Omega Healthcare Investors: Strong Buy Below $30 – Seeking Alpha

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Omega Healthcare Investors (OHI) shares are already a bargain, but they could get even cheaper as part of a wider market drop. With stocks sitting near record highs, a price drop of five to ten percent is fully within the realm of possibility, and investors need to plan accordingly. I am increasing my cash levels now in order to be able to take advantage of an inevitable market drop that would make quality income vehicles like Omega Healthcare Investors even cheaper.

Can you even remember the last time stock prices dropped 5 percent, 10 percent, or even 20 percent? And can you recall how painful the last bear market was for most investors? Chances are you cant because stock prices have been steadily climbing in the last couple of years, and the 2007 market crash happened almost a decade ago. In short, investors have short memories, and they have become way too complacent.

Earnings season has been pretty good so far for companies and investors, and, by extension, stocks. That said, though, todays complacency paired with investors willingness to buy into stocks at record levels is a convincing reason to be fearful. Valuations, on average, are pretty high, and they coincide with something else: Overbought sentiment.

As a matter of fact, I think there are three overriding reasons why investors should be prepared to buy into Omega Healthcare Investors as pressure on valuations begins to mount:

Omega Healthcare Investors has invested $5.8 billion in the growth of its real estate portfolio in the last thirteen and a half years - $1.3 billion in 2016 alone - in order to morph into a health care REIT with a national presence.

Source: Omega Healthcare Investors

Omega Healthcare Investors now has operating facilities in 42 states and in the United Kingdom.

Source: Omega Healthcare Investors

Omega Healthcare Investors works closely with health care facility operators. While the health care REITs relationships with its operator base have evolved over time, no operator poses an outsized risk to Omega in terms of revenues.

Source: Omega Healthcare Investors

In addition to a widely diversified real estate portfolio, Omega Healthcare Investors has had industry-beating occupancy rates.

Source: Omega Healthcare Investors

Omega Healthcare Investors just reported robust Q2-17 results, and continues to display top-shelf dividend coverage for a health care REIT. I recently doubled down on Omega Healthcare Investors as the REIT combines excess dividend coverage with an above-average commitment to raising its dividend payout every single quarter (Omega Healthcare Investors just raised its dividend for the 20th consecutive quarter and the new dividend rate is $0.64/share).

Omega Healthcare Investors is in a stable financial position and can continue to grow its dividend. I updated Omega Healthcare Investors dividend coverage chart for its second quarter results, and the real estate investment trust should have no problems growing its dividend payout by $0.01/share moving forward.

Source: Achilles Research

Omega Healthcare Investors guided for adjusted funds from operations of $3.42-$3.44/share for the current year. Based on this guidance, income investors seeking to access Omega Healthcare Investors 8.2 percent dividend, pay 9.1x 2017e AFFO. A market slide would translate into an even lower AFFO multiple (and higher cash flow yield), increasing investors margin of safety.

Income investors pay a premium to the REIT's book value. The premium valuation is justified in my opinion based on Omega's above-average dividend visibility, high cash flow yield, and potential for AFFO growth.

Investors have been piling into stocks for more than eight years (where do you think all that central bank money went?), pushing investors into risky assets and inflating their prices. Against this backdrop, I think the time has come to be a little more cautious, and raise cash in order to gobble up high-quality income vehicles when they are on sale.

If you have read my articles before you know that I have almost entirely liquidated my high-yield income portfolio earlier this year - primarily BDCs and mortgage REITs - due to concerns about stretched valuations and overbought sentiment, and because good investment opportunities have become increasingly hard to find.

Considering that a 5-10 percent market drop is entirely within the realms of possibility, having cash at hand to deploy during a market drop is the smart thing to do.

Omega Healthcare Investors has assembled a high-quality, geographically-diversified skilled nursing facility portfolio that throws off a growing stream of FFO. I have doubled down on the health care REIT because of its low valuation, and because it has a high degree of dividend coverage/visibility. Omegas second quarter results continued to show AFFO resilience and very good dividend coverage.

That said, I think income investors need to raise their cash levels in order to be able to scoop up high-quality income vehicles like Omega Healthcare Investors once the market falls back from its recent highs. Though Omega Healthcare Investors already makes a solid value proposition, I think the reward-to-risk ratio looks particularly attractive below $30.

If you like to read more of my articles, and like to be kept up to date with the companies I cover, I kindly ask you that you scroll to the top of this page and click 'follow'. I am largely investing in dividend paying stocks, but also venture out occasionally and cover special situations that offer appealing reward-to-risk ratios and have potential for significant capital appreciation. Above all, my immediate investment goal is to achieve financial independence.

Disclosure: I am/we are long OHI.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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Omega Healthcare Investors: Strong Buy Below $30 - Seeking Alpha

Medicine Is Getting More Precise For White People – FiveThirtyEight

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Aug. 2, 2017 at 12:34 PM

Every human on earth is unique our genes are different, we eat different things, we live in different places. As a result, medical treatments tend to work differently on different people. Depending on your genes, a drug might cure your sickness or it might cause a side effect that makes you sicker.

In the past, many of humanitys individual variations were invisible to us, but today, new technology offers us a way to peer into each persons genome, allowing doctors to personalize treatments for each patient. This approach, called precision medicine, has been a major focus of research and investment in the last few years.

But precision medicine only works if scientists have studied people who are similar to you. If your genes are rare or unusual compared to those researchers have examined in the past, you could end up getting the wrong treatment. Since the vast majority of genetics studies are done on people of European ancestry, members of other racial groups may lose out on the benefits of precision medicine entirely. Those same groups already often receive worse health care in the United States than people of European descent get, and personalized medical treatment could make the gap in care larger.

Precision medicine is based on the idea that genes can be linked to diseases. To study this, scientists assemble a group of people, some with a disease and some without, and identify their genetic differences. If particular differences are common among the people who have the disease and absent from the people without it, then scientists can infer that those genetic patterns might be involved in the disease.

But each person has their own catalogue of genetic characteristics. Some are common in people of certain ancestral backgrounds and rare in those from other backgrounds. If scientists exclusively study individuals of one ethnic group, they may not know how to refine their treatments for a person from a different group.

A 2009 analysis of the studies that can link a genetic variant to a disease or trait showed that fully 96 percent of participants were of European descent. In a 2016 commentary in the journal Nature, Alice Popejoy and Stephanie Fullerton, respectively a graduate student and a professor at the University of Washington, showed that these studies had grown more diverse and people of European ancestry now account for 81 percent of research subjects. Things are getting better, and its still pretty darn slow, Fullerton said in an interview. And of the progress that has been made, much of it is attributable not to an increase in diversity in U.S. research but to studies conducted in Asian countries, which involve local participants.

Disparities in biomedical research exacerbate an existing gap in U.S. health care. African-Americans and Latinos are less likely to have health insurance and more likely to suffer from chronic diseases. Even controlling for wealth differences between populations, African-Americans receive worse health care.

The science underlying precision medicine threatens to make these disparities worse because it could leave any genetic differences that primarily affect nonwhite groups unstudied. Some genetic differences are prevalent in one population and rare in another. A prominent example is a gene called APOL1. Differences in this gene are common in people whose ancestors are from sub-Saharan Africa but rare in those of other backgrounds. Some of these variations increase the risk of developing kidney disease more than sevenfold, but they also seem to confer protection against African sleeping sickness. Knowing a patients APOL1 genetic makeup might be useful for guiding kidney disease treatment, and APOL1 is likely one of many genes that must be studied within a nonwhite population.

Its possible to solve the problem of underrepresentation. The National Institutes of Health fund a number of large-scale genetic research projects in the United States, and scientists there consider this a major issue. We are aware of this situation, and work is being funded to rectify the situation, said Charles Rotimi, an investigator at NIH. He pointed to initiatives like Human Heredity and Health in Africa and the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology Consortium. These projects are developing more diverse study populations to address the underrepresentation of people of non-European ancestries, in some cases going to African countries to collect genetic data. In the United States, individual investigators can also apply for smaller-scale NIH grants to study particular diseases.

Even when scientists make a conscious effort to recruit a diverse study population, they can run into hurdles. For very good reason, minority populations can be more skeptical and concerned about being involved in biomedical research, said professor Danielle Dick of Virginia Commonwealth University, who studies how genetics contribute to a persons risk of substance abuse. The good reason Dick referred to is a long history of biomedical researchers mistreating people of color, including in the Tuskegee trials and through the forced sterilization of Puerto Ricans. Dicks team and others have tried to address issues of underrepresentation by visiting various hospitals to recruit Hispanic or African-American study participants, providing educational materials about genetics research, arranging to collect samples when patients may be off work, and taking other measures to encourage participation.

But the imbalance in samples is so severe, and the rush to develop precision medicine is so swift, that the problem may not be solved before treatments are developed, and as a result, those treatments will likely predominantly help people of European ancestry. The time horizon for a lot of therapies is typically in the 10- to 15-year range, Fullerton said. Could we solve it in that time frame? Possibly. But genetic differences may already be causing disparities in treatment results between groups. Some genetic variants that are common to certain racial or ethnic groups can affect a patients tolerance for drugs, for example, so knowing about a patients genetic code can guide a physicians prescription. Doctors are observing these phenomena in the clinic already, said Nishadi Rajapakse, an NIH administrator at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

Clinical differences in health care are only likely to become more severe as precision medicine advances. New drugs are already targeting certain genetic differences, although none that would function primarily in one ethnic group and not in others. In the long run, people of European ancestry could benefit from ever more specialized treatments while people of color are left behind.

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Medicine Is Getting More Precise For White People - FiveThirtyEight

Ben-Gurion University scholars uncover the secret to personalized medicine – The Jerusalem Post

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The secret to healing what ails you lies within your own DNA. (photo credit:DREAMSTIME)

Israeli genetic researchers have opened the door to new avenues of medical innovation with their research into the role that RNA plays in gene regulation.

Genomes, a complete set of genes, are divided into two categories: coding DNA and noncoding DNA (known as RNA). Dr. Ramon Birnbaum, co-founder of Ben-Gurion University of the Negevs Center for Evolutionary Genomics and Medicine (EGM), had long been fascinated with the latter. His pioneering research found that noncoding DNA, once labeled junk, plays an essential role in gene regulation.

His research focuses on understanding gene regulation during the brains development and specifically in early onset epilepsy. He explains why diagnosis and treatment can be difficult in infants: The symptoms can look the same, but the causes can be very different. Diving into the mechanisms that cause genes to express or not express will lead to more accurate diagnoses and avoid inefficient or even damaging medication."

Dr. Barak Rotblat, a member of the EGM Center, focuses on how genes affect cancer cells. He explains the potential for personalized medicine treating cancer patients. You can take a biopsy, see the specific tumor, know which genes are highly expressed, and which promote the cancers growth. You then create a cocktail to hit the tumor cells of the individual patient.

Meanwhile, Dr. Debbie Toiber, also of the EGM Center and Department of Life Sciences, is taking the RNA research in another direction. Her focus is on how mapping DNA can improve health and potentially increase lifespans.

DNA damage is one of the major causes of aging and age-related diseases, she explains. Most of the damage is repaired, but not everything. So as we age the DNA damage accumulates. With the accumulated damage, cells and neurons die, and organs become debilitated, causing the body to be more susceptible to disease and aging disorders.

Damage to the body is inevitable on some level by simply living, with the environment causing additional damage. While lifestyle plays a major role in the bodys ability to repair DNA damage on its own, genetic makeup contributes as well.

For example, if someone has an inherited gene mutation, it could limit his or her bodys ability to repair itself, leaving the individual prone to immune system damage, cancer, neurodegeneration, and premature aging. By looking into a persons genetic makeup, researchers are opening the door to personalized medicine, designed to uniquely address an individuals needs.

As Israeli researchers move forward with their studies, we come closer to gaining a deeper understanding of the human genome and providing the right personalized treatment for a myriad of medical conditions, from birth to old age and everything in between.

Making lives better in the Negev, in Israel and around the world, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev inter-disciplinary research and applied science teams are shaping the world of tomorrow with groundbreaking innovation. Sign up for eIMPACT newsletter to learn about the latest innovations as they happen.

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Ben-Gurion University scholars uncover the secret to personalized medicine - The Jerusalem Post

First human embryo editing experiment in US ‘corrects’ gene for heart condition – Washington Post

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Scientists have successfully edited the DNA of human embryos to erase a heritable heart condition that isknown for causingsudden death in young competitive athletes, cracking openthe doors toa controversial new era in medicine.

This is the first time gene editing on human embryos has been conducted in theUnited States. Researcherssaid in interviews this weekthat theyconsider their work very basic. The embryos were allowed to grow for only a few days, and there was never any intention to implant them to create a pregnancy. But they also acknowledged that they will continue to move forward with the science, with theultimate goal of being able to correct disease-causing genes in embryos that will develop into babies.

News of the remarkable experiment began to circulate last week, but details became public Wednesday with a paper in the journal Nature.

The experiment is the latest example of how the laboratory tool known as CRISPR (orClustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), a type of molecular scissors, is pushing the boundaries of our ability to manipulate life, and it has been receivedwith both excitement and horror.

The most recent work is particularly sensitive because it involves changes to the germ line that is, genes that could be passed on to future generations. The United States forbids the use of federal funds for embryo research, and theFood and Drug Administration is prohibited from considering any clinical trials involving genetic modifications that can be inherited. A report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in February urged caution in applying CRISPR to human germ-line editingbut laid out conditions by whichresearch should continue. The new study abides by those recommendations.

This animation depicts the CRISPR-Cas9 method for genome editing a powerful new technology with many applications in biomedical research, including the potential to treat human genetic disease or provide cosmetic enhancements. (Feng Zhang/McGovern Institute for Brain Research/MIT)

Shoukhrat Mitalipov, one of the lead authors of the paper and a researcher at Oregon Health & Science University, said that he is conscious ofthe need for a larger ethical and legal discussion about genetic modification of humans but that his team's work isjustified because it involves correcting genes rather than changing them.

Really we didnt edit anything. Neither did we modify anything, Mitalipov said. Our program is toward correcting mutant genes.

Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who is co-chair of the National Academies committee that looked at gene editing,said that concerns about the work that have been circulating in recent days are overblown.

What this represents is a fascinating, important and rather impressive incremental step toward learning how to edit embryos safely and precisely, she said. However, no matter what anybody says, this is not the dawn of the era of the designer baby. She said that characteristics that some parents might desire, such as intelligence and athleticism, are influenced by multiple genes and that researchers don't understand all the components of how such characteristics areinherited, much less have the ability to redesign them.

The research involved eggs from 12 healthy female donors and sperm from a male volunteer who carries the MYBPC3 gene, which causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. HCM is a disease that causes an abnormal thickening of the heart muscle butcan cause no symptoms and remain undetected until it causes sudden cardiac death. There's no way to prevent or cure it, and it affects1 in 500 people worldwide.

Around the time the sperm was injected into the eggs, researchers snipped out the gene that causes the disease. The result was far more successful than the researchers expected: As the embryo's cells began to divide and multiply, a huge number appearedto be repairing themselves by using the normal, non-mutated copy of the gene from the women'sgenetic material. In all, they saw that about 72 percent were corrected, a very high number. Researchers also noticed that theredidn't seem to be any off-target changes in the DNA, which has been a major safety concern ofgene-editing research.

Mitalipov said he hoped the technique could one day be applied to a wide variety of genetic diseases and that one of the team'snext targets may be the BRCA gene mutation, which is associated with breast cancer.

The first published work involving human embryos, reported in 2015, was done in Chinaand targeted a gene that leads to theblood disorder beta thalassemia. But those embryos were abnormal and nonviable, and there were far fewer than the number used in the U.S. study.

Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a researcher at the Salk Institute who is also a co-author on the new study, saidthat there are many advantages to treating an embryo rather than a child or an adult. When dealing with an embryo in its earliest stages, only a few cells are involved, while in a more mature human being there aretrillions of cells in the body and potentially millions that must be corrected to eradicate traces of a disease.

Izpisua Belmonte said that even if the technology is perfected, it could deal with only a small subset of human diseases.

Idont want to be negative with our own discoveries, but it is important to inform the public of what this means, he said. In my opinion the percentage of people that would benefit from this at the current way the world is rather small. For the process to make a difference, the child would have to be born through in vitro fertilization or IVF and the parentswould have to know the child has the gene for a disease to get it changed. But the vast majority ofchildren are conceived the natural way, and this correction technology would not work in utero.

For years, some policymakers, historians and scientists have been calling for a voluntary moratorium on the modification of the DNA of human reproductive cells. The most prominent expression of concern came in the form of a 2015 letter signed by CRISPR co-inventor Jennifer Doudna, Nobel Laureate David Baltimore and 16 other prominent scientists. They warned that eliminating a genetic disease could have unintended consequences on human genetics, society and even the environment far into the future.

On Wednesday,Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, warned that the O.H.S.U. research would result in fertility clinics offering genetic upgrades to those able to afford them.

Once those commercial dynamics kick in, we could all too easily find ourselves in a world where some peoples children are considered biologically superior to the rest of us, she said in a statement. We need to ask ourselves whether we want to add that new kind of excuse for extreme social disparities to the ones we already tolerate.

Researchers who worked on the heart-condition experiment appear to have differing views on where their work is headed.

Paula Amato, a reproductiveendocrinologist with O.H.S.U., was excited about the idea of being able to editout diseases before birth. She said that while pre-implantation genetic screening of embryos is now available, it isn't perfect.She talked about how one of her patients went through three cycles of in vitro fertilizationbut all theeggs that were harvested hadthegene mutation that causes diseases.

With gene correction technology, Amatosaid, we could have rescued some of those embryos.

ButIzpisua Belmonte said he is focusing on using thefindings from this study to further research into gene modifications during a pregnancy or after birth into adulthood.

Ifeel that the practical thing to do is deal with the diseases people have, not with the disease they may have, he said.

Mitalipov said he hopes regulators will provide more guidance on what should or should not be allowed.

Otherwise, he said, this technology will be shifted to unregulated areas, which shouldnt be happening.

This story has been updated.

Read more:

A new CRISPR breakthrough could lead to simpler, cheaper disease diagnosis

Scientists debate the ethics of CRISPR

Ethicists urge caution in applying CRISPR to humans

Jennifer Doudna ponders 'what it means to be human' on the frontier of gene editing

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First human embryo editing experiment in US 'corrects' gene for heart condition - Washington Post

TB: Genetic drug resistance tests as good in gauging treatment outcome, death risk as traditional culture-based tests – Medical Xpress

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August 3, 2017 This photomicrograph reveals Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria using acid-fast Ziehl-Neelsen stain; Magnified 1000 X. The acid-fast stains depend on the ability of mycobacteria to retain dye when treated with mineral acid or an acid-alcohol solution such as the Ziehl-Neelsen, or the Kinyoun stains that are carbolfuchsin methods specific for M. tuberculosis. Credit: public domain

Novel molecular tests are gaining popularity as a rapid way to detect genetic mutations that render tuberculosis impervious to drugs. Yet, how well these new tests fare in gauging risk of actual drug failure and patient death has remained unclear.

Now research led by scientists at Harvard Medical School reveals that when it comes to predicting response to treatment and risk of dying, molecular tests that detect resistance to a class of TB drugs known as fluoroquinolones may be as good and even superior to traditional drug-sensitivity tests conducted in lab cultures.

The findings of the research are published Aug. 3 in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Traditional drug-sensitivity testswhich involve exposing a bacterial strain to a series of drugs to determine which medications the bacterium responds tocan take up to eight weeks to yield results. By comparison, point-of-care molecular tests provide results within hours, expediting treatment decisions. However, while these tests can reveal the presence of a genetic mutation within hours, their predictive accuracy in terms of treatment outcomes has not been well established. Past research has indicated that molecular tests may fail to detect resistance mutations in more than 30 percent of strains insensitive to the drug moxifloxacin, which has fueled anxiety about their reliability as resistance detectors.

"Culture-based testing is still considered the gold standard for diagnosing TB resistance," said study lead investigator Maha Farhat, assistant professor of biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School and a pulmonary expert at Massachusetts General Hospital.

"However, our results should provide reassuring evidence that molecular tests, which are faster in detecting resistance mutations, are just as reliable, if not better, in predicting overall treatment outcome as a result of such resistance-causing gene alterations in patients who fail treatment with fluoroquinolones."

The researchers caution their study was relatively small171 patientsand further research is needed to tease out the predictive accuracy of molecular versus standard lab tests in other forms of drug-resistant TB. However, they researchers added, the data provide compelling early evidence that molecular tests could soon become a mainstayand a much faster alternative to traditional testingin informing drug choice and predicting the clinical course of a patient's infection.

"Widespread implementation of molecular tests to guide regimen development is critical to stemming transmission ofand illness and death due todrug-resistant forms of tuberculosis," said Carole Mitnick, study senior investigator and associate professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Our findings also affirm the importance that patients with fluoroquinolone-resistant TBwhether it's detected by molecular or culture-based testsneed drug regimens that reflect that diagnosis."

Using cough secretion samples from 171 patients in Lima, Peru, diagnosed with drug-resistant TB and receiving individualized treatment regiments, researchers compared the performance of molecular tests against traditional culture-based testing in detecting resistance to fluoroquinolones, a class of drugs critical for treating multidrug and extensively drug-resistant forms of the disease. Multi-drug resistant TB is defined as disease that does not respond to at least two of the first-line drugs used to treat the infection. Extensively drug-resistant TB is infection that fails to respond to first-line therapies and drugs used as second-line of defense.

Of the 171 samples, 44 carried a genetic mutation known to render TB resistant to one of several fluoroquinolone drugs. Researchers analyzed two types of genetic mutations that lend TB resistant to fluoroquinolonehigh-resistance gene variants as well as gene variants with intermediate level of resistance. Patients whose TB strains harbored the high-resistance mutations were three times more likely to respond poorly to treatment and succumb to the disease than patients whose TB showed no resistance-causing mutations. There were no meaningful differences in outcomes between patients with intermediate mutations and those with none, the analysis showed.

There were no appreciable differences in the chance for treatment failure or death based on the type of test used to detect drug resistance. In other words, the researchers said, patients in whom drug resistance was detected by a molecular test faced similar odds of treatment outcome and death risk as did patients in whom drug resistance was detected via traditional drug-sensitivity testing.

Next, researchers compared how well molecular fared in the context of specific medications within the fluoroquinolone family.

Molecular sequencing outperformed standard drug-sensitivity testing among patients whose disease was resistant to ciprofloxacin. Molecular sequencing was an equally accurate predictor of treatment failure for two other fluoroquinolone drugslevofloxacin and moxifloxacin.

To eliminate the chance that factors other than the type of test being used would influence the results, the researchers also analyzed individual patient treatment regimens, disease severity, the presence of other diseases, smoking and nutritional status, and previous TB treatment, among other characteristics.

Explore further: HIV patients showing signs of multidrug resistance in Africa

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TB: Genetic drug resistance tests as good in gauging treatment outcome, death risk as traditional culture-based tests - Medical Xpress

Genetic counseling field to rapidly expand – CNBC

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As a college student at the University of Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio, Megan McMinn studied biology, hoping to one day become a physician's assistant.

But a desire to interact even more with patients led her down a different path in genetic counseling.

"What genetic counseling gave me was a good split between patient care and the hard science research end of things," McMinn said.

At Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pa., McMinn sees about six patients a day, working in oncology. Soon, she'll move onto a cardiology clinic, helping to identify genetic risks for individuals and potentially their families. The system currently has 25 genetic counselors on staff, but anticipates needing hundreds more as genetic testing becomes cheaper and more accessible.

The trend extends far beyond Geisinger, as the field has grown dramatically in the past decade, touching all aspects of health-care as medicine becomes more personalized.

"Genetics permeates everythingthere won't be enough genetic counselors to see every patient who gets genetic information," said Mary Freivogel, president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC).

As a result, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the occupation will grow by 29 percent through 2024, faster than the average for all occupations

"I think [a genetic counselor] will become a key member of the team, discussing with patients and families what to do next, how to figure out how the genome is going to interact with your lifestyle and make decisions about what you want to do medically," said Dr. David Feinberg, president and CEO of Geisinger Health System.

Genetic counselors typically receive a bachelor's degree in biology, social science or a related field, and then go on to receive specialized training. Master's degrees in genetic counseling are offered by programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Genetic Counseling, offered at some 30 schools in the U.S. and Canada, according to the NSGC.

Those who want to be certified as genetic counselors must obtain a master's degree from an accredited program, but do not need to be doctors.

The NSGC is also working to recruit new talent by doing outreach in middle and high schools to let younger students know the field is an option in the future. Pay is competitive as wellon average, counselors make around $80,000 a year, but that can increase up to $250,000 annually depending on specialty, location and expertise, Freivogel said.

Health insurance often pays for genetic counseling, and for genetic testing when recommended by a counselor or doctor. However, it's important to check with insurers before scheduling any tests as coverage levels vary. Cost also varies greatly, for example, as multi-gene cancer panels can range from $300 to $4,000 depending on the type of test, the lab used and whether the patient goes through his or her insurance or pays out of pocket.

And while at-home tests like 23andMe are typically less expensive, those taking them still need to see a genetic counselor to explain their results.

Part of the reason more counselors will be needed in the future at Geisinger is because the health system is home to the MyCode Community Health Initiative, one of the largest biobanks of human DNA samples of its kind, according to Amy Sturm, director of Cardiovascular Genomic Counseling at Geisinger. The project has consent from more than 150,000 patients to participate in having their entire DNA code sequenced and synced with their electronic medical records, to look for new causes of disease and different ways to treat conditions.

"We are figuring out and researching the best way to deliver this information back to our patients and also back to families with the ultimate goal of preventing disease and improving the healthcare system," Sturm said.

Keeping up with the latest in genomics, where new developments happen almost daily, can be a challenge. Yet counselors like McMinn say the ability to impact more than just the patient by studying the genome makes the job well worth it.

"We are able to bring to the forefront the fact that we're not just taking care of the patient, but we're taking care of the entire family," McMinn said.

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Genetic counseling field to rapidly expand - CNBC

Don’t fear the rise of superbabies. Worry about who will own genetic engineering technology. – Chicago Tribune

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Seen any clone armies in your backyard lately? Probably not. This might surprise you if you are old enough to remember the ethical panic that greeted the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, in Scotland 21 years ago.

The cloned creature set off a crazy overreaction, with fears of clone armies, re-creating the dead, and a host of other horrors, monsters, abuses and terrors none of which has come to pass. That is why it is so important, amid all the moral hand-wringing about what could happen as human genetic engineering emerges, to keep our ethical eye on the right ball. Freaking out over impending superbabies and mutant humans with the powers of comic book characters is not what is needed.

An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University, has used genetic engineering on human sperm and a pre-embryo. The group is doing basic research to figure out if new forms of genetic engineering might be able to prevent or repair terrible hereditary diseases.

How close are they to making freakish superpeople using their technology? About as close as we are to traveling intergalactically using current rocket technology.

So what should we be worrying about as this rudimentary but promising technique tries to get off the launch pad?

First and foremost, oversight of what is going on. Congress, in its infinite wisdom, has banned federal funding for genetic engineering of sperm, eggs, pre-embryos or embryos. That means everything goes on in the private or philanthropic world here or overseas, without much guidance. We need clear rules with teeth to keep anyone from trying to go too fast or deciding to try to cure anything in an embryo intended to become an actual human being without rock-solid safety data.

Second, we need to determine who should own the techniques for genetic engineering. Important patent fights are underway among the technology's inventors. That means people smell lots of money. And that means it is time to talk about who gets to own what and charge what, lest we reinvent the world of the $250,000 drug in this area of medicine.

Finally, human genetic engineering needs to be monitored closely: all experiments registered, all data reported on a public database and all outcomes good and bad made available to all scientists and anyone else tracking this area of research. Secrecy is the worst enemy that human genetic engineering could possibly have.

Let your great-great-grandkids fret about whether they want to try to make a perfect baby. Today we need to worry about who will own genetic engineering technology, how we can oversee what is being done with it and how safe it needs to be before it is used to try to prevent or fix a disease.

That is plenty to worry about.

Arthur L. Caplan is head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University School of Medicine.

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Don't fear the rise of superbabies. Worry about who will own genetic engineering technology. - Chicago Tribune

Man’s best mend Gene therapy reverses muscular dystrophy … – Digital Trends

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Why it matters to you

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a horrible disease which slowly attacks every muscle in the body. Gene therapy could help treat it -- whether you're a dog or a human.

As difficult as it is when our beloved pet dogs get old, its a whole lot worse if their decline is the result of a horrible disease like Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic disorder characterized by progressive muscle degeneration and weakness. Fortunately, a team of gene-editing researchers from France and the U.K. have been working to develop gene therapy as an answer and its one that could help humans, too.

Their solution involves using gene therapy to restore muscle strength and stabilize clinical symptoms. This is achieved by way of a shortened version of the dystrophin gene, containing just 4,000 base pairs, which is combined with a viral vector and injected into patients.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a debilitating muscle-wasting disease affecting young boys and male animals, which is caused by inheritance of a damaged gene, George Dickson, professor of molecular cell biology at University of London, told Digital Trends. There is currently no very effective cure. Our work has involved producing a healthy functioning copy of the damaged gene in the lab, and then using a harmless virus to carry the gene into the affected muscles, a so-called gene therapy.

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The gene treatment has so far been tested on twelve golden retrievers affected by Duchenne muscular dystrophy. After a single dose, the dogs dystrophin production the protein responsible for maintaining the integrity and strength of muscles returned to its normal levels. Best of all, the trial was carried out a few years back, and all signs point to this being a lasting treatment. A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

We now have treated a number of dogs affected by this condition with a single round of gene therapy, Dickson continued. At the correct dose, the results have been very encouraging with dogs looking very active and healthy over 3 years after the treatment. The treatment involves a simple intravenous infusion, a one-off treatment, and we have been very pleased and quite surprised at how effective the gene therapy has been given that muscle is a major tissue spread all over the body.

Next up, the researchers hope to extrapolate the findings to human children, since they they are roughly the same weight and display similar clinical symptoms to canines.

The goal is to expand this gene therapy treatment into human patients, boys suffering from the Duchenne muscular dystrophy disease, Dickson said. We have to scale up production of the gene therapy medicine for human use, complete more safety tests, and then embark on recruiting patients into full-scale clinical trials.

Should all go according to plan, itll be another reminder of why gene therapy is the future of medicine as we know it.

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Man's best mend Gene therapy reverses muscular dystrophy ... - Digital Trends

Agilis forms joint venture to advance gene therapy vectors … – FierceBiotech

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Agilis Biotherapeutics has formed a joint venture with Japans Gene Therapy Research Institution (GTRI). The alliance gives Agilis a base in Japan and a partnership with a fellow CNS specialist to support its development of adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors and gene therapies.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Agilis set up the joint venture using a grant from the Japanese government. The agreement will establish an AAV manufacturing facility in Japan, from where Agilis and GTRI will work on vectors using Sf9 baculovirus and HEK293 mammalian cell systems. Agilis and GTRI plan to develop and manufacture AAV gene therapy vectors through the joint venture.

Agilis and GTRI also plan is to collaborate on the development and commercialization of certain CNS gene therapies.

GTRIs background suggests it is well-equipped to contribute to the project. The Japanese company grew out of the work of Shin-ichi Muramatsu, M.D., a scientist who sequenced AAV3 in the 1990s before going on to create AAVs designed to cross the blood-brain barrier. GTRI is working on gene therapies against diseases including Alzheimers, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Parkinsons that build on this research into AAVs.

Both biotechs are developing gene therapies to treat aromatic l-amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) deficiency. GTRI aims to get its candidate into the clinic in 2019. Agilispicked up its candidate from a university in Taiwan, which enrolled 18 patients in two clinical trials of the gene therapy. Those trials have taken the candidate toward a pivotal trial.

These programs may benefit from the joint venture. Working out of the Life Science Innovation Center of Kawasaki City, the joint venture intends to develop and produce AAVs for use in gene therapies against AADC deficiency and Parkinson's.

The joint venture marks the second time Agilis has looked outside of its walls for help with AAV vectors. Late in 2013, Agilis struck a deal with Intrexon that gave it access to the latters vector platform. Agilis is using the vectors to develop a treatment for Friedreichs ataxia.

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Philly gene therapy company reports early promising hemophilia A results – Philly.com

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Shares of Spark Therapeuticssurged nearly 20 percentWednesday after the Philadelphia gene therapy company revealed promisingresults from a study of its potential one-time therapy for hemophilia A.

Preliminary data from a Phase 1/2 dose-escalation clinical trial of SPK-8011showed human proof-of-concept in three participants, the drug maker said.

The encouraging start for hemophilia A reinforces the strength of our gene-therapy platform and positions us well to potentially transform the current treatment approach for this life-altering disease with a onetime intervention, said Katherine A. High, Sparks president and chief scientific officer.

Hemophilia is a genetic disorder caused by missing or defective factor VIII, a clotting protein. About 20,000 Americans live with hemophilia. The way the medical community has addressed the disorder is to ensure that patients have continuous injections of blood-clotting factors. Patients infuse themselves two to three times a week for the rest of their lives.

In the study, three patientsreceived infusions of vector genomes and no serious adverse events were reported, Spark said. One person has been followed for 23 weeks and another for 12 weeks. The initial dose created stable factor VIII levels with no spontaneous bleeds, the company said.

For a third patient, the genome dose was doubled and that persons factor VIII activity level is tracking proportionally higher, consistent with the dose escalation. So far, the drug has been safe and well tolerated, with no reports of serious adverse events, no thrombotic events, no immune responses, and no elevations of liver enzymes, the company said.

The data must be considered preliminary and one must be careful not to overinterpret them, said Cowen & Co. analyst Phil Nadeau in a client update. That being said, we find the results quite encouraging.

Despite a low starting dose, the gene therapy produced stable and clinically meaningful factor levels sufficient to prevent spontaneous bleeds in patients, Nadeau said. Moreover, the safety profile is clean thus far. The results suggest the company may be able to achieve greater factor levels at higher doses. We find SPK-8011s early data encouraging, and think they suggest that Spark has a viable and competitive hemophilia A program.

Spark will present full data at a medical conference in December.

The hemophilia A results, though early, along with previously reported data for the companys hemophilia B candidate, confirm Sparks thought leadership in hemophilia gene therapy, and the likelihood of achieving a leading position in the overall hemophilia market (currently $7 billion, growing to $14 billion in 2030), Chardan Capital Markets analyst Gbola Amusa said in a client note. Chardan raised its peak earnings forecast for Sparks hemophilia A therapy to $1.3 billion, up from $397 million.

Sparks lead drug, a treatment for rare inherited blindness, is under priority review with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, with a possible approval date of Jan. 12, 2018. If approved, it would be the first gene therapy for a genetic disease in the United States.

Spark, which was spun out of Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, reported a second-quarter financial loss of $74.4 million in the quarter ended June 30, or $2.40 per share, on revenue of $1.5 million from itscollaboration with Pfizer Inc. for hemophilia B.

Sparks shares have risen 58 percent since Jan. 1 and 37 percent in the last 12 months. The stock closed up 19.72 percent, or $13.13, to $79.72.

Published: August 2, 2017 1:12 PM EDT

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In Breakthrough, Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation From Genes in Human Embryos – New York Times

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Weve always said in the past gene editing shouldnt be done, mostly because it couldnt be done safely, said Richard Hynes, a cancer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-led the committee. Thats still true, but now it looks like its going to be done safely soon, he said, adding that the research is a big breakthrough.

What our report said was, once the technical hurdles are cleared, then there will be societal issues that have to be considered and discussions that are going to have to happen. Nows the time.

Scientists at Oregon Health and Science University, with colleagues in California, China and South Korea, reported that they repaired dozens of embryos, fixing a mutation that causes a common heart condition that can lead to sudden death later in life.

If embryos with the repaired mutation were allowed to develop into babies, they would not only be disease-free but also would not transmit the disease to descendants.

The researchers averted two important safety problems: They produced embryos in which all cells not just some were mutation-free, and they avoided creating unwanted extra mutations.

It feels a bit like a one small step for (hu)mans, one giant leap for (hu)mankind moment, Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist who helped discover the gene-editing method used, called CRISPR-Cas9, said in an email.

Scientists tried two techniques to remove a dangerous mutation. In the first, genetic scissors were inserted into fertilized eggs. The mutation was repaired in some of the resulting embryos but not always in every cell. The second method worked better: By injecting the scissors along with the sperm into the egg, more embryos emerged with repaired genes in every cell.

When gene-editing components were introduced into a fertilized egg, some embryos contained a patchwork of repaired and unrepaired cells.

Gene-editing

components inserted

after fertilization

Cell with

unrepaired

gene

Mosaicism in

later-stage embryo

When gene-editing components were introduced with sperm to the egg before fertilization, more embryos had repaired mutations in every cell.

Gene-editing components

inserted together with sperm,

before fertilization

In 42 of 58

embryos

tested, all

cells were

repaired

Uniform

later-stage embryo

When gene-editing components were introduced into a fertilized egg, some embryos contained a patchwork of repaired and unrepaired cells.

Gene-editing

components inserted

after fertilization

Cell with

unrepaired

gene

Mosaicism in

later-stage embryo

When gene-editing components were introduced with sperm to the egg before fertilization, more embryos had repaired mutations in every cell.

Gene-editing

components inserted

together with sperm,

before fertilization

In 42 of 58

embryos

tested, all

cells were

repaired

Uniform

later-stage embryo

I expect these results will be encouraging to those who hope to use human embryo editing for either research or eventual clinical purposes, said Dr. Doudna, who was not involved in the study.

Much more research is needed before the method could be tested in clinical trials, currently impermissible under federal law. But if the technique is found to work safely with this and other mutations, it might help some couples who could not otherwise have healthy children.

Potentially, it could apply to any of more than 10,000 conditions caused by specific inherited mutations. Researchers and experts said those might include breast and ovarian cancer linked to BRCA mutations, as well as diseases like Huntingtons, Tay-Sachs, beta thalassemia, and even sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis or some cases of early-onset Alzheimers.

You could certainly help families who have been blighted by a horrible genetic disease, said Robin Lovell-Badge, a professor of genetics and embryology at the Francis Crick Institute in London, who was not involved in the study.

You could quite imagine that in the future the demand would increase. Maybe it will still be small, but for those individuals it will be very important.

The researchers also discovered something unexpected: a previously unknown way that embryos repair themselves.

In other cells in the body, the editing process is carried out by genes that copy a DNA template introduced by scientists. In these embryos, the sperm cells mutant gene ignored that template and instead copied the healthy DNA sequence from the egg cell.

We were so surprised that we just couldnt get this template that we made to be used, said Shoukhrat Mitalipov, director of the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at Oregon Health and Science University and senior author of the study. It was very new and unusual.

The research significantly improves upon previous efforts. In three sets of experiments in China since 2015, researchers seldom managed to get the intended change into embryonic genes.

And some embryos had cells that did not get repaired a phenomenon called mosaicism that could result in the mutation being passed on as well as unplanned mutations that could cause other health problems.

In February, a National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine committee endorsed modifying embryos, but only to correct mutations that cause a serious disease or condition and when no reasonable alternatives exist.

Sheldon Krimsky, a bioethicist at Tufts University, said the main uncertainty about the new technique was whether reasonable alternatives to gene editing already exist.

As the authors themselves noted, many couples use pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to screen embryos at fertility clinics, allowing only healthy ones to be implanted. For these parents, gene editing could help by repairing mutant embryos so that more disease-free embryos would be available for implantation.

Hank Greely, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford, said creating fewer defective embryos also would reduce the number discarded by fertility clinics, which some people oppose.

The larger issue is so-called germline engineering, which refers to changes made to embryo that are inheritable.

If youre in one camp, its a horror to be avoided, and if youre in the other camp, its desirable, Dr. Greely said. Thats going to continue to be the fight, whether its a feature or a bug.

For now, the fight is theoretical. Congress has barred the Food and Drug Administration from considering clinical trials involving germline engineering. And the National Institutes of Health is prohibited from funding gene-editing research in human embryos. (The new study was funded by Oregon Health and Science University, the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea, and several foundations.)

The authors say they hope that once the method is optimized and studied with other mutations, officials in the United States or another country will allow regulated clinical trials.

I think it could be widely used, if its proven safe, said Dr. Paula Amato, a co-author of the study and reproductive endocrinologist at O.H.S.U. Besides creating more healthy embryos for in vitro fertilization, she said, it could be used when screening embryos is not an option or to reduce arduous IVF cycles for women.

Dr. Mitalipov has pushed the scientific envelope before, generating ethical controversy with a so-called three-parent baby procedure that would place the nucleus of the egg of a woman with defective cellular mitochondria into the egg from a healthy woman. The F.D.A. has not approved trials of the method, but Britain may begin one soon.

The new study involves hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a disease affecting about one in 500 people, which can cause sudden heart failure, often in young athletes.

It is caused by a mutation in a gene called MYBPC3. If one parent has a mutated copy, there is a 50 percent chance of passing the disease to children.

Using sperm from a man with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and eggs from 12 healthy women, the researchers created fertilized eggs. Injecting CRISPR-Cas9, which works as a genetic scissors, they snipped out the mutated DNA sequence on the male MYBPC3 gene.

They injected a synthetic healthy DNA sequence into the fertilized egg, expecting that the male genome would copy that sequence into the cut portion. That is how this gene-editing process works in other cells in the body, and in mouse embryos, Dr. Mitalipov said.

Instead, the male gene copied the healthy sequence from the female gene. The authors dont know why it happened.

Maybe human sex cells or gametes evolved to repair themselves because they are the only cells that transmit genes to offspring and need special protection, said Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a co-author and geneticist at the Salk Institute.

Out of 54 embryos, 36 emerged mutation-free, a significant improvement over natural circumstances in which about half would not have the mutation. Another 13 embryos also emerged without the mutation, but not in every cell.

The researchers tried to eliminate the problem by acting at an earlier stage, injecting the egg with the sperm and CRISPR-Cas9 simultaneously, instead of waiting to inject CRISPR-Cas9 into the already fertilized egg.

That resulted in 42 of 58 embryos, 72 percent, with two mutation-free copies of the gene in every cell. They also found no unwanted mutations in the embryos, which were destroyed after about three days.

The method was not perfect. The remaining 16 embryos had unwanted additions or deletions of DNA. Dr. Mitalipov said he believed fine-tuning the process would make at least 90 percent of embryos mutation-free.

And for disease-causing mutations on maternal genes, the same process should occur, with the fathers healthy genetic sequence being copied, he said.

But the technique will not work if both parents have two defective copies. Then, scientists would have to determine how to coax one gene to copy a synthetic DNA sequence, Dr. Mitalipov said.

Otherwise, he said, it should work with many diseases, a variety of different heritable mutations.

R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at University of Wisconsin at Madison, who led the committee with Dr. Hynes, said the new discovery could also yield more information about causes of infertility and miscarriages.

She doubts a flood of couples will have edited children.

Nobodys going to do this for trivial reasons, Dr. Charo said. Sex is cheaper and its more fun than IVF, so unless youve got a real need, youre not going to use it.

A version of this article appears in print on August 3, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Scientists Repair A Risky Mutation In Human Embryo.

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In Breakthrough, Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation From Genes in Human Embryos - New York Times

Gene Therapy Could Cure Muscular Dystrophy for Dogs and Humans – Edgy Labs (blog)

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There is new hope for muscular dystrophy patients as researchers, using gene therapy, successfully reversed the disease in dogs.

Gene therapy aims to replace missing or defective genes in the DNA of a given cell.

The technique has evolved over the years to become a viable therapy thats safe and effective, opening new paths in the management of many difficult diseases.

Not only can gene editing be used to treat pathologies, but it can also to prevent them. Only, were not there just yet.

Muscular dystrophy is the term used for a group of diseases in which musculature weakens and progressively degenerates until the patient loses most, ifnot all of their mobility.

Symptoms of muscular dystrophy often include general muscle weakness and degeneration, stiff joints, coordination and mobility troubles, and frequent falls.

In most cases a congenital condition, muscular dystrophy disorders are rare. Each disorder of muscular dystrophy is associated with distinct genetic mutations. The nature and location of the genetic mutation define the form of muscular dystrophy.

Although they can occur at any age, the onset of most MD disorders starts during childhood, and usually, affected persons dont live past 30 years of age, especially with particularly aggressive forms of the disease like Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

The most common and most studied form of muscular dystrophy is Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), which affects 1 in 5,000 children at birth, and especially boys (1/3500).

Theres hope for children and other DMD patients, as a scientific experiment suggests that the disease could be reversed and a cure might be on the way.

An international research team, comprised of scientists from Genethon and Insermin France and the Royal Hollowayat the University of London UK, announced theyd managed to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) with gene therapy in dogs.

Their findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.

The team has shown the efficacy of gene therapy in restoring normal muscle function in 12 dogs (Golden Retrievers) affected by canine DMD, with a stabilization of clinical symptoms.

A video of these dogs before and after treatment can be found here.

Researchers injected highly functional micro-dystrophin genes (a short version of the dystrophin gene) through a drug vector (harmless virus) so that the repaired gene could produce the protein involved in muscle function.

2 years after the injection of the drug, researchers observed that all dogs demonstrated signs of significant restoration of their muscles and regained their motor skills. Not to mention that the same dogs werent expected to live past the age of 6 months.

Now, with the method has been shown to be safe and efficient in animals, the next logical step would human trials.

For the many people affected by this debilitating disease, this is a miraculous development.

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Gene Therapy Could Cure Muscular Dystrophy for Dogs and Humans - Edgy Labs (blog)

The Futurist: Fishing for the right talent – Human Resources Online

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Are you using the best vendors and HR solutions providers in Asia? Human Resources only recommends companies listed in the HR Vendors of the Year Awards.

Many business leaders believe that Asia will spearhead the global economic growth for decades to come. Organisations from around the globe are hoping to get a slice of the Asian market, making it one of the hottest destinations for top talent.

Talent Fishers was set up in 2007 in China to cater to a growing demand from foreign-invested companies for human capital solutions in Asia.

When conducting a cross-cultural search, matching candidates to the right position is not enough. We dont only find the right candidates, we are here to advise clients on the best practices for Asian markets.

The mission of Talent Fishers is changing peoples lives by offering them better career and better responsibilities, and we change a companys future by finding the right people for the right roles, enabling the company to better develop.

With the use of the latest technology such as databases, job boards and social networks, a huge amount of time is being saved in extracting data on suitable candidates, but Talent Fishers is committed to taking things to the next level.

We believe having in-depth conversations with our candidates puts them in the best position to be successful, and these new technologies are not able to help consultants understand candidates better.

Our consultants ask candidates the right questions to learn about their professional backgrounds and find out who they really are and what they really want in life.

When conducting a search, understanding the organisation is just as important. Every company has a different culture, DNA and history. We combine all those factors to match an individual who fits in with the organisations culture and DNA at the right time.

Sometimes, the most talented individual might not be the best fit for a specific role at a specific time.

For our consultants to get to know the candidates, a face-to-face meeting is often the best way to communicate. With that being said, I believe technology such as virtual reality will bring a huge impact to the executive search landscape by allowing individuals to hold in-depth conversations without having to be seated in the same room.

I hope with VR technology, I will be able to interview candidates from overseas with the same quality of interaction as we have sitting in the same room.

In todays business world, people are more prone to move to explore another culture. As a result, I foresee top talent from different backgrounds gathering to work in an expertise hub.

There will be different expertise hubs set up around the world and I think Hong Kong is an interesting place for financial services-related functions to set up an expertise hub.

The June 2017 issue of Human Resources magazine is a special edition, bringing you interviews with 12 HR leaders, with their predictions on the future of HR.

ReadThe Futuristor subscribe here.

Are you using the best vendors and HR solutions providers in Asia? Human Resources only recommends companies listed in the HR Vendors of the Year Awards.

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The Futurist: Fishing for the right talent - Human Resources Online

Anders Srman-Nilsson (LLB/EMBA), global futurist, speaker and author – InvestorDaily

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Anders Srman-Nilsson (LLB / EMBA) is a global futurist and innovation strategist who helps leaders decode trends, decipher whats next and turn provocative questions into proactive strategies. With an average of 240 international travel days a year, Anders view is that the future and the now are converging in a city or start-up near you, giving the curious, the creative and the courageous a competitive and sustainable edge. At the same time, that same future contains fearsome forecasts for futurephobes.

This Swedish-Australian futurist has shared the stage with Hillary Clinton, Nobel laureates, and European and Australian heads of state. He is an active member of TEDGlobal, has keynoted at TEDx in the United States and Australia, was nominated to the World Economic Forums Young Global Leaders in 2015, and was the keynote speaker at the G20s Y20 Summit in Australia.

His thought leadership has been featured in international media like Monocle, Business Insider, Sky News Business, Financial Review, CIO Magazine and Boss. He is the author of the books Digilogue: how to win the digital minds and analogue hearts of tomorrows customers and Thinque Funky: Upgrade Your Thinking, and his most recent book Seamless: the futurephiles guide to leading digital adaptation and human transformation.

His presentations are meticulously researched, highly energetic and always fascinating with content tailored to the audience, which is why clients like Apple, Cisco, Mercedes Benz, Hilton, SAP, Gartner and Macquarie Bank have turned to Anders over the years to help them turn research into foresight and business impact.

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Anders Srman-Nilsson (LLB/EMBA), global futurist, speaker and author - InvestorDaily

A Star System Only 10 Light-Years Away is Our … – futurism.com

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In BriefOnly a little more than 10 light-years away is a glimpse intothe past of our solar system. The nearby star system resembles anapproximation of what our solar system may have looked like in itsearly development.

Astronomers are understandably fascinated with the Epsilon Eridani system. For one, this star system is in close proximity to our own, at a distance of about 10.5 light-years from the Solar System. Second, it has been known for some time that it contains two asteroid belts and a large debris disk. And third, astronomers have suspected for many years that this star may also have a system of planets.

On top of all that, a new study by a team of astronomers has indicated that Epsilon Eridani may be what our own Solar System was like during its younger days. Relying on NASAs Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) aircraft, the team conducted a detailed analysis of the system that showed how it has an architecture remarkably similar to what astronomer believe the Solar System once looked like.

Led by Kate Su an Associate Astronomer with the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona the team includes researchers and astronomers from the Department of Physics & Astronomy of Iowa State University, the Astrophysical Institute and University Observatory at the University of Jena (Germany), and NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Ames Research Center.

For the sake of their study the results of which were published in The Astronomical Journal under the title The Inner 25 AU Debris Distribution in the Epsilon Eri System the team relied on data obtained by a flight of SOFIA in January 2015. Combined with detailed computer modeling and research that went on for years, they were able to make new determinations about the structure of the debris disk.

As already noted, previous studies of Epsilon Eridani indicated that the system is surrounded by rings made up of materials that are basically leftovers from the process of planetary formation. Such rings consist of gas and dust, and are believed to contain many small rocky and icy bodies as well like the Solar Systems own Kuiper Belt, which orbits our Sun beyond Neptune.

Careful measurements of the disks motion has also indicated that a planet with nearly the same mass as Jupiter circles the star at a distance comparable to Jupiters distance from the Sun. However, based on prior data obtained by the NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists were unable to determine the position of warm material within the disk i.e. the dust and gas which gave rise to two models.

In one, warm material is concentrated into two narrow rings of debris that orbit the star at distances corresponding respectively to the Main Asteroid Belt and Uranus in our Solar System. According to this model, the largest planet in the system would likely be associated with an adjacent debris belt. In the other, warm material is in a broad disk, is not concentrated into asteroid belt-like rings, and is not associated with any planets in the inner region.

Using the new SOFIA images, Su and her team were able to determine that the warm material around Epsilon Eridani is arranged like the first model suggests. In essence, it is in at least one narrow belt, rather than in a broad continuous disk. As Su explained in a NASA press release:

The high spatial resolution of SOFIA combined with the unique wavelength coverage and impressive dynamic range of the FORCAST camera allowed us to resolve the warm emission around eps Eri, confirming the model that located the warm material near the Jovian planets orbit. Furthermore, a planetary mass object is needed to stop the sheet of dust from the outer zone, similar to Neptunes role in our solar system. It really is impressive how eps Eri, a much younger version of our solar system, is put together like ours.

These observations were made possible thanks to SOFIAs on-board telescopes, which have a greater diameter than Spitzer 2.5 meters (100 inches) compared to Spitzers 0.85 m (33.5 inches). This allowed for far greater resolution, which the team used to discern details within the Epsilon Eridani system that were three times smaller than what had been observed using the Spitzer data.

In addition, the team made use of SOFIAs powerful mid-infrared camera the Faint Object infraRed CAmera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST). This instrument allowed the team to study the strongest infrared emissions coming from the warm material around the star which are otherwise undetectable by ground-based observatories at wavelengths between 25-40 microns.

These observations further indicate that the Epsilon Eridani system is much like our own, albeit in younger form. In addition to having asteroid belts and a debris disk that is similar to our Main Belt and Kuiper Belt, it appears that it likely has more planets waiting to be found within the spaces between. As such, the study of this system could help astronomers to learn things about the history of our own Solar System.

Massimo Marengo, one of he co-authors of the study, is an Associate Professor with the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Iowa State University. As he explained in a University of Iowa press release:

This star hosts a planetary system currently undergoing the same cataclysmic processes that happened to the solar system in its youth, at the time in which the moon gained most of its craters, Earth acquired the water in its oceans, and the conditions favorable for life on our planet were set.

At the moment, more studies will need to be conducted on this neighboring stars system in order to learn more about its structure and confirm the existence of more planets. And it is expected that the deployment of next-generation instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in October of 2018 will be extremely helpful in that regard.

The prize at the end of this road is to understand the true structure of Epsilon Eridanis out-of-this-world disk, and its interactions with the cohort of planets likely inhabiting its system, Marengo wrote in a newsletter about the project. SOFIA, by its unique ability of capturing infrared light in the dry stratospheric sky, is the closest we have to a time machine, revealing a glimpse of Earths ancient past by observing the present of a nearby young sun.

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First US Human Embryo Gene Editing Experiment Successfully Corrects a Heart Condition – Futurism

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In BriefA study published today in the journal Nature confirms earlierreports of the first-ever successful gene-editing of embryos in theU.S. Though controversial, the treatment could one day be used toaddress any of the 10,000 disorders linked to just a single geneticerror. Correcting Mutant Genes

Last week, reports circulated that doctors had successfully edited a gene in a human embryo the first time such a thing had been done in the United States. The remarkable achievement confirmed the powerful potential of CRISPR, the worlds most efficient and effective gene-editing tool. Now, details of the research have been published inNature.

The procedure involved correcting the DNA of one-cell embryos using CRISPRto remove the MYBPC3 gene. That gene is known to cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a heart disease that affects 1 out of 500 people. HCM has no known cure or treatment as its symptoms dont manifest until the disease causes sudden death through cardiac arrest.

The researchers started with human embryos created from 12 healthy female donors and sperm from a male volunteer who carried the MYBOC3 gene. The defective gene was cut out using CRISPR around the time the sperm was injected into the eggs.

As a result, as the embryos divided and grew, many repaired themselves using the non-edited genes from the genetic materials of the female donors, and in total, 72 percent of the cells that formed appeared to be corrected. The researchers didnt notice any off-target effects on the DNA, either.

The researchers told The Washington Postthat their workwas fairly basic. Really, we didnt edit anything, neither did we modify anything, explained Shoukhrat Mitalipov, lead author and a researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University. Our program is toward correcting mutant genes.

Basicor not, the development is remarkable.By using this technique, its possible to reduce the burden of this heritable disease on the family and eventually the human population, Mitalipov said in an OHSU press release.

However, gene editing is a controversial area of study, and the researchers work included changes to the germ line, meaning the changes could be passed down to future generations. To be clear, though, the embryos were allowed to grow for only a few days and none were implanted into a womb (nor was that ever the researchers intention).

In fact, current legislation in the U.S. prohibits the implantation of edited embryos. Thework conducted by these researchers waswell within the guidelines set by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on the use of CRISPR to edit human genes.

University of Wisconsin-Madison bioethicist Alta Charo thinks that the benefits of this potential treatment outweigh all concerns. What this represents is a fascinating, important, and rather impressive incremental step toward learning how to edit embryos safely and precisely, she told The WashingtonPost. [N]o matter what anybody says, this is not the dawn of the era of the designer baby.

Before the technique could be truly beneficial, regulations must be developed that provide clearer guidelines, according to Mitalipov. If not, this technology will be shifted to unregulated areas, which shouldnt be happening, he explained.

More than 10,000 disorders have been linked to just a single genetic error, and as the researchers continue with their work, their next target is BRCA, a gene associated with breast cancer growth.

Mitalipov hopes that their technique could one day be used to treat a wide-range of genetic diseases and save the lives of millions of people. After all, treating a single gene at the embryonic stage is far more efficient that changing a host of them in adults.

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First US Human Embryo Gene Editing Experiment Successfully Corrects a Heart Condition - Futurism

In Less Than 2 Days, Bitcoin Cash Becomes Third Biggest Cryptocurrency – Futurism

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In Brief Barely 48 hours since its spin-off from the Bitcoin blockchain, Bitcoin Cash has already surged past other cryptocurrencies to become the third-biggest in terms of market capitalization. How the currency will fare over time is still up for debate, as it still lacks support from several mining pools and major exchanges. [Un]Expected Boom

Less thantwo days aftersplitting from the main Bitcoin network, Bitcoin Cash[BCC] now ranks third amongst the worlds most valuable cryptocoins. The budding cryptocurrency has reached a market cap of more $7.7 billion as of this writing, overtaking Ripples $6.7 billion market cap.

With a market cap of alittle more than $44 billion, the original Bitcoin currency is leading the market, while Ethereum comes in second at $20.9 billion. In terms of value per coin, Bitcoin Cash is even ahead of Ethereums current valuation of $223.54, with a per unit value of $470.27.

The surge in Bitcoin Cash comes despite a lack of support from several mining pools and major exchanges like Coinbase and BitMEX. Some Coinbase users are eventhreatening to sue the exchangefor not recognizing the currency.

Blockchain Globals recently re-opened Australian Cryptocurrency Exchange, on the other hand, is confirming Bitcoin Cash trades and claims to have seen a huge demand for the currency. We are receiving a lot of off-market orders for bitcoin cash theyre exploding! venture partner Sebastian Quinn-Watson told Business Insider.

The creation of Bitcoin Cash was the result of anongoing debate regarding how to scale Bitcoin blockchain transactions, and experts are currently dividedon how the split will ultimately play out.

For now, this sudden increase in value is understandable. Bitcoin Cash carries all the history of the original Bitcoin platform up until the fork on August 1, which means anyone with Bitcoin now has an equalamount of Bitcoin Cash.

Eventually, Bitcoin Cash should be able to stabilize itself for market exchanges, but right now, speculation is causing a surge in initial interest. People are selling their Bitcoin positions and buying Bitcoin Cash as a proposition that it is the new coin that has more value in the future, explainedQuinn-Watson. Its a bit speculative.

No one knows for surehow long Bitcoin Cash can sustain this upshot. As with other digital currencies, Bitcoin Cashs value depends mainly on how much value investors assign to it and how easily it can be used for real-world transactions.

Theres no infrastructure available out of the box to support BCC, Fran Strajnar, co-founder and CEO of Brave New Coin,told CNBC. The network needs further support and infrastructure needs to be as easy as Bitcoin; otherwise, its over for BCC.

Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in a number of cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.

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In Less Than 2 Days, Bitcoin Cash Becomes Third Biggest Cryptocurrency - Futurism

New Research Suggests We Can Stop Human Cells From Aging – Futurism

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In Brief A study by a team from the Houston Methodist Research Institute showed the potential of a treatment that targets telomeres in chromosomes to reverse cellular aging. Lab tests using cells from patients with genetic disease causing accelerated aging proved to be promising. The Mechanisms of Aging

For a phenomenon that affects all living beings, theres nothing simple about aging. Experimentsthat focus on understanding aging are as numerous and varied as the aspects of the subject itself. Some look at the roles that the brain or the mitochondria have on aging, while others examine some protein or another. A study from the Houston Methodist Research Institute(HMRI) is focusing on chromosomes.

Specifically, the team led by cardiovascular sciences department chair John Cooke, looked at telomeres the region located at the tip of every chromosome, thelength of which supposedly corresponds to age. Cookes team studied the cells of children with a fatalgenetic disease called progeria that causes rapid aging.

In their study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the researchers discovered that extending the shortened telomeres effectively halted aging in the isolated sample cells taken from the patients with progeria. What weve shown is that when we reverse the process of the telomere shortening in the cells from these children and lengthen them, it can reverse a lot of the problems associated with aging, Cooke said in an HMRI press release.

Cookes team isnt the first to associate telomeres with aging. The field, however, isnt considered that precise yet. Medical genetics professor Peter Lansdorp at the University of British Columbia told Motherboardthat theres still a lot to learn in this area. It is not hard to find a 70-year-old with longer telomeres than a teenager, he said, noting that the decline in telomeres works as a tumor suppression mechanism for the body.

Furthermore, since the study was limited to cell samples taken from just 17 patients on a lab dish, the researchers still need to see if it could work in cells functioning inside the body. The next step is to deliver the same treatment directly into patients, beginning with children suffering from progeria.

Still, Cooke is hopeful. We can at least stall or slow down accelerated aging, and thats what were working toward, he said in the press release. I want to develop a therapy for these children. Its an unmet need.

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New Research Suggests We Can Stop Human Cells From Aging - Futurism

Hyperloop One Passes Second Full System Test Faster Than Ever Before – Futurism

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In Brief Hyperloop One has just put its tech through another test, which it passed with flying colors by going 308 km/h (192 mph) faster than ever before. So, how long until we see the technology implemented, and what challenges will it have to overcome to get to this stage? Hyperloop One tests are growing ever more impressive, reaching faster speeds and, in the process, showing us what the technology is really capable of. During thelatest evaluation, on Saturday, the pod reached speeds of 308 km/h (192 mph) down the companys 500-meter (1,640-foot) test track in Nevada, before gliding to a graceful halt.

This is a remarkable improvement on the companys first full system test earlier this summer. During this outing, it traveled farther by a factor of 4.5 times, reached speeds 2.7 times faster, and achieved 3.5 times the horsepower.

Shervin Pishevar, Hyperloop One co-founder, told CNBC, Weve got the Hyperloop working. Its the dawn now [] of the commercialization of the hyperloops. Weve got conversations and dialogues with governments around the world.

Pishevar was referring to the worldwide travel he has been undertaking recently. The company is currently looking at various cities in the U.S. to build a loopand is also planning on installing the system in Europe. In fact, Hyperloop One is alreadyundertaking feasibility studies in Finland, Moscow, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, and the U.K.

Despite these successes, there are still hurdles that need to be overcome before we see the transportation system of the future. Most prominently, it will need to achieve the right-of-way allowances, land acquisitions, and regulatory approvals that other means of transportation like the railway enjoy.

However, this announcement gives us a reassuring reminder that the future of transport isnt far away.

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Apple and Cochlear Have Teamed Up to Create iPhone Compatible … – Futurism

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In Brief Apple is leading the way in terms of hearing impaired accessibility with their devices. The tech giant has teamed up with Cochlear to create a new implant that allows the hearing impaired to hear audio from their compatible Apple devices.

Technology and innovation have the power to level the playing field between all kinds of people, including the disabled. One such innovation is helping hearing impaired people better connect with the world and lead fuller lives. Apple has partnered with Cochlear, a company who develops devices that allow the hearing impaired to hear better, or in some cases, for the very first time.

This partnership has led to the development of the Nucleus 7 Sound Processor, which streams audio from a compatible Apple device (iPhones, iPads, iPod touches) directly to a persons implant via Bluetooth technology. These surgically implanted devices give hearing impairedindividuals the power to not only hear activity on theirdevices but also customize the audio.

Apple began by creating a protocol for use by hearing device developers and manufacturers to make devices compatible with Apples products. Apples senior manager for global accessibility policy and initiatives, Sarah Herrlinger, told TechCrunch, We want everybody to use our technology and to say wow my iPhone is the best piece of technology Ive ever used beforewith every iteration of our operating system our goal is to add in new accessibility features in order to expand the support that we can give to people all over the world.

The Hearing Health Foundation estimates that greater than 50 million Americans have experienced hearing loss. This technology aims to help widen the auditory world for a great number of people.

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Apple and Cochlear Have Teamed Up to Create iPhone Compatible ... - Futurism