man is a human figure with the same style of body as the Tulloch stone figure but holding a spear and a shield, and he has some sort of neck adornment, but the carving is too faint to determine exactly what it is.

The ancient monolith was found near a 5th to 7th century stone burial cairn in the 19th century and is about four and a quarter foot tall. The Collessie stone, found in 2017 by highway construction workers in a field at Melville Home Farm about a half mile east of Collessie, depicts another similarly styled human figure with a spear and a shield.

Related Article: Thousands of Lost Ancient Sites Discovered on Mystical Scottish Isle of Arran

The Rhynie and Collossie figures both have symbols below their feet. Although unclear, it is possible that the symbols are names of specific individuals. Another theory is that all three figures may instead represent ancient heroes, social groups, or gods.

Discovery of the ancient monolith Tulloch Stone and the other warrior images is fueling much study about the development of a martial ideology in post-Roman Pict society and the development of early Scotland.

Follow this link:

Ancient Scotsman with Protruding Rear End Found Carved on Monolith - The Vintage News

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C., Feb. 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Each year, Rare Disease Day is recognized by people around the world on the last day of February. This is a day to bring attention to rare diseases and to encourage recognition of these conditions as a global health challenge. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) identifies a disease as rare if it affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. In Europe, a disease is defined as rare if fewer than 1 in 2,000 people are affected 1.

As rare diseases are currently defined, there are as many as 7,000 conditions listed as rare, and 300 million people in the world are estimated to be affected by one or more of these conditions1. This year on February 29th, IFFGD will join the rare disease community in a social media campaign to raise awareness about rare diseases while highlighting those that affect the digestive tract using hashtags #RareDiseaseDay and #ShowYourStripes.

"We are joining the rare disease community to support all individuals around the world who are impacted by rare diseases," said IFFGD President, Ceciel Rooker. "Greater awareness for each rare disorder and patient involvement in research gets us one step closer to better diagnoses and treatment options for those living with a rare condition(s)."

Many rare diseases such as Hirschsprung disease, chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction (CIP), achalasia, eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), congenital sucrase-isomaltase deficiency (CSID), and short bowel syndrome (SBS), among others, are documented to affect how the digestive tract functions. Symptoms associated with a rare disease and a chronic digestive disorder can be debilitating and life-altering. Increasing awareness by sharing information and personal stories about these rare diseases helps to educate the public while empowering millions who are impacted by a rare condition.

Ms. Rooker added, "Sharing your personal story and embracing the uniqueness of your disease are what Rare Disease Day is about. If you are living with a rare disease, remember that your stripes are unique, and when we raise awareness as a collective, we are powerful. Everyone should be proud to show his/her rare disease, not just for one day of the year but every day."

1 Research recently published in the European Journal of Human Genetics, article authored by EURORDIS-Rare Diseases Europe, Orphanet & Orphanet Ireland "Estimating cumulative point prevalence of rare diseases: analysis of the Orphanet database". The analysis is of rare genetic diseases and is therefore conservative as it does not include rare cancers, nor rare diseases caused by rare bacterial or viral infectious diseases or poisonings https://www.nature.com/articles/s41431-019-0508-0

About Rare Disease Day

Rare Disease Day is observed the last day of February on the 28th or 29th in a leap year the rarest day of the year to underscore the nature of rare diseases and encourage recognition of these conditions as a global health challenge. This awareness event was first established in Europe in 2008 by EURORDIS and is now observed in more than 80 countries. For more information about Rare Disease Day, visit https://www.rarediseaseday.org/.

About IFFGD

The International Foundation for Gastrointestinal Disorders (IFFGD) is a nonprofit education and research organization dedicated to improving the lives of people affected by functional gastrointestinal and motility disorders. Founded in 1991, IFFGD helps improve care by enhancing awareness, improving education, and supporting and encouraging research into treatments and cures for chronic digestive conditions. Learn more about IFFGD at http://www.iffgd.org.

Media Contact:Hayley McCorkle234973@email4pr.com414-964-1799

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/iffgd-raises-awareness-for-rare-digestive-diseases-on-rare-disease-day-2020-301012138.html

SOURCE International Foundation for Gastrointestinal Disorders

Follow this link:

IFFGD Raises Awareness for Rare Digestive Diseases on Rare Disease Day 2020 - P&T Community

About 74,000 years ago, a volcano in Sumatra erupted, smothering its corner of the globe in debris and dust. The blast was the biggest volcanic eruption in the last 2 million years. For a long time, researchers thought its fallout would have wiped out most of the human life in the broader region including modern-day India.

If the eruption had made life nearly impossible in early India, then records of human activity, like stone tools, would have transformed dramatically after the explosion as survivors adapted to their new conditions. But excavations in India show that the people who lived there during the eruption managed to keep going after the ash settled.

Stone tools embedded in dirt older than the eruption matched those found in deposits after the eruption, according to new research out in Nature Communications. Those stone tools were identical they didnt change at all, says Michael Petraglia, a study co-author and archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

These new excavations back up the growing evidence that the Sumatra eruption wasnt as life-threatening as scientists used to believe. And the tools themselves look similar to what early Homo sapiens were producing in Africa which could indicate that humans in India moved into the continent earlier than some anthropologists think.

Several years ago, other researchers digging in the Middle Son Valley identified ash from the Sumatra volcano. When looking at a crosscut of the land, the deposit is visible from afar, Petraglia says: Its a white strip running through reddish brown sediment. This north-central region in India is also rich in fossils and other remains. Petraglia and his team were curious if theyd find artifacts from early humans in the region too. Lo and behold, we found artifacts eroding out of these red and brown sediments, he says.

Excavations several hundred feet away from where the ash lies revealed several dozen stone tools, found in increasingly deeper levels of dirt. Though there was no ash sediment mixed in with the finds, the team drew parallel lines to where the white streaks lie in the nearby landscape. Seeing what was in the dirt before and after the ash helped the team conclude that the explosion didnt stop human activity in the region. Instead, people continued on, making the same tools they had been making.

The analysis backs up a similar concept that Petroglia and his team had proposed in 2007 to much controversy. "Since writing that, weve been debating ever since, Petroglia says. And this reinforces what weve said for 10 years."

Additionally, these Son Valley finds more closely resembled the designs of those made by early H. sapiens still in Africa than those made by European Neanderthals. To Petraglia, this coordination combined with the fact that some of the excavated tools are older than the eruption itself supports the idea that early humans moved out of Africa in more than just one wave 60,000 years ago.

Archaeological remains are most of what the region has to go on when it comes to spelling out their early history. Human fossils are hard to find, and theyre exceedingly rare in Asia, Petraglia says. He also acknowledged that the genetics of modern-day populations also dont show evidence of a super-early wave of human migration into the area.

For now, Petraglia plans to look in Sri Lanka for more fallout of the Sumatra explosion. Maybe remains from other surrounding regions will also support the possibility of humans having fared decently well after the volcano blew its top.

Of course, the layers of ash falling in India would have been difficult to deal with, Petraglia says. But look at towns covered in ash from volcanoes now, he says. "People are eventually able to clean up."

Read the original here:

When a Supervolcano Erupted, These Ancient People Survived the Blankets of Ash - Discover Magazine

Evidence from decades of animal and human research points to wide-ranging health benefits of intermittent fasting, according to an NIA-conducted review of the research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Still, more research is needed to determine whether intermittent fasting yields benefits or is even feasible for humans when practiced over the long term, such as for years.

Intermittent fastingis an eating pattern that includes hours or days of no or minimal food consumption without deprivation of essential nutrients. Commonly studied regimens include alternate day fasting, 5:2 intermittent fasting (fasting two days each week), and daily time-restricted feeding (such as eating only during a six-hour window).

Hundreds of animal studies and scores of human clinical trials have shown that intermittent fasting can lead to improvements in health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancers and neurological disorders. The evidence is less clear for lifespan effects. Animal studies have shown mixed results, with sex, food composition, age and genetics among the factors that influence longevity. Human trials have mainly involved relatively short-term interventions and so have not provided evidence of long-term health effects, including effects on lifespan.

The review authors are Rafael de Cabo, Ph.D., of NIAs Intramural Research Program (IRP), and Mark P. Mattson, Ph.D., formerly of NIAs IRP and currently a neuroscientist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Although intermittent fasting often results in reduced calorie consumption, weight loss is not the main driver of the health benefits observed in preclinical and clinical studies, according to the authors. Rather, the key mechanism is metabolic switching, in which fasting triggers the body to switch its source of energy from glucose stored in the liver to ketones, which are stored in fat.

Ketone bodies are not just fuel used during periods of fasting, the authors wrote. They are potent signaling molecules with major effects on cell and organ functions.

Ketogenesis, or the increase of ketones in the bloodstream, initiates activity in a variety of cellular signaling pathways known to influence health and aging. This activity enhances the bodys defenses against oxidative and metabolic stress and initiates the removal or repair of damaged molecules. The impact of ketogenesis carries over into the non-fasting period and can improve glucose regulation, increase stress resistance and suppress inflammation.

Repeated exposure to fasting periods results in lasting adaptive responses that confer resistance to subsequent challenges, the authors explain. The broad-spectrum benefits include not only disease resistance but also improved mental and physical performance.

The authors acknowledge impediments to widespread adoption of intermittent fasting: the ingrained practice in developed nations of three meals a day plus snacks (along with the ready availability and marketing of food), the discipline required to shift to a new eating pattern and the lack of physician training on intermittent fasting interventions. The authors suggest that clinicians who prescribe intermittent fasting encourage their patients to adopt a gradual, phased-in schedule in consultation with a dietitian or nutritionist.

In addition to the question of intermittent fastings long-term effects in humans, the authors point to two other areas requiring further research. Studies are needed to determine whether this eating pattern is safe for people at a healthy weight, or who are younger or older, since most clinical research so far has been conducted on overweight and middle-aged adults. In addition, research is needed to identify safe, effective medications that mimic the effects of intermittent fasting without the need to substantially change eating habits.

This review article and many of the research studies cited within were supported by NIA.

Reference: De Cabo R and Mattson MP. Effects of intermittent fasting on health, aging, and disease. New England Journal of Medicine. 2019;381(26):2541-2551. doi: 10.1056/NEJMra1905136.

See the rest here:

Research on intermittent fasting shows health benefits - National Institute on Aging

As most of the U.S. stock market flounders amid a massive global flight from risk assets, one stock briefly led the S&P 500 with an astonishing 3.4% rally. Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD) defied the coronavirus slump after the World Health Organization praised its remdesivir drug as a leading candidate to help fight the global health crisis.

With all three of the major U.S. stock market indices down more than 3%, Monday was a terrible day for Wall Street bulls.

For those investors brave enough to dive into the biotech wars to find a coronavirus treatment, there was some gold to be found. Gilead Sciences has emerged as the front runner in providing a drug to combat the disease, according to the WHOs Bruce Aylward.

Hopes were already high for remdesivir after Gilead claimed that there were optimistic signs based on its animal tests.

Remdesivir has demonstrated in vitro and in vivo activity in animal models against the viral pathogens MERS and SARS, which are also coronaviruses and are structurally similar to COVID-19.

The limited preclinical data on remdesivir in MERS and SARS indicate that remdesivir may have potential activity against COVID-19.

Given that some of these results were on monkeys, which have a close correlation with human genetics, investors are banking on the possibility that this drug, which has been used to help treat HIV and Cholera, gets fast-tracked to human trials.

The coronavirus has now infected around 80,000 people globally, but its the diseases spread outside of China that has spooked the S&P 500 so much.

Outside of stocks, the fear in the marketplace looks very real as the price of gold rallies aggressively alongside the safe-haven Japanese yen. Demonstrating concerns about growth, crude oil took a monster 5% hit as global trade continued to struggle.

South Korea is dealing with a parabolic spike in infections, while northern Italy is on lockdown after a seventh death. The quarantine threatens the most important financial hub of one of the eurozones wealthiest nations.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has acknowledged the desperate need to contain the virus.

Its clear that the upside for Gilead Sciences stock is enormous if they can prove that remdesivir works before another drugmaker develops an effective treatment.

But thats still a big if.

Until then, the move higher in GILD only marks speculative optimism, with the potential for a far more significant spike.

Disclaimer: This article represents the authors opinion and should not be considered investment or trading advice from CCN.com.

This article was edited by Josiah Wilmoth.

View post:

Why This S&P 500 Stock Is Defying the Brutal Coronavirus Plunge - CCN.com

The ConversationFeb 27, 2020 10:14:33 IST

About 74,000 years ago a volcanic eruption at what is now Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia, created one of the most dramatic natural disasters of the past two million years. The plume of the eruption punched 30 kilometres or more into the sky, eventually blanketing much of India and parts of Africa in a layer of ash. Some scientists argue the eruption plunged Earth into a six-year volcanic winter followed by a thousand-year cooling of the planets surface. The long chill, the argument goes, may have resulted in the near extinction of our own species.

One prominent theory says the eruption was a key event in human evolution. If this is right, the few human survivors in Africa would have developed more sophisticated social, symbolic and economic strategies to cope with the harsh conditions. These new strategies might then have enabled them to repopulate Africa and migrate into Europe, Asia and Australia by 60-50,000 years ago.

New evidence suggests that humans in India survived the Toba eruption and continued to flourish after it. Image credit: Christina Neudorf, Author provided

It is still unclear how intense the fallout from the Toba eruption really was, and how it affected humans. The debate has been running for decades, drawing on evidence from climate science, geology, archaeology and genetics.

We have found new evidence that humans in India survived the Toba eruption and continued to flourish after it. The study by researchers from the University of Queensland, the University of Wollongong, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the University of Allahabad and others is published in Nature Communications today.

We studied a unique archaeological record that covers 80,000 years at the Dhaba site in the middle Son valley of northern India. Ash from the Toba eruption was found in the Son valley back in the 1980s, but until now there was no archaeological evidence to go with it.

The Dhaba site fills a major time gap in our understanding of how ancient humans survived and migrated out of Africa and across the world. The stone tools we found at Dhaba are similar to the ones people were using in Africa at the same time.

Some of the stone tools found at Dhaba. Image credit: Chris Clarkson

These toolkits were present at Dhaba before and after the Toba super-eruption, indicating that populations survived the event. It is likely that humans made the same kinds of tools all along the dispersal route from Africa through India, reaching Australia by at least 65,000 years ago.

Dhaba, therefore, provides a crucial cultural link between Africa, Asia and Australia. Although fossil and genetic evidence indicate modern humans have lived outside Africa for the past 200,000 years (at sites such as Apedima, Misliya,Qafzeh, Skhul, Al Wusta and Fuyan cave) only human fossil evidence can prove beyond doubt they were in India 80,000 years ago.

Nevertheless, the stone tools at Dhaba go a long way toward demonstrating human presence.

Our findings at Dhaba fit with archaeological evidence from Africa, Asia, and elsewhere in India to support the idea that the Toba super-eruption had minimal effects on humans and did not cause a population bottleneck. Archaeological sites in southern Africa show human populations thrived following the Toba super-eruption.

Climate and vegetation records from Lake Malawi in East Africa likewise show no evidence for a volcanic winter at the time of the eruption. Genetic studies similarly have not detected a clear population bottleneck around 74,000 years ago.

Possible routes of ancient human migration. Image credit: Chris Clarkson, Author provided

At Jwalapuram, in southern India, Michael Petraglia and colleagues found similar Middle Palaeolithic stone tools above and below a thick layer of Toba ash. At the Lida Ajer site in Sumatra, close to the eruption itself, Kira Westaway and colleagues found human teeth dated to 73,000-63,000 years ago. This indicates humans were living in Sumatra, in a closed-canopy rainforest environment not long after the eruption.

Our new findings contribute to a revised understanding of the global impact of the Toba super-eruption. While the Toba super-eruption was certainly a colossal event, global cooling may have been less significant than previously thought.

In any case, archaeological evidence suggests that humans survived and coped with one of the largest volcanic events in human history. Small bands of hunter-gatherers turned out to be highly adaptable in the face of climate change.

Chris Clarkson, Professor in Archaeology, The University of Queensland and Michael Petraglia, Professor of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Find latest and upcoming tech gadgets online on Tech2 Gadgets. Get technology news, gadgets reviews & ratings. Popular gadgets including laptop, tablet and mobile specifications, features, prices, comparison.

Originally posted here:

Stone tools show humans in India survived the cataclysmic Toba eruption 74,000 years ago - Firstpost

By Caitlin O'Hara for UCSB Arts & Lectures | January 15, 2020 | 9:00 a.m.

UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara co-present Understanding Genetics and Cancer, a free community event featuring Mary-Claire King, the scientist who discovered the BRCA1 gene,7:30 p.m. Thurs., Feb. 6, at UCSB Campbell Hall.

King's lecture will be followed by a panel of experts discussing genetics, cancer and you, providing resources and answering pertinent questions

UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Santa Barbara Cancer Foundation will present a free community event Understanding Genetics and Cancer, featuring a lecture by human geneticist Mary-Claire King, the scientist who discovered the BRCA1 gene.

Her talk, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 6, at UCSB Campbell Hall, will be followed by a panel of experts discussing genetics, cancer and you.

King discovered the genetic mutation responsible for breast cancer, a finding that has revolutionized the course of cancer research and transformed the way patients are diagnosed and treated.

A recipient of the National Medal of Science for her bold, imaginative and diverse contributions to medical science and human rights, Dr. King will discuss the genetics of inherited cancers.

Following the talk, a panel of experts will address genetics, cancer and you, including the following topics:

Lifestyle and cancer risk reductionFamily history and ethnicity risk factorsGenetic testing as cancer preventionPrivacy of genetic testing resultsBenefits and perils of ancestry testingLocal resources for cancer risk assessment and counseling

King is American Cancer Society professor in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. She was the first to show that breast cancer is inherited in some families, as the result of mutations in the gene that she named BRCA1.

In addition to inherited breast and ovarian cancer, her research interests include the genetic bases of schizophrenia, the genetic causes of congenital disorders in children, and human genetic diversity and evolution.

King pioneered the use of DNA sequencing for human rights investigations, developing the approach of sequencing mitochondrial DNA preserved in human remains, then applying this method to the identification of kidnapped children in Argentina and subsequently to cases of human rights violations on six continents.

King grew up in Chicago. She received her bachelor's degree cum laude in mathematics from Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.; her doctorate in genetics from the University of California at Berkeley; and her postdoctoral training at UC San Francisco.

Her Ph.D. dissertation with Allan Wilson was the demonstration that protein-coding sequences of humans and chimpanzees are 99 percent identical. She was professor at UC Berkeley from 1976-95 and at the University of Washington in Seattle since 1995.

King has served on multiple councils and study sections of the N.I.H. and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. She was consultant to the Commission on the Disappearance of Persons of the Republic of Argentina and carried out DNA identifications for the United Nations War Crimes Tribunals.

She is past president of the American Society of Human Genetics and a past member of the Council of the National Academy of Sciences. King has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, American Philosophical Society, and as a foreign member of the French Academy of Sciences.

Understanding Genetics and Cancer is co-presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara in association with Breast Cancer Resource Center, Ridley-Tree Cancer Center at Sansum Clinic, Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics and UCSB Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology.

Sponsored by the Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara, supporter of the Ridley-Tree Cancer Center and its Genetic Counseling Program.

For more, call UCSB Arts & Lectures, 805-893-3535 or visit http://www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu.

UCSB Arts & Lectures acknowledges Community Partners the Natalie Orfalea Foundation & Lou Buglioli and Corporate Season Sponsor SAGE Publishing for their support of the 2019-20 season.

Caitlin O'Hara for UCSB Arts & Lectures.

Read the original:

Scientist Who Discovered BRCA1 Gene to Give Free Talk on Cancer And Genetics - Noozhawk

NUTLEY, N.J., Jan. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Genomic medicine's groundbreaking treatments, and its future promise, will be the focus of a full-day symposium at the Hackensack Meridian Health Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) on Wednesday, February 19.

This emerging discipline for tailoring active clinical care and disease prevention to individual patients will be the focus of presentations given by eight experts from medical centers in the U.S.A. and Canada.

"The Genomic Medicine Symposium convenes a diverse group of scientific experts who help serve as a vanguard for precision medicine," said David Perlin, Ph.D., chief scientific officer and vice president of the CDI. "At the Center for Discovery and Innovation, we are working to make genomics a central component of clinical care, and we are delighted to host our peers and partners from other institutions."

"The event is one-of-a-kind," said Benjamin Tycko, M.D., Ph.D., a member of the CDI working in this area, and one of the hosts. "We are bringing together great minds with the hope it will help inform our planning for genomic medicine within Hackensack Meridian Health and inspire further clinical and scientific breakthroughs."

Cancer treatments, neuropsychiatric and behavioral disorders, cardiometabolic conditions, autoimmune disease, infectious disease, and a wide array of pediatric conditions are areas where DNA-based strategies of this type are already employed, and new ones are being tested and refined continually.

The speakers come from diverse medical institutions and will talk about a variety of clinical disorders in which prevention, screening, and treatment can be informed through genomic and epigenomic data.

Among the speakers are: Daniel Auclair, Ph.D., the scientific vice president of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation; Joel Gelernter, M.D., Ph.D., Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Genetics and of Neuroscience and Director, Division of Human Genetics (Psychiatry) at Yale University; James Knowles, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of Cell Biology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn; Tom Maniatis, Ph.D., the Isidore S. Edelman Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, director of the Columbia Precision Medicine Initiative, and the chief executive officer of the New York Genome Center; Bekim Sadikovic, Ph.D., associate professor and head of the Molecular Diagnostic Division of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Western University in Ontario; Helio Pedro, M.D., the section chief of the Center for Genetic and Genomic Medicine at Hackensack University Medical Center; Kevin White, Ph.D., the chief scientific officer of Chicago-based TEMPUS Genetics; and Jean-Pierre Issa, M.D., Ph.D., chief executive officer of the Coriell Research Institute.

The event is complimentary, but registration is required. It will be held from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the auditorium of the CDI, located at 111 Ideation Way, Nutley, N.J.

The event counts for continuing medical education (CME) credits, since Hackensack University Medical Center is accredited by the Medical Society of New Jersey to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

Hackensack University Medical Center additionally designates this live activity for a maximum of 7 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit TM. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

For more information, visit https://www.hackensackmeridianhealth.org/CDIsymposium.

ABOUTHACKENSACKMERIDIAN HEALTH

Hackensack Meridian Health is a leading not-for-profit health care organization that is the largest, most comprehensive and truly integrated health care network in New Jersey, offering a complete range of medical services, innovative research and life-enhancing care.

Hackensack Meridian Health comprises 17 hospitals from Bergen to Ocean counties, which includes three academic medical centers Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, JFK Medical Center in Edison; two children's hospitals - Joseph M. Sanzari Children's Hospital in Hackensack, K. Hovnanian Children's Hospital in Neptune; nine community hospitals Bayshore Medical Center in Holmdel, Mountainside Medical Center in Montclair, Ocean Medical Center in Brick, Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, Pascack Valley Medical Center in Westwood, Raritan Bay Medical Center in Old Bridge, Raritan Bay Medical Center in Perth Amboy, Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, and Southern Ocean Medical Center in Manahawkin; a behavioral health hospital Carrier Clinic in Belle Mead; and two rehabilitation hospitals - JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute in Edison and Shore Rehabilitation Institute in Brick.

Additionally, the network has more than 500 patient care locations throughout the state which include ambulatory care centers, surgery centers, home health services, long-term care and assisted living communities, ambulance services, lifesaving air medical transportation, fitness and wellness centers, rehabilitation centers, urgent care centers and physician practice locations. Hackensack Meridian Health has more than 34,100 team members, and 6,500 physicians and is a distinguished leader in health care philanthropy, committed to the health and well-being of the communities it serves.

The network's notable distinctions include having four hospitals among the top 10 in New Jersey by U.S. News and World Report. Other honors include consistently achieving Magnet recognition for nursing excellence from the American Nurses Credentialing Center and being named to Becker's Healthcare's "150 Top Places to Work in Healthcare/2019" list.

The Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University, the first private medical school in New Jersey in more than 50 years, welcomed its first class of students in 2018 to its On3 campus in Nutley and Clifton. Additionally, the network partnered with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to find more cures for cancer faster while ensuring that patients have access to the highest quality, most individualized cancer care when and where they need it.

Hackensack Meridian Health is a member of AllSpire Health Partners, an interstate consortium of leading health systems, to focus on the sharing of best practices in clinical care and achieving efficiencies.

For additional information, please visit http://www.HackensackMeridianHealth.org.

About the Center for Discovery and Innovation:

The Center for Discovery and Innovation, a newly established member of Hackensack Meridian Health, seeks to translate current innovations in science to improve clinical outcomes for patients with cancer, infectious diseases and other life-threatening and disabling conditions. The CDI, housed in a fully renovated state-of-the-art facility, offers world-class researchers a support infrastructure and culture of discovery that promotes science innovation and rapid translation to the clinic.

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hackensack-meridian-health-center-for-discovery-and-innovation-to-host-genomic-medicine-symposium-300989060.html

SOURCE Hackensack Meridian Health

Follow this link:

Hackensack Meridian Health Center for Discovery and Innovation to Host Genomic Medicine Symposium - P&T Community