Carnival Liberty | Deck Plans, Activities & Sailings …

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We think you should have a great time at sea. Carnival Liberty feels the same way! This is one ship thats ready to put its fun where your vacation is, with plenty of ways to enjoy your time away.

All day long, Carnival Liberty can be found serving up signature burgers designed by Guy Fieri, right there at Guys Burger Joint and look! just over there is SkyBox Sports Bar: a double-header of a sports bar that brings together live sports on TV and lively sports-gaming competition... oh, not to mention great drinks! Enjoy BlueIguana Cantina tacos and burritos on Lido deck made fresh, and fast, while you wait plus two great bars: one rum-slinging, one tequila-wielding, both dueling for your heart. Thats right: just a quick stroll from RedFrog Rum Bar youll find BlueIguana Tequila Bar.

On the entertainment side of things, Carnival Liberty features two of our best, live on stage. First theres Playlist Productions, where pros sing and dance their hearts out, performing high-energy themed revues of tunes you know, backed by amazing visual effects. Then theres Hasbro, The Game Show, where you might get the chance to come on down, get up on stage and compete in larger-than-life versions of your family-favorite Hasbro games each with a unique twist. Kids have three unique youth spaces where they can hang out with others their age and enjoy supervised activities, games and more.

You might call Carnival Liberty a vacation spot thats just full of great vacation spots and wed agree!

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Carnival Liberty | Deck Plans, Activities & Sailings ...

Liberty University to offer $1,000 credit to students who leave dorms by Saturday because of coronavirus – Richmond.com

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LYNCHBURG Liberty University offered $1,000 credits to students who decided not to return to campus residence halls because of the coronavirus pandemic, the university announced Friday.

For students returning in the fall, the credit will be available for tuition and room and board costs.

Graduating students will be provided a refund for any money left over after the credit is applied to their accounts in late April. Students not returning in the fall are not eligible.

Students had until Saturday to leave their dorms to qualify for the credit, according to the universitys online announcement Friday.

The offer could help incentivize some students who remained on campus to return to their hometowns. On Tuesday, a Liberty representative said about 1,900 were back on campus.

Liberty faced a flood of criticism from state and local officials after President Jerry Falwell Jr. invited students to return to campus even as most classes moved to an online format in response to the coronavirus threat.

I think we have a responsibility to our students who paid to be here, who want to be here, who love it here to give them the ability to be with their friends, to continue their studies, enjoy the room and board theyve already paid for and to not interrupt their college life, Falwell told The News & Advance on March 22.

During a news conference Wednesday, Gov. Ralph Northam called on Falwell to reconsider his decision to invite students back to campus.

Fridays announcement made Liberty the first institution of higher learning in the Lynchburg area to announce specific plans to reimburse students.

Leaders at Randolph College and Sweet Briar College have pledged to offer reimbursements in the future but had not yet released details about the exact size of the refunds.

The University of Lynchburg, meanwhile, has a policy against providing refunds in response to a pandemic, but administrators have said they are considering changing that policy.

Robert Lambeth Jr., the president of the Council of Independent Colleges in Virginia, said most private institutions in the state were considering offering refunds to students but are taking different approaches.

Some independent colleges and universities, including Liberty, are offering refunds at a flat rate, while others are prorating refunds based on the amount of time students spend on campus and the level of financial aid they receive, Lambeth said.

Theyre all over the map as to how the amount is calculated, Lambeth said. Everybody is making their own decisions.

Lambeth said several institutions were waiting to see how much assistance they would receive from the federal government as part of a $2 trillion emergency stimulus package.

Colleges and universities across the country are expected to receive about $14 billion in total relief.

Private institutions in particular are taking a huge financial hit from this whole crisis, he said. Its very difficult for all colleges, but particularly private colleges that dont get any direct state assistance.

Housing costs at Liberty range from $2,300 to $3,750 a semester, depending on the residence hall.

Richard Chumney covers Liberty University for The News & Advance. Reach him at (434) 385-5547.

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Liberty University to offer $1,000 credit to students who leave dorms by Saturday because of coronavirus - Richmond.com

Two COVID-19 cases confirmed aboard Liberty of the Seas – Galveston County Daily News

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GALVESTON

Two crew members from Royal Caribbean's Liberty of the Seas cruise ship have tested positive for COVID-19, Port of Galveston officials confirmed Monday.

One of those crew members has been hospitalized and the other was still quarantined aboard the ship, along with about 1,250 other crew members, as of Monday evening, officials said.

The Liberty of the Seas is one of four nearly empty cruise ships that have been rotating out of the Port of Galveston over the past two weeks. The ship left the port Monday and was moored at an anchorage point off the Texas coast, Port of Galveston Director Rodger Rees said.

The ships need to move occasionally to resupply and keep their engines and other equipment working properly, he said, explaining that crew members remain aboard while the ships are berthed.

Liberty of the Seas is the second Galveston-based cruise ship to be connected to a case of COVID-19. Last week, Carnival Cruise Line informed passengers that one of the crew members of the Carnival Freedom had tested positive for COVID-19 and urged them to quarantine themselves because of their potential exposure.

It was unclear Monday whether Royal Caribbean was similarly notifying passengers who were on the Liberty of the Seas during its most recent voyage March 8. The ship returned to port from that voyage March 15.

In a statement to The Daily News, a Royal Caribbean spokesman said the situation aboard the Liberty of the Seas was "fluid."

"The health and well-being of our crew is our foremost priority," Jonathan Fishman said. "Crew members who exhibited symptoms will receive medical care in accordance with our health and safety protocols.

"We are in continuous contact with multiple government authorities and public health officials, and we appreciate their support and guidance in protecting everyones health and safety."

Members of the Wharves Board of Trustees were informed about the first diagnosed case Sunday, officials said. Trustees were told that at least 30 crew members were allowed off the ship and driven to an airport, officials said.

Those crew members were U.S. citizens, Rees said on Monday. They were screened for COVID-19 symptoms before they were allowed off the ship and then driven directly to a local airport, Rees said.

The Galveston County Health District has been informed about the infection aboard the cruise ship, a spokeswoman said.

The U.S. Coast Guard is one of the lead agencies in charge of monitoring and screening people on ships coming into the port for COVID-19 symptoms, Rees said. The Coast Guard did not respond to a request for comment about the situation aboard the Liberty of the Seas on Monday.

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Two COVID-19 cases confirmed aboard Liberty of the Seas - Galveston County Daily News

KHS grad Robinson had found a spot on NCAA Tournament-bound Liberty – Kearney Hub

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KEARNEY Shiloh Robinson initially thought he would redshirt in his first year at Liberty University.

But that quickly changed as the 6-foot-7, 215-pound freshman forward from Kearney showed promise in preseason practices.

Robinson and the Liberty mens basketball coaching staff agreed just days before the start of the regular season that it was in the teams best interest if he played this season.

Robinson was a key piece off the bench for the Flames, who posted a 30-4 record and had one of their best seasons in program history this year.

The Flames tied for the second-most wins in Division I behind Gonzagas 31 victories. They also won the Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament to earn their second consecutive automatic berth for the NCAA Tournament.

Robinson didnt experience the thrills of March Madness this season, however. On March 12, the NCAA canceled the tournament due to the coronavirus crisis.

It was a shocking occurrence for Robinson and his teammates, especially since the Flames roster boasts four seniors. Last year, the 12th-seeded Flames upset fifth-seeded Mississippi State in the first round.

We figured out March Madness was probably going to get canceled when the NBA suspended their league, Robinson said. I found out on the notification app just like everyone else. Most of the coaches were gone recruiting, so we had a team meeting to discuss the season later that night.

Robinson ranked eighth in minutes played and was one of six players to appear in all 34 contests for the Flames this season.

He averaged 2.6 points per game on 46.6 percent shooting in 10.9 minutes per contest. He was a versatile option defensively for the Flames, playing mostly at power forward. He also saw time at small forward and center, which he played in high school for Kearney High School when he earned 2018-19 Hub Territory Boys Basketball Player of the Year.

It was obviously an adjustment from high school to college, Robinson said. I think I definitely got a lot better.

The hardest transition was the physicality. Nebraska high school basketball doesnt really prepare you physically for Division I. Also, just shooting. I didnt shoot a lot in high school, so that was a big adjustment.

Robinson, a sports management major, returned to Kearney on March 19 and will finish the semester online.

Despite the coronavirus outbreak, Liberty is allowing students to remain on campus and attend classes in-person if they prefer that option.

Robinson said he will return to Lynchburg, Va., once student-athletes are allowed to use the athletic facilities.

He hopes to improve his dribbling, understanding of the offense and jump shot this offseason in preparation for his sophomore year.

Although the season ended abruptly, Robinson is appreciative of the success he experienced in his first year. He also aspires to lead the Flames back to the NCAA Tournament in the future.

March Madness got canceled and that was disappointing, Robinson said. But something Ive been thinking is that if our team needed to win one, two, three more games to deem our team as successful then the whole season was useless. We won 30 games, so I dont think we should focus on what didnt happen but what did happen. We had a really good season.

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History’s Headlines: The Liberty Bell stopped here – 69News WFMZ-TV

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ALLENTOWN, Pa. | Anybody who's been around the Lehigh Valley any length of time has heard about Allentowns Zions Reformed United Church of Christ's Liberty Bell Shrine Museum, and the story of how the bell was kept at the church during the British occupation of Philadelphia from 1777 to 1778.

But after a lot of work, a long-sought goal of the churchs pastor, Rev. Robert "Bob" Stevens, and others was achieved. In a letter received earlier this month by the museums new director, Rev. Joshua Knappenberger, it was learned that the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission had approved the historical marker nomination for the church.

Stevens notes the help of state Sen. Pat Browne and his office staff in their support for the project.

"We could not have gotten it done without them," he said.

The markers are significant in giving the state of Pennsylvanias official recognition of the historical worth of a property. Over the years, the church has received several plaques from groups like the Daughters of the American Revolution. Stevens, who will be retiring as Zions pastor later this year, wanted to get this done. No date for the dedication of the plaque has yet been established.

The roots of Zions Church go back before the Revolution. When William Allen laid out his plan for the village he called Northampton Town, he set aside the property between Hamilton Street and what became Walnut Street for a church. The first building was a log structure where a parking deck is today. It was a Union church that was shared with a Lutheran congregation that was later St. Pauls Lutheran.

One source suggests that at least part of the property was intended as the churchs cemetery, but that never happened. It was shortly thereafter on Oct. 8, 1763, that the churchs Lutheran services were interrupted by the arrival of local farmers from the frontier seeking protection from what they feared would be an attack by native Americans. A recent raid in Whitehall had left 22 settlers dead.

"As I was a preaching the people came in such numbers, I was abliged (sic) to quit my Sarmon (sic)," the minister wrote.

By 1770, there was a movement among some members of Zions congregation to contemplate building a new church. But it was not until 1773 that it began to get off the ground. The money was raised through the form of a lottery. Many years later, in 1937, when the churchs official history was being written, the concept of gambling to build a church brought condemnation from its authors as immoral.

Todays generation, to whom lotteries are common, would probably be more tolerant. The Lutheran congregation continued to hold services there until they got land to build a church in the 1790s. After the Lutherans ceased to worship in the log church, its lumber was sold.

The Zions Church building was a handsome stone structure that would have been at home in the Philadelphia of its day. The Liberty Bell was not the first bell that was tied to Zions Revolutionary history.

On July 8, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was read for the first time in Allentown, the small bell outside the church was rung to gather the people of the village for that reading. That bell, after being put to other uses in the 19th century, was restored in the 1990s and is now a treasured historical item that is rung by the church during its Fourth of July service.

It was the British occupation of Philadelphia from 1777-78 that sent the State House Bell, as it was then known, to Allentown. The reason for its departure, ordered by the Continental Congress, along with the citys other bells, is not known exactly. It is usually given that there was a fear that the British would melt them down to make either cannon or bullets that would be used to shoot at Washingtons Army.

"The British were in need of ammunition," says Zions official 1937 history, "and what a delight it would have been to them to convert the herald of freedom into cannon balls!"

Two things are questionable about this. The British, then the worlds only super-power, had plenty of ammunition, and what we call the Liberty Bell would not be called that until many years later by abolitionists in the 1850s.

To the patriots of that day, it was not "the herald of freedom" but simply the State House Bell. And because the State House, what we call Independence Halls steeple was badly in need of repairs, some historians wonder if it could have been rung at that time. There is a greater possibility that the bells were moved so that if it was necessary, they could be turned into cannon by the patriots to hurl cannon balls at the British.

Proof of this possibility can be found in the papers of the patriot leaders in New York, when that city's bells were removed before the British occupation in 1776. They refer to the bells as the "sinews of War" that could be useful in arming the forces of Washington. Washington himself fully supported their removal from New York for that reason.

Whatever the reason, Pennsylvania German farmers from what was then western Northampton County aided in moving the Liberty Bell and other Philadelphia bells. This may have happened by night because it is known from diary accounts that the citizens woke up one morning to hear no bells, something that was very unusual at a time when many people depended on them to keep track of time.

The exact route of the bells trip north is still disputed. Thanks to the Moravian diaries it is known that the wagons broke down and had to be repaired in Bethlehem. When they got in the vicinity of Allentown, they most likely took part of the route of the Kings Highway, known as the Reading Road after the Revolution that ran from Reading to Easton.

This would have placed them relatively close to Trout Hall, country home of James Allen, the third son of William Allen.

"The road in front of my house has become the busiest highway in North America," Allen wrote in his diary. And indeed, the troops of militia that moved down it were many.

Although years later artists liked to depict the Liberty Bell at the center of a wagon as riders in tricorn hats galloped around them, this was not the case. As one source has suggested, as the region was swarming with Tories that would have quickly reported it to the British, chances were good it was hidden in some way and then moved largely at night.

It was then moved up what is now Church Street and hidden underneath the church. There, it and presumably all of Philadelphias other bells were kept until the summer of 1778. Diary writers note one day they were not there and the next they were ringing again.

Why Sir William Howe, the British commander, did not send scouting parties into the region around Valley Forge and further north remains a mystery. Some believe Howe hoped he could persuade the Americans to come to him and beg for peace. Others think Howe just enjoyed the comforts of Philadelphia too much to go out in a Little Ice Age winter to chase rebels in the snow.

Perhaps Benjamin Franklin had it best. When he was representing the new nation in France, the foreign minister approached him with the news that Howe had captured Philadelphia. "There you are wrong," Franklin is said to have replied, "it is Philadelphia rather that has captured General Howe."

Although what the National Park Service calls, "a long-standing oral tradition" kept alive the stay of the Liberty Bell in Zions Church, locally it was not until 1824 that prominent local attorney Robert Wright Sr. made reference to it in a speech.

In the Civil War era as the bell became known as the Liberty Bell, Allentown began to honor its role in the revolution. On Oct. 27, 1893, on its return from the Chicago Worlds Fair, the Liberty Bell was placed on a trolley lines flat car. Crowds lined the streets from the railroad station to Zions Church as it was stopped in front of the church. Photos of the time suggest that this was all done in the rain.

In the 1830s, Zions Church underwent another change and became a red-brick, white-steepled structure that could have graced the green of any New England village. In 1886, under the direction of local architect Lewis Jacoby it became the Victorian Gothic beauty it is today. The Liberty Bell Shrine Museum was added in 1962. And now at long last, it will get its official recognition by the state.

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Fire Oak Distillery in Liberty Hill has produced nearly 600 gallons of sanitizer for Williamson County first responders, community – Community Impact…

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Fire Oak Distillery in Liberty Hill has produced nearly 600 gallons of sanitizer for Williamson County first responders and for the community. (Courtesy Fire Oak Distillery)

Endsley said as soon as the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau authorized the use of ethanol, which the distillery makes for its alcohol, as a base for hand sanitizer, the business's focus turned toward supplying those in need.

"As a craft distillery, we knew there was something we could do to help our community," Endsley said. "We started making it and received a call from Williamson County. They had a need, and we told them we were ready to help."

For Williamson County, the distillery has produced just under 200 gallons as of March 30, which has gone to aid county emergency management services, police and first responders as well as local law enforcement. These entities are the distillery's top priority, Endsley said, but it has made bottles available in its tasting room for persons in the community with a need.

The distillery has not stopped making its Fire Oak Vodka and Fire Oak Texas Bourbon, but it has slowed down production of those to make as much sanitizer as it can, Endsley said. He added that the sanitizer is made on a need base with local entities reporting to him how much they need.

"We have been able to work closely with one another to expedite distribution so that everyone taking care of all of us has what they need," he said.

A single batch takes four to five days, but Fire Oak is running staggered batches so that it is producing sanitizer almost daily, Endsley said.

"As long as the supply chain holds up, we will keep things running," he said.

Because of the county government's stay-at-home order, Fire Oak cannot offer food or drinks service on-site, but the distillery is selling its vodka and bourbon bottles to go, as well as hand sanitizer and apparel.

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Liberty urged to help smaller F1 teams survive shutdown – RACER

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Formula 1 owner Liberty Media has been urged to help the smaller F1 teams survive the COVID-19 crisis by the chairman of Motorsport UK, David Richards.

There will be no races held before the Canadian Grand Prix on June 14 at the very earliest, with the countries where all of the teams are based the United Kingdom, Italy and Switzerland all in various states of lockdown. Richards used to be team principal of Benetton and BAR and now heads up motorsport in the UK, and he believes F1s ownership group needs to focus on protecting the smaller teams at this time.

A lot will depend on the way Formula 1 behaves throughout this, Richards told the Press Association. F1 cannot afford to lose teams at the back of the grid because that would be a disaster for them. Bernie (Ecclestone) made sure that when there were tough times the smaller teams were looked after and I hope that Liberty see the common sense in that, too.

The big manufacturers such as Mercedes and Renault will be OK, but if you look at Williams and Racing Point, for example, it is not going to be easy for them. There is a distinct danger of operations going out of business.

There will be motorsport companies who do not have the resources to get through this period. It is going to be a real challenge.

A number of changes have already been agreed and announced by F1 in response to the impact of the pandemic, with the 2021 technical regulations delayed by a year and teams taking a mandatory three-week shutdown before the end of April in order to reduce overheads and open up the potential for more races and with them more income later this year.

F1 CEO and chairman Chase Carey this week stated the sport is currently aiming for between 15 and 18 grands prix this season, by extending the final race beyond the previous date of November 29.

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Liberty urged to help smaller F1 teams survive shutdown - RACER

Biden Nears Nomination, Focuses Sights on the Second Amendment – America’s 1st Freedom

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Credit: Photo courtesy ofGage Skidmore

Former Vice President Joe Biden is moving ever closer to the Democratic Partys presidential nomination, as he recently picked up wins in a handful of additional states to extend his lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Despite losing early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, the former vice president had strong showings elsewhere, all while taking a more focused aim at the Second Amendment.

Recently, he used expletives to insult Second Amendment supporters headed to the polls in Detroit, Mich. When asked about why he was trying to rescind Second Amendment rights, Biden told the man, Youre full off s---. A Biden spokesman doubled down on this rhetoric by tweeting, Remember that its not only Donald Trump whos terrified of a Biden presidency. Its the NRA, who Joe Biden has beaten twice - to ban assault weapons and pass the Brady Bill.

Just a week earlier, Joe Biden tapped failed presidential candidate and former Texas Rep. Beto ORourke to take care of the gun problem with him. It wasnt long ago that ORourke was making headlines for proclaiming, Hell yes, were going to take your AR-15. ORourkes numbers dipped following this debate and he exited the race just over a month later.

Biden decided he wasnt done there, though. He also recently hired ORourkes former campaign manager, Jen OMalley Dillon, to the same position. It should come as no surprise that, like ORourke, she is no friend of our right to keep and bear arms. Following a tragedy in Texas that took eight lives (including the murderer), she tweeted, GET EVERYONE OF THOSE GODD--- GUNS OFF OUR STREETS.

The former vice president also picked up endorsements from anti-gun politicians and special-interest groups alike. This includes support from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who made attacking the Second Amendment the cornerstone of his failed campaign. Biden also secured endorsements from the bulk of all other previous presidential hopefuls, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and, most recently, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii).

Biden also received the backing of the Bloomberg-funded Everytown for Gun Safety, the Brady Campaign and former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.).

As this was being written, however, Sanders had still not conceded the race. That being said, Sanders has also made it clear throughout his decades in public office that he is an anti-gun opportunist who will cave to the demands of his partisan, anti-Second Amendment base.

Whoever the nominee ultimately is, both leading candidates have the Second Amendment in their sights; but whats most troubling is that the former vice president seems to be taking a more focused aim on the Second Amendment as his campaign progresses towards the nomination in July.

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COVID-19: Threat to Second Amendment – NRA ILA

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Nothing is more important than protecting ourselves and our families -- especially during these times of uncertainty. Yet, some anti-gun lawmakers are exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to deny you and your loved ones your fundamental right to self-defense and your Second Amendment rights.

These anti-gun and anti-self defense extremists deem gun stores "non-essential," they shut down issuance of firearm permits, and, in some locations, they have created extreme delays for background checks required for firearm transfers. Some jurisdictions have even put added restrictions on firearm transfers, making it all but impossible for many law-abiding Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights.

All of this is happening against a backdrop of reported prisoner furloughs and law enforcement only arresting for the most serious of crimes.

Just like you, we know that's wrong.

That is why the NRA will keep a constant watch on what is happening nationwide and will work diligently to ensure that you are able to defend yourself and your family during these unprecedented times. In the past four decades, your NRA has led the way to pass Right-to-Carry, Castle Doctrine, and most important for the current crisis, protection against gun confiscation during declared emergencies. This time is no different.

We hope you find this website useful. Please use it to stay updated on what's happening in your town or state and across the country. If you need help or would like to alert us to something happening in your town or state, please contact us here or send us an email atCOVID19@nrahq.org.

During these difficult times, your NRA is keeping vigilant watch over your right to buy a gun and to make sure you are able to defend yourself andyourfamily. The NRA fights for all law-abiding gun owners, whether they can afford to donate or not. We understand times are tough. But, if you have the means, pleasehelp us keep fighting against those politicians who are determined to strip away our right to self-defense and their billionaire backers. Every dollar counts. We thank you in advance.

If you are unable to help us at this time, please drop us a line and let us know how you and your family aredoing. We are always grateful to hear from our members and supporters. Again, a big THANK YOU from all of us here at the NRA.

Stay safe.

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COVID-19: Threat to Second Amendment - NRA ILA

Institute of Genetic Medicine | Johns Hopkins Medicine

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The McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine | Department of Genetic Medicineseeks to further the understanding of human heredity and genetic medicine and use that knowledge to treat and prevent disease.

The Department of Genetic Medicineis working to consolidate all relevant teaching, patient care and research in human and medical genetics at Johns Hopkins to provide national and international leadership in genetic medicine. The Department of Genetic Medicineserves as a focal point for interactions between diverse investigators to promote the application of genetic discoveries to human disease and genetics education to the public. It builds upon past strengths and further develops expertise in the areas of genomics, developmental genetics and complex disease genetics. The Department of Genetic Medicineworks to catalyze the spread of human genetic perspectives to other related disciplines by collaboration with other departments within Johns Hopkins.

There are more than 300 dedicated employees in the Department of Genetic Medicine, fulfilling the Johns Hopkins tripartite mission of research, teaching and patient care. They include 45 full-time faculty, 15 residents, more than 70 graduate students and 200 staff.

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Institute of Genetic Medicine | Johns Hopkins Medicine

Biotech innovations to spur next phase of personalized care – ModernHealthcare.com

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Another component of more regular monitoring is using sensors for continuous, remote evaluation of blood pressure, breathing, body temperature and other signs, whichideallycould allow providers to intervene when health starts to deteriorate, as opposed to after a patient starts reporting symptoms.

Its not a new idea. But Dr. Steve Xu, medical director at Northwestern Universitys Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics, said he envisions a world where patients could one day have implanted sensors that not only monitor vital signs but also provide automated health insightstransforming healthcare into a system where patients are constantly provided feedback on their health status.

He said he could see that proliferating in the next 20 years, and doesnt think an implantable sensor would be an insurmountable privacy concern for patients. Implantable devices are already being used in healthcare, including birth-control implants and nerve stimulators. However, it would be on companies to provide evidence that these sensors are actually helpful for patient health and transparency into how the data is being used.

Xus research at Northwestern involves working on wearable sensors for pediatric care, such as to better monitor newborns who are born prematurely. Already, one-third of consumers report owning a wearable device to help track their health, according to a 2019 report from the Stanford Medicine Center for Digital Health and early-stage digital health venture fund Rock Health. While most of those devices track more general exercise, sleep and heart rate, and arent used for medical care, they could point to patient interest and comfort with monitoring health data.

And health systems have been looking at the space more closely too. To lay the groundwork for better remote monitoring of patients, such as after discharge, UCHealth in Colorado partnered with startup BioIntelliSense to help develop its health-monitoring patch, as well as to support the company as it sought regulatory clearance. About the size of a Band-Aid, the patch continuously tracks metrics like heart rate, skin temperature and respiratory rate and sends the data back to a provider.

BioIntelliSense earned U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance for the device earlier this year.

Xu said he expects to see a tipping point within the next decade when almost everyone will collect data with wearable devices, sensors or patches, which can be linked with medical records.

He points to how in the 1980s, it was difficult to imagine everyone would have a cellphone. Flip phones in the mid-2000s provided a shift in perspectiveMotorola came out with the Razr flip phone, and that was a turning point, where things were really coolbut it wasnt until the BlackBerry and Apples iPhone that adoption really took off.

While wearables available today have shown promise for fitness tracking and some limited medical functions like conducting electrocardiograms, theres still opportunities for what the future is, Xu said, which developers will continue to build on. I think these wearables are probably at the flip-phone stage, he added.

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Biotech innovations to spur next phase of personalized care - ModernHealthcare.com

What is genomic medicine? An introduction to genetics in …

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Scientists and doctors have been studying genes and hereditary conditions (those handed down from parent to child) for many years. These days, it's possible for someone to have a genetic test for a number of illnesses. A blood sample is taken and closely examined for abnormal chromosomes, but because so much information is stored on the DNA, scientists only tend to look for particular disorders.

Genomic medicine is the field of study that looks into genes (our DNA) and their interaction with our health. Genomics investigates the complex biological details of an individual and the use of these for effective diagnosis and tailor-made treatment.

While genetics looks at specific genes or groups of 'letters' along the DNA strand, genomics refers to the study of someone's entire genetic makeup. It's about how they relate and react with each other and is associated with conditions that have a broader range of triggers such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and asthma.

Genomic medicine can help in many ways:

This greater understanding of the links between biology and disease brings benefits on several levels.

There are a number of types of service provider. In the U.K., for example, the National Health Service employs 90 consultant clinical geneticists at 25 centres. They're supported by hundreds of specifically trained staff.5 Referral is usually through a general practitioner (GP or family doctor) and is available to those who are worried about a serious genetic family condition or a family tendency towards developing cancer, or to parents of a child with learning difficulties and other developmental problems looking for an expert assessment.

In places where a public service isn't available, or for those who choose to seek private health care treatment, check to make sure that the clinic you're using has the necessary registration (for example, in the UK this is through the Care Quality Commission, also known as the CQC6) and the lab is also correctly accredited.

Whatever the setting, the appointment might take some time and you may need to bring other members of your family with you. Your family and medical history will be mapped and explored, and it's likely you'll have a medical examination too. Finding out that there may be a life-changing or life-limiting condition in your future is a serious and, for some, traumatic experience. Alongside counselling, you may be offered tests (including blood tests)with the option of having these done on the day or, if you need time to think about the possible implications, to come back at a later date.

Results can take weeks or even months to return (depending on the rarity of the genetic abnormality and how easy it is to find) but pre-natal test results will be returned much sooner.

Aftercare then depends on the results and the nature of what you're being tested for. Some people will be referred back to their family doctor along with full details, or they may go on to receive treatment at a specialist unit. Those who are aren't showing symptoms will be given support and advice about lifestyle changes, in order to minimise their risk, and advice about managing their potential condition in the future.

There are also a number of private companies who offer genetic testing by mail. It involves having a cheek swab or a blood sample taken at a local clinic. It's then sent off to the laboratory. The kinds of things tested for include genetic risk for diabetes and heart conditions, as well as ancestry information. Some companies deliver more of a service than others, with counsellors or other health professionals on hand to help. Convenient (but not necessarily cheap), it must be remembered that this is genetic testing without the usual level of holistic support found in established clinics.

The broad area known as genomic medicine is evolving the study of genetic mutation pathways and their variations is particularly exciting. But what does this mean for people on a practical level? As discussed earlier, there are some hereditary diseases that are difficult to diagnose simply because of the wide range of genes involved.

Scientists are working towards finding a chemical or genetic bottleneck for conditions like these. The ability to switch off a vital reaction along the pathway from genetic trigger to hay fever, dust allergy, or asthma, for example, would aid diagnosis and treatment, and possibly whether or not these traits need cause misery for the next generation.7

The emerging field of epigenetics takes this idea one step further. It's based on the concept that each gene has its own chemical tag that tells the gene how to act. It is possible to turn the gene off (make it dormant) or turn it on (make it active) according to its chemical tag. In this way, the genetic code remains the same but the way in which it is expressed changes.8

This is a very exciting development. If things such as what we eat and drink and how much we sleep affect the way our genetic code manifests itself, what are the implications for disease and ageing? The times when genes are switched from a healthy, normal state into one that causes disease and the end of life?

These chemical modifications can also be passed on to the next generation, creating a more variable level to genetic inheritance. In other words, your lifestyle choices can affect your childs health in a negative or positive way on a basic, biological level.

Advances in genomic medicine mean that more diseases, both rare and more common, can be diagnosed and treated than ever before. But there are a few things to consider:

By understanding that which is already written down in our genetic code, we can predict and manage what happens in the future. New advances in genomic medicine create an environment where we can make sound health care plans, seek advice, and get treatment in the vital early stages of disease.

On a personal level, this doesn't stop at us the principles behind epigenetics suggest that our everyday habits what we eat and whether we smoke can have a positive or negative effect on our grandchildren's biology, meaning that our genetic legacy is also well worth taking care of. At Aetna International, we may cover gene testing on a case by case basis, for example if an oncologist needs to determine the most suitable treatment for a member with cancer.

Read our article: How genetic information can support your familys health: a guide.

For more information on international private medical insurance and accessing the best health care for you and your family, contact one of Aetna International's expert sales consultants today.

Are you looking for expat insurance? Click here to get a quote.

If youre an employer or broker looking for international Private Medical insurance for clients or staff, you can call us to discuss your needs. Get the right telephone number for your area, here.

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Battelle and Wexner Medical Center create new diagnostic test for COVID-19 – The Ohio State University News

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Battelle and The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center have jointly developed a new rapid, sensitive diagnostic test for COVID-19. The Ohio State Wexner Medical Center will administer the new test under its existing FDA certification permits. This will increase and improve test processing in Ohio according to existing state clinical guidelines.

The new rapid test will allow for faster turnaround time on test results, which will help flatten the curve.

Battelle researchers spent several weeks working in the companys West Jefferson labs to develop a diagnostic assay and complete a validation process, with early results suggesting exceptionally high sensitivity.

Since March 14, more than 100 Ohio State Wexner Medical Center researchers and clinicians have worked with Battelle researchers nights and weekends to stand up the lab that will support COVID-19 testing. After enough data was gathered by researchers at both institutions, Ohio State processed its first 91 tests for diagnosis Wednesday using cutting-edge Battelle and Ohio State equipment in a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)-certified pathology lab at Ohio State.

Battelle is now working to bring a second lab online in West Jefferson, with the intent of making more test processing available. Battelle is in the process of receiving a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment (CLIA) from CMS to begin its own clinical testing.

Ohio State and Battelle teams have shown incredible leadership and ingenuity in moving this project forward so rapidly, said Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. With this collaboration, we will increase testing right here in Ohio to better help health care professionals and public health officials understand, treat and prevent the spread of the virus.

Results of the test can be available in as few as five hours. Initially, the system can process approximately 200 tests per day, but when the infrastructure is fully built over the coming weeks, the goal is to process more than 1,000 test swabs per day.

Battelle has decades of experience in infectious disease research and has worked with virtually all federal health and national security agencies to respond to emerging health threats, said Lou Von Thaer, Battelles president and CEO. I am incredibly proud of the Battelle team, the speed at which it was able to work around the clock to quickly get this operational, and our collaboration with The Ohio State University.

Battelles infectious disease, genetic and virology experts teamed up with researchers and scientists across Ohio States College of Medicine, including immunologists, microbiologists, pathologists, epidemiologists and data analytics researchers for this project.

Were proud of the partnership of our dedicated scientists with Battelle researchers to help find innovative solutions for the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the world, said Dr. Hal Paz, executive vice president and chancellor for health affairs at Ohio State and CEO of the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. Our physicians and nurses are eager to start administering these tests that will greatly increase our capacity to diagnose more people and assist us in finding solutions for this disease. Testing is just one of more than 50 new research areas aimed at combatting COVID-19 underway at the Wexner Medical Center. We are working hand in hand with Battelle on many of these critical projects.

Battelle is contributing its expertise and using its specialty facilities, including the largest, private BSL-3 laboratory in the United States, and is actively working on several other solutions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 testing requires an order from a physician or other advanced practice provider. Based on feedback from the Ohio Department of Health, testing is prioritized for inpatients in hospitals and other facilities, outpatients who are moderately ill but who are at high risk for serious illness (e.g, elderly, immune compromised, underlying lung disease, etc.), health care providers and first responders. Asymptomatic patients do not need to be tested.

People who believe they need to be tested should contact their primary care provider, local hospital or your local health department for further direction.

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Battelle and Wexner Medical Center create new diagnostic test for COVID-19 - The Ohio State University News

Patients with Severe Forms of Coronavirus Disease Could Offer Clues to Treatment – Howard Hughes Medical Institute

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A new international project aims to enroll 500 COVID-19 patients to search for genetic mutations that make some people more vulnerable to severe infection.

HHMI scientists are joining many of their colleagues worldwide in working to combat the new coronavirus.Theyre developing diagnostic testing, understanding the viruss basic biology, modeling the epidemiology, and developing potential therapies or vaccines. Over the next several weeks, we will be sharing stories of some of this work.

Hundreds of clinicians worldwide are banding together in an effort to study some types ofseverecases of the new coronavirus disease.

The project, led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator Jean-Laurent Casanova at The Rockefeller University, seeks to identify genetic errors that make some younger patients especially vulnerable to the virus that causes COVID-19, the infectious respiratory illness also known as coronavirus disease 2019.

Casanova aims to enroll 500 patients internationally who meet three broad criteria: theyre less than 50 years old, have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and admitted to an intensive care unit, and have no serious underlying illnesses, such as diabetes, heart disease, or lung disease.

By studying these patients' DNA, scientists may pinpoint genetic mutations that make some people more susceptible to infection. Such information could one day help doctors identify people who are most at risk of developing severe coronavirus disease, says Casanova, a pediatrician at Rockefeller. It could also offer clues for scientists searching for new therapeutics. For example, if patients cells arent making enough of a particular molecule, doctors may be able to offer a supplement as treatment.

Were going to try to find the genetic basis of severe coronavirus infection in young people.

Jean-Laurent Casanova, HHMI Investigator at The Rockefeller University

That day may still be years away. This is not a short-term effort, Casanova says. Some scientists have hypothesized that COVID-19 might be a seasonal illness, with infections ebbing in the spring and summer, and then returning in the fall. But Casanovas team is optimistic. They have already begun enrolling patients and have started sequencing their exomes spelling out all of the DNA letters in every gene in a persons genome. Were going to try to find the genetic basis of severe coronavirus infection in young people.

Late last year, when the first coronavirus infections began cropping up in China, Casanova started reaching out to his colleagues there. Though the most severe cases seemed to concentrate among older adults and those with other conditions, Casanova was interested in the outliers kids and young adults hit hard by the illness who didnt have any of the usual risk factors, such as age or underlying illness.

His team kicked off a new project to study these mysterious cases, and in January just weeks after the Wuhan outbreak began enrolling patients. Clinicians mailed patient blood and DNA to his lab, and researchers there and elsewhere began processing samples the first steps needed for scientists to peer into patients genomes. Now, the project is global, and Casanova is collaborating with scientists and healthcare workers from Europe to Africa, Asia, and Oceania.

We will recruit children and adults <50 yo without risk factor admitted to ICU for idiopathic #COVID19. We will test the hypothesis that they carry inborn errors of immunity to this virus. Please refer patients to @casanova_lab and please RT. pic.twitter.com/DXPoFKieEy

Hunting for the genetic underpinnings of severe infectious diseases is nothing new for Casanovas team. What were doing with coronavirus is what my lab has been doing for 25 years with other infections, he says.

They look for weak spots in peoples immune systems small genetic changes that make people more vulnerable to disease. His group has previously searched the genomes of patients infected with viruses, bacteria, fungi, and even parasites. The infection closest to COVID-19 his team has studied is severe influenza pneumonitis, for which theyve discovered three genetic links. Theyve also identified specific genetic errors that can predispose patients with herpes to viral encephalitis. And theyve found that children with mutations in an immunity gene called IFN-gamma are vulnerable to the bacteria that cause tuberculosis. These children make low levels of the IFN-gamma protein, which is critical for fighting off bacterial infections.

Casanovas team has put these findings to use clinically. For example, the researchers have shown that tuberculosis patients with these genetic errors can benefit from treatment with IFN-gamma. Hes hoping to identify problematic genes in patients with severe coronavirus infection that can bring similar clinical gains. These genes could tell scientists which cellular defenses are crucial for warding off COVID-19 and pave the way for understanding whether such defenses are derailed in older adults or patients with an underlying medical condition.

In the US and around the world, severe coronavirus disease seems to hit older patients hardest, though scientists have reported some country-to-country variation. As of March 24, more than 44,000 confirmed and presumptive positive cases have been reported in the US. Fatality has been highest in people over 85 years old, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Though young people may be more susceptible than scientists once suspected,the older you are, the higher the likelihood you have a severe form of the disease, Casanova says.

Last week, Rockefeller closed all labs except those working on the coronavirus, and Casanova whittled his team to a skeleton crew of about eight people down from 35 who rotate so there is only one person per room at a time. He and his lab members are following CDC recommendations, and taking protective measures to keep themselves and others safe, including social distancing, washing hands, and disinfecting surfaces. Theyve also taken to Twitter to get the word out about their work. A tweet posted from Casanovas lab last week about recruiting new patients to their study has since been retweeted more than 400 times.

Soon, theyll be testing their genetic theory on a pandemic thats occurring in real time. Im grateful weve been able to start this new project so quickly, he says. God willing, it will be of clinical usein two or three years.

Follow the Casanova lab on Twitter (@casanova_lab) to learn the latest about their work. Doctors interested in enrolling patients in the study can contact Jean-Laurent Casanova at jean-laurent.casanova@rockefeller.edu.

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Patients with Severe Forms of Coronavirus Disease Could Offer Clues to Treatment - Howard Hughes Medical Institute

8 strains of the coronavirus are circling the globe. Here’s what clues they’re giving scientists. – USA TODAY

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An epidemiologist answers the biggest questions she's getting about coronavirus. Wochit

SAN FRANCISCO At least eight strains of the coronavirusare making their way around the globe, creating a trail of death and disease that scientistsare tracking by their genetic footprints.

While much is unknown, hidden in the virus's unique microscopic fragments are clues to the origins of its original strain, how it behaves as it mutates and which strains are turning into conflagrations while others are dying out thanksto quarantine measures.

Huddled in once bustling and now almost empty labs, researchers who oversaw dozens of projects are instead focused on one goal:tracking the currentstrains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that cause the illness COVID-19.

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Labs around the world are turning their sequencing machines, most about the size of a desktop printer, to the task ofrapidly sequencing the genomes of virus samples taken frompeople sick with COVID-19.The information is uploaded to a website called NextStrain.org that shows how the virus is migrating and splitting into similarbut new subtypes.

While researcherscaution they'reonly seeing the tip of the iceberg, the tiny differences between the virus strains suggest shelter-in-place orders are working in some areas and thatno one strain of the virus ismore deadly than another. They also say it does not appear the strains will grow more lethal as theyevolve.

The virus mutates so slowly that the virus strains are fundamentally very similar to each other, said Charles Chiu, a professor of medicine and infectious disease at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

A map of the main known genetic variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 disease. The map is being kept on the nextstrain.org website, which tracks pathogen evolution.(Photo: nextstrain.org)

Investigation:How federal health officials mislead states and derailed the best chance at containment.

The SARS-CoV-2 virusfirst began causing illness in China sometimebetween mid-November and mid-December. Its genome is made up of about 30,000 base pairs. Humans, by comparison, have more than 3 billion. So fareven in the virus's most divergent strainsscientists have found only 11 base pair changes.

That makes iteasy to spot new lineages as they evolve, said Chiu.

The outbreaks are trackable. We have the ability to do genomic sequencing almost in real-time to see what strains or lineages are circulating, he said.

So far, mostcases on the U.S. West Coast are linked to a strainfirst identified in Washington state. It may have come from a man who had been in Wuhan, China, the virus epicenter, and returned home on Jan. 15. It is only three mutations away from the original Wuhan strain, according to work done early in the outbreakby Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutch, a medical research center in Seattle.

On the East Coast there are several strains, including the one from Washington and others that appear to have made their way from China to Europe and then to New York and beyond, Chiu said.

Death rate soars in New Orleans coronavirus 'disaster' that could define city for generations

Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, director of the UCSF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center, inserts a tray of Universal Transport Medium (UTM) or vials for the collection, transport, maintenance and long term freeze storage of viruses into a Biomatrix sorter that the Chiu Lab will be using, starting Monday to study the genes of the Coronavirus.(Photo: Susan Merrell/UCSF)

This isnt the first time scientists have scrambled to do genetic analysis of a virus in the midst of an epidemic. They did it with Ebola, Zika and West Nile, but nobodyoutside the scientific community paid much attention.

This is the first time phylogenetic trees have been all over Twitter, said Kristian Andersen, a professor at Scripps Research, a nonprofit biomedical science research facility in La Jolla, California, speaking of the diagrams that show the evolutionary relationships between different strains of an organism.

The maps are available on NextStrain, an online resource for scientists that uses data from academic, independent and government laboratories all over the world to visually track the genomics of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It currently represents genetic sequences of strains from 36 countries on six continents.

While the maps are fun, they can also be a little dangerous said Andersen. The trees showing the evolution of the virus are complex and its difficult even for experts to draw conclusions from them.

Remember, were seeing a very small glimpse into the much larger pandemic. We have half a million described cases right now but maybe 1,000 genomes sequenced. So there are a lot of lineages were missing, hesaid.

The basics on the coronavirus: What you need to know as the US becomes the new epicenter of COVID-19

COVID-19 hitspeople differently, with some feeling only slightly under the weather for a day, others flat on their backs sick for two weeks and about 15% hospitalized. Currently, an estimated1% of those infected die. The rate varies greatly by country and experts say it is likely tied to testing rates rather than actual mortality.

Chiu says it appears unlikely the differences are related to people being infected withdifferent strains of the virus.

The current virus strains are still fundamentally very similar to each other, he said.

The COVID-19 virus does not mutate very fast. It does so eightto 10 times more slowly than the influenza virus, said Anderson, making its evolution rate similar to other coronaviruses such asSevere Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

Its also not expected tospontaneously evolve into a form more deadly than it already is to humans. The SARS-CoV-2 is so good at transmitting itself between human hosts,said Andersen,it is under no evolutionary pressure to evolve.

Chius analysis shows Californias strict shelter in place efforts appear to beworking.

Over half of the 50 SARS-CoV-2 virus genomes his San Francisco-based lab sequenced in the past two weeks are associated with travel from outside the state. Another 30% are associated with health care workers and families of people who have the virus.

Only 20% are coming from within the community. Its not circulating widely, he said.

Thats fantastic news, he said, indicating the virus has not been able to gain aserious foothold because of social distancing.

It's like a wildfire, Chiu said. A few sparks might fly off the fire and land in the grass and start new fires. But if the main fire is doused and itsembers stomped out, you can kill offan entire strain.In California, Chiu sees a lot of sparks hitting the ground, most coming from Washington,but they're quickly being put out.

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An example wasa small cluster of cases in Solano County, northeast of San Francisco. Chius team did a genetic analysis of the virus that infected patients there and found it was most closely related to a strain from China.

At the same time, his lab was sequencing a small cluster of cases in the city of Santa Clara in Silicon Valley. They discovered the patients there had the same strain as those in Solano County. Chiu believes someone in that cluster had contact with a traveler who recently returned from Asia.

This is probably an example of a spark that began in Santa Clara, may have gone to Solano County but then was halted, he said.

The virus, he said, can be stopped.

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China is an unknown

So far researchers dont have a lot of information about the genomics of the virus inside China beyond the fact that it first appeared in the city of Wuhan sometime between mid-November and mid-December.

The viruss initial sequence was published on Jan. 10 by professor Yong-Zhen Zhang at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center. But Chiu says scientists dont know if there was justone strain circulating in China or more.

It may be that they havent sequenced many cases or it may be for political reasons they havent been made available, said Chiu. Its difficult to interpret the data because were missing all these early strains.

Researchers in the United Kingdom who sequenced the genomes of viruses found in travelers from Guangdong in south China found those patients strains spanned the gamut of strains circulating worldwide.

That could mean several of the strains were seeing outside of China first evolved there from the original strain, or that there are multiple lines of infection. Its very hard to know, said Chiu.

There's a new symptom of coronavirus, docs say: Sudden loss of smell or taste

While there remain many questions about the trajectory of the COVID-19 disease outbreak, one thing is broadly accepted in the scientific community: Thevirus was not created in a lab but naturally evolved in an animal host.

SARS-CoV-2s genomic molecular structure thinkthe backbone of the virus is closest to a coronavirus found in bats. Parts of its structure also resemble a virus found in scaly anteaters, according to a paper published earlier this month in the journal Nature Medicine.

Someone manufacturing a virus targetingpeople would have started with one that attacked humans, wrote National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collinsin an editorial that accompanied the paper.

Andersen was lead author on the paper. He said it could have been a one-time occurrence.

Its possible it was a single event, from a single animal to a single human, and spread from there.

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8 strains of the coronavirus are circling the globe. Here's what clues they're giving scientists. - USA TODAY

MyoKardia Announces Mavacamten Treatment Well Tolerated and Significantly Reduced Biomarkers of Cardiac Injury and Wall Stress in Non-Obstructive…

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DetailsCategory: Small MoleculesPublished on Tuesday, 31 March 2020 10:23Hits: 79

MAVERICK-HCM Phase 2 Clinical Trial Results Consistent with Tolerability Observations from Prior Studies of Mavacamten

Improvement in NT-proBNP and Troponin Levels Support Future Development in Non-Obstructive HCM and Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction (HFpEF)

BRISBANE, CA, USA I March 30, 2020 I MyoKardia, Inc. (Nasdaq: MYOK) today announced results from the dose-ranging MAVERICK-HCM Phase 2 clinical trial of mavacamten for the treatment of non-obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). Data were presented during a late-breaker session at the American College of Cardiologys 69th Annual Scientific Session together with the World Congress of Cardiology (ACC.20/WCC Virtual) In the MAVERICK-HCM study, mavacamten was generally well tolerated, and statistically significant improvements in key biomarkers of cardiac injury and wall stress were observed. Further, subgroup analyses of study participants with indicators of more advanced disease demonstrated clinical responses across multiple parameters among patients on active treatment versus placebo.

Non-obstructive HCM is especially challenging to treat as there are no proven or approved pharmacological therapies. Thus, for patients who develop symptoms refractory to medications, cardiac transplantation may be the only option, saidCarolynHo, M.D., Medical Director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Center at Brigham and Womens Hospital and lead author on behalf of the MAVERICK-HCM study investigators. Although the primary objective of MAVERICK was to assess the safety and tolerability of mavacamten in non-obstructive HCM, in exploratory analyses we observed an encouraging result with reductions in serum levels of NT-proBNP, a biomarker of hemodynamic stress, and also cardiac troponin I, a biomarker of myocardial injury. We believe MAVERICK is the first study to show an improvement in important serum biomarkers in this patient population and suggests that there is potential physiological benefit from the drug. We were also intrigued by findings that patients with more severe disease expression, those with elevated serum troponin levels or evidence of diastolic dysfunction by echo, may have achieved functional benefit. These findings, combined with mavacamtens tolerability profile, are encouraging, and they provide direction for further evaluation of mavacamten for patients with non-obstructive HCM.

MAVERICK has succeeded in providing us with the important data we needed to proceed in our planned clinical trials in non-obstructive HCM, as well as a targeted subset of patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, or HFpEF. We gained unique insights into dosing strategies using markers linked to clinical benefit, as well as how to identify patients who may be most likely to benefit from mavacamten, said Jay Edelberg, M.D. Ph.D., MyoKardias Senior Vice President of Development. The MAVERICK results also further our confidence in mavacamtens development in obstructive HCM, as we approach our Phase 3 EXPLORER-HCM readout, which is expected in the second quarter.

MAVERICK-HCM ResultsSafety and Tolerability ObservationsMavacamten was generally well tolerated, consistent with prior clinical studies.

Effect on Exploratory Endpoints of Efficacy: Biomarkers of Cardiac Wall Stress and Injury Among several pre-specified endpoints analyzed, treatment with mavacamten resulted in significant changes in circulating biomarkers associated with heightened risks of cardiac complications.

For the intent-to-treat population, no difference was observed between active and placebo groups in the other exploratory endpoints.

The effect of mavacamten on NT-proBNP and cardiac troponin levels in non-obstructive HCM patients is a first-of-its-kind finding for a product candidate in this patient population, said Michael R.Zile, M.D.,Director of Cardiology, Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center. NT-proBNP is a measure of cardiac wall stress, and elevated troponins signal heart muscle injury, both of which have been established in the literature as prognosticators of dire complications in both HCM and HFpEF patients, including the need for hospitalizations, surgical intervention and death. The reductions in biomarkers associated with poor outcomes are encouraging, and I look forward to seeing the potential for mavacamten to impact outcomes in HCM, as well as certain targeted HFpEF populations, over time.

Patient Subgroups with Advanced Diastolic Disease MyoKardia also shared its analyses of the effect of mavacamten treatment on two subgroups of patients with advanced disease: one comprising 19 of the 59 enrolled patients (32%) with elevated cardiac troponin levels of >0.03ng/mL and another including 25 patients (42%) who had elevated filling pressures, defined by E/e >14(4). HCM patients with higher cardiac troponin levels are known to be at greater risk for serious complications, and elevated filling pressures are indicative of impaired diastolic compliance, or the ability of the left ventricle to relax and fill with oxygenated blood.

A trend toward potential benefit was observed across numerous clinical measurements in patients with elevated cardiac troponin I levels and those with higher diastolic filling pressures versus placebo:

Composite Functional Endpoint Analysis A composite functional endpoint(4) analysis was utilized to compare responses among the intent-to-treat population and the subgroups of patients with more advanced disease to those within the placebo population.

Based on our observations that multiple markers responded to mavacamten, we believe we may be able to utilize markers of likely clinical benefit to guide dosing in the non-obstructive HCM patient population moving forward, similar to the way we are utilizing LVOT gradient to guide dosing in obstructive HCM, said Jay Edelberg, M.D., Senior Vice President, Development at MyoKardia. Additionally, we observed in MAVERICK that patients who were most impaired showed the most meaningful trends toward benefit with mavacamten treatment within the 16-week treatment period. We look forward to leveraging these learnings, as well as knowledge gained from the longer exposures to treatment provided by our long-term extension study, as we look to advance mavacamten for the treatment of non-obstructive HCM patients and adjacent HFpEF populations.

Data from the MAVERICK-HCM Phase 2 clinical trial were presented by Carolyn Ho, M.D., Medical Director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, during the American College of Cardiologys Annual Scientific Session together with World Congress of Cardiology virtual meeting this morning during the Featured Clinical Research III Session in a presentation titled Mavacamten Improves Biomarkers Of Myocardial Wall Stress And Injury In Patients With Symptomatic Non-Obstructive Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (nHCM): Results From The Phase 2 MAVERICK-HCM Study (#412-16).

About the Phase 2 MAVERICK-HCMClinical TrialThe Phase 2 MAVERICK-HCM trial assessed the safety and tolerability of a range of exposures over 16 weeks of treatment in patients with symptomatic, non-obstructive HCM. All study participants were required to be diagnosed with non-obstructive HCM, with left ventricular wall thickness either 15mm or 13mm with a family history of HCM,New York Heart Association(NYHA) classifications of Class II or III, and NT-proBNP levels of greater than 300 pg/mL at rest.Baseline characteristics, such as age, weight, gender, pathogenic mutation status, background beta blocker use, NYHA classification and exercise capacity were evenly distributed between active and placebo arms.

A total of 59 participants were enrolled in the study and randomized into one of three groups to receive once-daily doses of mavacamten or placebo.The active mavacamten treatment arms were designed to assess a range of drug concentrations around target levels of 200 ng/mL and 500 ng/mL. All participants in the active treatment arms began the study receiving 5mg doses of mavacamten. At Week 4, pharmacokinetic (PK) assessments were conducted and doses were adjusted in a blinded fashion per the protocol based on the participants assigned cohort. Following the 16-week treatment period, participants were monitored for an additional 8 weeks and became eligible to participate in MyoKardias MAVA Long-Term Extension (LTE) study.

Conference Call and WebcastMyoKardia management will also host a virtual event for investors and analyst today to review the data from MAVERICK-HCM and discuss future development plans for mavacamten in targeted groups of patients with diastolic disease. This live webcast event will begin at 4:30 p.m. EDT / 1:30 p.m. PDT and include remarks by Dr. Anjali Owens, Medical Director, Center for Inherited Cardiac Disease at the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Michael Zile, Professor of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina.

To access the call, please dial (844) 494-0193 (U.S.) or (508) 637-5584 (international), and reference the conference ID 2982709. A live webcast of the event will be available on the Investors section of MyoKardias website at http://investors.myokardia.com. A replay of the webcast, and accompanying slides, will be available on theMyoKardiawebsite for 90 days following the call.

About Non-obstructive HCM and Heart Failure with preserved Ejection FractionHypertrophic cardiomyopathy is the most common genetic form of heart disease, affecting an estimated one in every 500 people worldwide.There are two main forms of HCM, obstructive HCM and non-obstructive HCM, which often share the same underlying genetic defects in the sarcomere that result in hypercontractility.In non-obstructive HCM, the heart contracts excessively and the left ventricle becomes abnormally thick, restricting the ability of the heart to relax and fill or pump to meet the bodys needs, but no physical obstruction is present in the outflow tract of the left ventricle. Non-obstructive HCM affects an estimated one-third of all HCM patients and presents unique treatment challenges.Patients may progress to a more advanced state of disease than those with obstructive disease before being diagnosed, and there are no approved pharmacological treatment options available.As non-obstructive HCM progresses, symptoms begin to resemble those of a congestive heart failure patient and heart transplantation may become the only viable treatment option.

Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is a heterogeneous clinical syndrome, which in many patients is characterized by impairment of the left ventricles ability to relax and fill during diastole, resulting in insufficient blood flow to meet the bodys needs.HFpEF is estimated to affect approximately three million people in the U.S. and is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. There are currently no approved therapies for HFpEF.

About Mavacamten (MYK-461)Mavacamten is a novel, oral, allosteric inhibitor of cardiac myosin being developed for the treatment of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). Mavacamten is intended to reduce cardiac muscle contractility by inhibiting the excessive myosin-actin cross-bridge formation that underlies the excessive contractility, left ventricular hypertrophy and reduced compliance characteristic of HCM.MyoKardiais currently evaluating mavacamten in multiple clinical trials for the treatment of obstructive and non-obstructive HCM. The pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial, known as EXPLORER-HCM, is being conducted in patients with symptomatic, obstructive HCM andMyoKardiaanticipates data from this program in the second quarter of 2020. Two long-term follow-up studies are also ongoing, the PIONEER open-label extension study of obstructive HCM patients from MyoKardias Phase 2 PIONEER trial and the MAVA-LTE, an extension study for patients who have completed either EXPLORER-HCM or MAVERICK-HCM, the companys Phase 2 clinical trial of symptomatic non-obstructive HCM patients. InApril 2016, the U.S.FDAgranted Orphan Drug Designation for mavacamten for the treatment of symptomatic obstructive HCM.

About MyoKardiaMyoKardia is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company discovering and developing targeted therapies for the treatment of serious cardiovascular diseases. The company is pioneering a precision medicine approach to its discovery and development efforts by 1) understanding the biomechanical underpinnings of disease; 2) targeting the proteins that modulate a given condition; 3) identifying patient populations with shared disease characteristics; and 4) applying learnings from research and clinical studies to inform and guide pipeline growth and product advancement. MyoKardias initial focus is on small molecule therapeutics aimed at the proteins of the heart that modulate cardiac muscle contraction to address diseases driven by excessive contraction, impaired relaxation, or insufficient contraction. Among its discoveries are three clinical-stage therapeutics: mavacamten (formerly MYK-461); danicamtiv (formerly MYK-491) and MYK-224.

MyoKardias mission is to change the world for people with serious cardiovascular disease through bold and innovative science.

SOURCE: MyoKardia

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MyoKardia Announces Mavacamten Treatment Well Tolerated and Significantly Reduced Biomarkers of Cardiac Injury and Wall Stress in Non-Obstructive...

8 strains of coronavirus are circling the globe; heres the clues theyre giving scientists – Canton Repository

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Hidden in the virus's unique microscopic fragments are clues to the origins of its original strain. So far, mostcases on the U.S. West Coast are linked to a strainfirst identified in Washington state

SAN FRANCISCO At least eight strains of the coronavirus are making their way around the globe, creating a trail of death and disease that scientistsare tracking by their genetic footprints.

While much is unknown, hidden in the virus's unique microscopic fragments are clues to the origins of its original strain, how it behaves as it mutates and which strains are turning into conflagrations while others are dying out thanksto quarantine measures.

Huddled in once bustling and now almost empty labs, researchers who oversaw dozens of projects are instead focused on one goal:tracking the currentstrains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that cause the illness COVID-19.

This story is provided free to the community to keep readers informed about coronavirus. | If local news is important to you, please consider a digital subscription.

Labs around the world are turning their sequencing machines, most about the size of a desktop printer, to the task ofrapidly sequencing the genomes of virus samples taken frompeople sick with COVID-19.The information is uploaded to a website called NextStrain.org that shows how the virus is migrating and splitting into similarbut new subtypes.

While researcherscaution they'reonly seeing the tip of the iceberg, the tiny differences between the virus strains suggest shelter-in-place orders are working in some areas and thatno one strain of the virus ismore deadly than another. They also say it does not appear the strains will grow more lethal as theyevolve.

"The virus mutates so slowly that the virus strains are fundamentally very similar to each other," said Charles Chiu, a professor of medicine and infectious disease at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

The SARS-CoV-2 virusfirst began causing illness in China sometimebetween mid-November and mid-December. Its genome is made up of about 30,000 base pairs. Humans, by comparison, have more than 3 billion. So fareven in the virus's most divergent strainsscientists have found only 11 base pair changes.

That makes iteasy to spot new lineages as they evolve, said Chiu.

"The outbreaks are trackable. We have the ability to do genomic sequencing almost in real-time to see what strains or lineages are circulating," he said.

So far, mostcases on the U.S. West Coast are linked to a strainfirst identified in Washington state. It may have come from a man who had been in Wuhan, China, the virus epicenter, and returned home on Jan. 15. It is only three mutations away from the original Wuhan strain, according to work done early in the outbreakby Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutch, a medical research center in Seattle.

On the East Coast there are several strains, including the one from Washington and others that appear to have made their way from China to Europe and then to New York and beyond, Chiu said.

Beware pretty phylogenetictrees

This isnt the first time scientists have scrambled to do genetic analysis of a virus in the midst of an epidemic. They did it with Ebola, Zika and West Nile, but nobodyoutside the scientific community paid much attention.

"This is the first time phylogenetic trees have been all over Twitter," said Kristian Andersen, a professor at Scripps Research, a nonprofit biomedical science research facility in La Jolla, California, speaking of the diagrams that show the evolutionary relationships between different strains of an organism.

The maps are available on NextStrain, an online resource for scientists that uses data from academic, independent and government laboratories all over the world to visually track the genomics of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It currently represents genetic sequences of strains from 36 countries on six continents.

While the maps are fun, they can also be "little dangerous" said Andersen. The trees showing the evolution of the virus are complex and its difficult even for experts to draw conclusions from them.

"Remember, were seeing a very small glimpse into the much larger pandemic. We have half a million described cases right now but maybe 1,000 genomes sequenced. So there are a lot of lineages were missing," hesaid.

Different symptoms, same strains

COVID-19 hitspeople differently, with some feeling only slightly under the weather for a day, others flat on their backs sick for two weeks and about 15% hospitalized. Currently, an estimated1% of those infected die. The rate varies greatly by country and experts say it is likely tied to testing rates rather than actual mortality.

Chiu says it appears unlikely the differences are related to people being infected withdifferent strains of the virus.

"The current virus strains are still fundamentally very similar to each other," he said.

The COVID-19 virus does not mutate very fast. It does so eightto 10 times more slowly than the influenza virus, said Anderson, making its evolution rate similar to other coronaviruses such asSevere Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

Its also not expected tospontaneously evolve into a form more deadly than it already is to humans. The SARS-CoV-2 is so good at transmitting itself between human hosts,said Andersen,it is under no evolutionary pressure to evolve.

Shelter in place working in California

Chius analysis shows Californias strict shelter in place efforts appear to beworking.

Over half of the 50 SARS-CoV-2 virus genomes his San Francisco-based lab sequenced in the past two weeks are associated with travel from outside the state. Another 30% are associated with health care workers and families of people who have the virus.

"Only 20% are coming from within the community. Its not circulating widely," he said.

Thats fantastic news, he said, indicating the virus has not been able to gain aserious foothold because of social distancing.

It's like a wildfire, Chiu said. A few sparks might fly off the fire and land in the grass and start new fires. But if the main fire is doused and itsembers stomped out, you can kill offan entire strain.In California, Chiu sees a lot of sparks hitting the ground, most coming from Washington,but they're quickly being put out.

An example wasa small cluster of cases in Solano County, northeast of San Francisco. Chius team did a genetic analysis of the virus that infected patients there and found it was most closely related to a strain from China.

At the same time, his lab was sequencing a small cluster of cases in the city of Santa Clara in Silicon Valley. They discovered the patients there had the same strain as those in Solano County. Chiu believes someone in that cluster had contact with a traveler who recently returned from Asia.

"This is probably an example of a spark that began in Santa Clara, may have gone to Solano County but then was halted," he said.

The virus, he said, can be stopped.

China is an unknown

So far researchers dont have a lot of information about the genomics of the virus inside China beyond the fact that it first appeared in the city of Wuhan sometime between mid-November and mid-December.

The viruss initial sequence was published on Jan. 10 by professor Yong-Zhen Zhang at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center. But Chiu says scientists dont know if there was justone strain circulating in China or more.

"It may be that they havent sequenced many cases or it may be for political reasons they havent been made available," said Chiu. "Its difficult to interpret the data because were missing all these early strains."

Researchers in the United Kingdom who sequenced the genomes of viruses found in travelers from Guangdong in south China found those patients strains spanned the gamut of strains circulating worldwide.

"That could mean several of the strains were seeing outside of China first evolved there from the original strain, or that there are multiple lines of infection. Its very hard to know," said Chiu.

The virus did not come from a lab

While there remain many questions about the trajectory of the COVID-19 disease outbreak, one thing is broadly accepted in the scientific community: Thevirus was not created in a lab but naturally evolved in an animal host.

SARS-CoV-2s genomic molecular structure thinkthe backbone of the virus is closest to a coronavirus found in bats. Parts of its structure also resemble a virus found in scaly anteaters, according to a paper published earlier this month in the journal Nature Medicine.

Someone manufacturing a virus targetingpeople would have started with one that attacked humans, wrote National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collinsin an editorial that accompanied the paper.

Andersen was lead author on the paper. He said it could have been a one-time occurrence.

"Its possible it was a single event, from a single animal to a single human," and spread from there.

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8 strains of coronavirus are circling the globe; heres the clues theyre giving scientists - Canton Repository

Myriad Seeks Japanese Regulatory Approval for its BRACAnalysis Diagnostic System in People with Advanced Pancreatic and Prostate Cancer -…

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SALT LAKE CITY, March 30, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: MYGN), a leader in molecular diagnostics and precision medicine, announced it has submitted a supplementary application with the Japanese Ministry of Health Labour and Welfare for its BRACAnalysis Diagnostic System (i.e., BRACAnalysis) to be used as a companion diagnostic to help to identify people with metastatic pancreatic or metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer who have germline BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations and may be candidates for targeted therapy with the PARP inhibitor, Lynparza (olaparib), subject to regulatory approval.

Todays regulatory filing potentially will expand the approved indications for BRACAnalsyis as companion diagnostic test in Japan, said Gary King, executive vice president of International Operations at Myriad. We look forward to helping people with pancreatic and prostate cancers access precision medicine therapy.

Myriad estimates there are more than 78,000 cases of prostate cancer and 40,000 cases of pancreatic per year in Japan. The BRACAnalysis Diagnostic System previously was approved in Japan to identify patients with ovarian or breast cancer who have a germline BRCA mutation and are eligible for Lynparza therapy. BRACAnalysis is the only germline test for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations to receive regulatory approval in Japan.

Myriad has partnered with SRL Inc., a subsidiary of Miraca Group, to commercialize the BRACAnalysis Diagnostic System in Japan.

About the BRACAnalysis Diagnostic SystemBRACAnalysis is a diagnostic system that classifies a patients clinically significant variants (DNA sequence variations) in the germline BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Variants are classified into one of the five categories; Deleterious, Suspected Deleterious, Variant of Uncertain Significance, Favor Polymorphism, or Polymorphism. Once the classification is completed, the results are sent to medical personnel in Japan for determining the eligibility of patients for treatment with Lynparza.

Myriad has been collaborating with AstraZeneca (LSE/STO/NYSE: AZN) since 2007 on the development of companion diagnostics for Lynparza. Lynparza is a trademark of AstraZeneca Lynparza is marketed by AstraZeneca and MSD (known as Merck & Co., Inc. in the United States and Canada).

About SRLSince the establishment in 1970, SRL, Inc., a member of the Miraca Group, Japan-based leading healthcare group, has been providing comprehensive testing services as the largest commercial clinical laboratory in Japan. SRL carries out nearly 400,000,000 tests per year, covering a wide range of testing services including general/emergency testing, esoteric/research testing, companion diagnostics tests, genomic analysis, and etc. For more information, please visit http://www.srl-group.co.jp/

About Myriad GeneticsMyriad Genetics Inc., is a leading personalized medicine company dedicated to being a trusted advisor transforming patient lives worldwide with pioneering molecular diagnostics. Myriad discovers and commercializes molecular diagnostic tests that: determine the risk of developing disease, accurately diagnose disease, assess the risk of disease progression, and guide treatment decisions across six major medical specialties where molecular diagnostics can significantly improve patient care and lower healthcare costs. Myriad is focused on five strategic imperatives: build upon a solid hereditary cancer foundation, growing new product volume, expanding reimbursement coverage for new products, increasing RNA kit revenue internationally and improving profitability with Elevate 2020. For more information on how Myriad is making a difference, please visit the Company's website: http://www.myriad.com.

Myriad, the Myriad logo, BART, BRACAnalysis, Colaris, Colaris AP, myPath, myRisk, Myriad myRisk, myRisk Hereditary Cancer, myChoice, myPlan, BRACAnalysis CDx, Tumor BRACAnalysis CDx, myChoice HRD, EndoPredict, Vectra, GeneSight, riskScore, Prolaris, Foresight and Prequel are trademarks or registered trademarks of Myriad Genetics, Inc. or its wholly owned subsidiaries in the United States and foreign countries. MYGN-F, MYGN-G.

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 regulatory filing with the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare helping to expand the approved indications for BRACAnalsyis as companion diagnostic test in Japan; helping people with prostate and pancreatic cancers access precision medicine therapy; and the Company's strategic directives under the caption "About Myriad Genetics." These "forward-looking statements" are based on management's current expectations of future events and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from those set forth in or implied by forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: uncertainties associated with COVID-19, including its possible effects on our operations and the demand for our products and services; our ability to efficiently and flexibly manage our business amid uncertainties related to COVID-19; the risk that sales and profit margins of our molecular diagnostic tests and pharmaceutical and clinical services may decline; risks related to our ability to transition from our existing product portfolio to our new tests, including unexpected costs and delays; risks related to decisions or changes in governmental or private insurers reimbursement levels for our tests or our ability to obtain reimbursement for our new tests at comparable levels to our existing tests; risks related to increased competition and the development of new competing tests and services; the risk that we may be unable to develop or achieve commercial success for additional molecular diagnostic tests and pharmaceutical and clinical services in a timely manner, or at all; the risk that we may not successfully develop new markets for our molecular diagnostic tests and pharmaceutical and clinical services, including our ability to successfully generate revenue outside the United States; the risk that licenses to the technology underlying our molecular diagnostic tests and pharmaceutical and clinical services and any future tests and services are terminated or cannot be maintained on satisfactory terms; risks related to delays or other problems with operating our laboratory testing facilities and our healthcare clinic; risks related to public concern over genetic testing in general or our tests in particular; risks related to regulatory requirements or enforcement in the United States and foreign countries and changes in the structure of the healthcare system or healthcare payment systems; risks related to our ability to obtain new corporate collaborations or licenses and acquire new technologies or businesses on satisfactory terms, if at all; risks related to our ability to successfully integrate and derive benefits from any technologies or businesses that we license or acquire; risks related to our projections about our business, results of operations and financial condition; risks related to the potential market opportunity for our products and services; the risk that we or our licensors may be unable to protect or that third parties will infringe the proprietary technologies underlying our tests; the risk of patent-infringement claims or challenges to the validity of our patents or other intellectual property; risks related to changes in intellectual property laws covering our molecular diagnostic tests and pharmaceutical and clinical services and patents or enforcement in the United States and foreign countries, such as the Supreme Court decisions in Mayo Collab. Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66 (2012), Assn for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 569 U.S. 576 (2013), and Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Intl, 573 U.S. 208 (2014); risks of new, changing and competitive technologies and regulations in the United States and internationally; the risk that we may be unable to comply with financial operating covenants under our credit or lending agreements; the risk that we will be unable to pay, when due, amounts due under our credit or lending agreements; and other factors discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" contained in Item 1A of our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019, which has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as any updates to those risk factors filed from time to time in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q or Current Reports on Form 8-K. All information in this press release is as of the date of the release, and Myriad undertakes no duty to update this information unless required by law.

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Keck professors receive grant to further retinal research – Daily Trojan Online

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Three Keck School of Medicine professors created Argus II retinal prosthesis systems, an implant that helps patients who have become blind by retinitis pigmentosa. With the grant, the team looks to create a new device to prevent vision loss. (Daily Trojan file photo)

Inspired by his life research in retinal prosthesis, co-director of the Roski Eye Institute Mark Humayun is in the early stages of developing retinal contacts that could prevent or slow down vision loss. Humayun, along with a team of experts that includes Keck School of Medicine Provost Gianluca Lazzi and assistant professor of translational genomics Bodour Salhia, won an award of nearly $2 million from the National Science Foundation Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation to further research on the contacts.

As a Keck professor of ophthalmology and director of the USC Ginsburg Institute for Biomedical Therapeutics, Humayuns idea for retinal contacts came from his prior work in vision restoration. Humayun invented Argus II retinal prosthesis systems, an implant behind the eye that helps restore vision to blind patients with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disorder where the retinal cells at the back of the eye start to break down and become damaged.

[The grant] led us to consider this approach to try a controlled electrical stimulation to see if we could slow down or even prevent vision loss from certain types of retinal degeneration and retinal diseases, Humayun said.

The purpose of retinal research and lens device creation is to develop preventative measures for patients who are at risk of becoming blind from these diseases, whereas the Argus II treats patients after theyve already gone blind. The team of experts plans to continue this in their research funded by the grant.

The first step is to really demonstrate whether true utilization of this device through electrical stimulation will in fact result in meaningful slowing of neuron loss, Lazzi said.

The device also induces indirect electrical pulses that activate the remaining neurons in the retina. After working with Lazzi and finishing final tests, Humayun trained numerous surgeons on how to properly install the Argus II implant behind the eye. Approved by the Federal Drug Administration in 2013, the system became the first approved artificial retina system and has been commercially released through Second Sight, a medical prosthetics company for neurostimulation devices.

For more than 20 years, Lazzi has been part of the development team for Argus IIs hardware, ensuring its electronic functionality while implanted behind the eye. Lazzi said Argus II activates similarly to a scoreboard where hundreds of LED lights behind the eye turn on and off to display a partial image the blind patient sees by targeting certain points in the retina.

From his previous work in the bioelectromagnetic field, Humayun was able to develop the idea to use electrical stimulation to restore vision to people who are blind while Lazzi designed electrodes that would be placed on the retina to ensure the electronics used work properly in the eye.

The engineering work for the project has proved challenging because contacts were composed of electronic systems that pose a safety risk and may be damaged when submerged in the salty vitreous humor of the eye, Lazzi said. The issues have since been resolved by having electric currents and wireless transmissions strictly regulated in a casing.

Humayun also reached out to colleague Salhia in 2018 to ask her to collaborate on the project based on her translational genomics labs research with rat retinas that have degenerative diseases. Through this work, the team was able to show that electrical stimulation to the retina caused changes to genes associated with neuroprotection that maintains the structural integrity of neurons, which aids in preventing cell death.

The beauty of the project lies in how three groups from very different backgrounds basically come together to solve a problem, Salhia said. Its been one the funnest and most exciting and most innovative projects that Ive recently engaged in because its just so highly interdisciplinary and people from very different backgrounds are coming together to solve a problem.

Although the team of three has just begun its research for a new vision device with the funds provided from the grant, its members have already seen encouraging results in Salhias research on rat retinas and are looking forward to continuing their work to help patients in the coming years.

We have this grant for three years, so we hope to be in a pretty good position, Humayun said. In three years, we hope to be pretty far along in all these aspects as to whether we would be ready to do human studies.

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Keck professors receive grant to further retinal research - Daily Trojan Online

UB infectious disease doctor breaks down Covid-19 and its potential impact on WNY – Buffalo News

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Covid-19 proliferates freely across the region. The more people with whom you come in contact, the greater likelihood you will contract it. Your age, health and genetics will dictate whether you get sick, end up hospitalized or die.

You also may need to reconsider your Easter plans.

These are the conclusions at this point from Dr. Thomas A. Russo, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases in the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

The number of people impacted regionally will grow in the weeks to come, he said.

"Of those who are symptomatic based on data to date, about 80%, maybe 85%, have less serious disease that does not require hospitalization; about 15% require hospital treatment; and about 5% become critically ill, said Russo, who also works at the VA Medical Center in Buffalo, where at least four patients were on ventilators with Covid-19 late last week.

He talked with The Buffalo News about the dangers of the novel coronavirus and the mysteries that cloud saving the sickest of its victims. Below are excerpts.

Dr. Thomas Russo, professor and chief of infectious diseases in the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. (Photo courtesy of UB)

Q: What are the symptoms?

Someone could be minimally symptomatic, which could be some combination of fever, rhinitis (stuffiness and runny nose), sore throat. They could have a mild cough, more of an upper respiratory tract infection. Loss of taste or smell were first anecdotally recognized in England and are being increasingly described. I certainly think those are symptoms that someone could develop early on as well.

Q: Are these symptoms emblematic of other conditions, too?

Flu and other respiratory viruses can mimic them. Right now, we still have circulating Influenza A, Influenza B, and some parainfluenzas (respiratory viruses that differ from the flu) around. In the absence of a diagnostic test, it's very difficult to be absolutely sure. Flu is on the downswing right now. Because coronavirus is starting to become the dominant virus in Western New York, its more likely to be coronavirus.

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Q: Do epidemiologists have a sense about how often people are asymptomatic?

That is part of the problem. Right now, the kits we use to test the RNA of the virus, the genetic footprint, arent being used on people that are asymptomatic. We're saving our tests for the most part for people with symptoms that are critically ill, so the tests are not a good tool to gauge what proportion of the population is asymptomatic.

People can be asymptomatic and be infected and able to spread the virus.

Q: Why does the disease progress in some people and not others?

The biology depends on our genetics and probably how much of the virus we get. If someone gets a huge dose of the virus, it may be such that the hosts defenses which are imperfect because we've never seen this virus before may be overwhelmed. If you get a lower dose, combined with the genetics, you may hopefully have a milder course. Everyone can be a little different.

Greater exposure to the coronavirus almost certainly raises your risk of infection and may boost the chance you will get sicker.

Q: How do you get a small dose versus a big dose?

The people who are going to be at risk for a large dose are those in close contact with someone whos infected with coughing and sneezing for prolonged periods of time. They're constantly going to be shedding virus. If you're in contact with multiple individuals, you may get sort of multiple repeat doses over time. Whether that's better or worse than with one person who is sick, who knows?

Q: What symptoms tend to first appear?

I'm not aware of any pecking order. I can tell you through years of experience in infectious diseases that were all different in terms of how we present which symptoms, what combination of symptoms, how severe. We're obviously seeing that with the new coronavirus as well.

Q: When is it time to get medical help?

Present recommendations are that if you develop an upper respiratory tract infection, even with a fever or cough, you're going to feel a little bit miserable but not critically ill. It's OK to touch base with your primary care physician. You should sort of isolate yourself at that point. The critical tell is always shortness of breath, which suggests you're developing pneumonia. That's the complication that we're concerned about. If pneumonia becomes extensive, you have problems with oxygen exchange and as that difficulty increases, that's when you end up on a ventilator.

Q: Is there anything to beat this back once you start to notice that your taste or sense of smellhas left you and that you're starting to develop other symptoms?

Using Star Trek terminology, our shields are completely down. With the flu, even if we've had a bad match in the vaccine, we've still got 30-40% of our shields. We've also got Tamiflu, which we know can both prevent disease and shorten symptoms. But so far for this new coronavirus, we have no drugs. We have no vaccine. We're all susceptible.

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Q: Who is most at risk in Western New York?

The vulnerable population with underlying cardiac disease, underlying pulmonary disease, underlying immunocompromised states due to certain cancers or drugs they may be on. Diabetes and hypertension have also been associated. It certainly makes sense that if you're a smoker, you're going to be an increased risk.

We think probably people that are older are still at increased risk, even if they don't have any comorbidities, but it seems the comorbidities are a little bit more important. I'd probably rather be a 70-year-old with no comorbidities than a 60-year-old with bad lungs and heart. The relative risk we're still sorting out. And even though younger adults and children are in terms of a bad consequences relatively spared, with significantly less risk, they're not absolutely bulletproof.

Q: Who should limit contact with others right now and what should be the threshold?

The smaller the number, the better. As the number increases, you're increasing your likelihood of getting infected, and that likelihood increases as the prevalence of infection in our community increases, which is happening right now. It's a mathematical thing. If the prevalence is increased tenfold, then it takes tenfold less people to potentially be exposed. We need to button down with our social distancing more than ever to cut the prevalence.

Q: What about big celebrations like Easter?

A common question Im getting is, I want to have a small group gathering for Easter, can I do it safely? The answer is no, you cant do so with 100% certainty. Theres the whole asymptomatic issue, which makes it impossible to be sure that you are not infected.

Both parties need to be quarantined for 14 days, not previously infected. It has to be rigorous. It can't be you running out to work, running out to Wegmans. You really can't have that contact with anyone. And as long asyou follow that and both parties are fine at the end of 14 days, then when you get together you want to really practice modified social distancing. No kissing, hugging, sharing any sort of foods and utensils, anything where there could be sort of transference of saliva or respiratory secretions. Maintain rigorous hand hygiene, especially after contacting high-touch areas such as phones, refrigerator door handles, TV remotes, etc. You're gonna minimize risk, but you can't drive it to zero.

How to celebrate Easter, Passover and Ramadan in the midst of coronavirus

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UB infectious disease doctor breaks down Covid-19 and its potential impact on WNY - Buffalo News