Category Archives: Transhuman News

In 2007, VGX acquired Advisys for a combination of cash and equity. Luckily, Dr. Kim had been on a fundraising tear for the previous seven years, raising more than $40 million from a wide array of investors, including Japan's Softbank, Korea Development Bank, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. "We learned how to be very creative in utilizing our financial resources, saving cash and so on," he said. "So the Advisys acquisition was straightforward."

Two years later, VGX acquired Inovio, which allowed it to effectively corner the market on electroporation patents. "What Inovio had was the breadth and depth of patent portfolio of the delivery system," Dr. Kim said. Upon completion of the merger in 2011, VGX changed its name to Inovio Pharmaceuticals.

Today, Inovio vaccines for treating breast, lung, pancreatic cancer and Hepatitis C are in Phase I clinical testing, and next year its cervical cancer vaccine will begin phase III testing, the final step to FDA approval. And those are just the lead products. Inovio has a vaccine in the works for nearly every disease that hasn't been eradicated by traditional vaccines.

Read MoreA start-up that solved fracking's dirty problem

Not all of those will come to fruition, of course. But as a man who got two degrees when one would have sufficed, and who acquired two electroporation companies when most would have stopped at one, Dr. Kim knows the value of covering his bases. "We always wanted to have multiples shots on goal," he said. "Not every product is going to work, so we want to make sure our shareholders' risks and benefits are well managed and that we ultimately bring the best therapies to patients."

By Douglas Quenqua, special to CNBC.com

Visit link:
DNA hunters aiming at a single-shot cancer cure

IMAGE:The image shows a droplet of condensed nano-DNA and within it smaller drops of its liquid crystal phase which show up in polarized light on the left. The liquid crystal... view more

Credit: Image courtesy Noel Clark, University of Colorado

The self-organization properties of DNA-like molecular fragments four billion years ago may have guided their own growth into repeating chemical chains long enough to act as a basis for primitive life, says a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of University of Milan.

While studies of ancient mineral formations contain evidence for the evolution of bacteria from 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago -- just half a billion years after the stabilization of Earth's crust -- what might have preceded the formation of such unicellular organisms is still a mystery. The new findings suggest a novel scenario for the non-biological origins of nucleic acids, which are the building blocks of living organisms, said CU-Boulder physics Professor Noel Clark, a study co-author.

A paper on the subject led by Tommaso Bellini of the University of Milan was published in a recent issue of Nature Communications. Other CU-Boulder co-authors of the study include Professor David Walba, Research Associate Yougwooo Yi and Research Assistant Gregory P. Smith. The study was funded by the Grant PRIN Program of the Italian Ministries of Education, Universities and Research and by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The discovery in the 1980's of the ability of RNA to chemically alter its own structure by CU-Boulder Nobel laureate and Distinguished Professor Tom Cech and his research team led to the development of the concept of an "RNA world" in which primordial life was a pool of RNA chains capable of synthesizing other chains from simpler molecules available in the environment. While there now is consensus among origin-of-life researchers that RNA chains are too specialized to have been created as a product of random chemical reactions, the new findings suggest a viable alternative, said Clark.

The new research demonstrates that the spontaneous self-assembly of DNA fragments just a few nanometers in length into ordered liquid crystal phases has the ability to drive the formation of chemical bonds that connect together short DNA chains to form long ones, without the aid of biological mechanisms. Liquid crystals are a form of matter that has properties between those of conventional liquids and those of a solid crystal -- a liquid crystal may flow like a liquid, for example, but its molecules may be oriented more like a crystal.

"Our observations are suggestive of what may have happened on the early Earth when the first DNA-like molecular fragments appeared," said Clark.

For several years the research group has been exploring the hypothesis that the way in which DNA emerged in the early Earth lies in its structural properties and its ability to self-organize. In the pre-RNA world, the spontaneous self-assembly of fragments of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) may have acted as a template for their chemical joining into polymers, which are substances composed of a large number of repeating units.

"The new findings show that in the presence of appropriate chemical conditions, the spontaneous self assembly of small DNA fragments into stacks of short duplexes greatly favors their binding into longer polymers, thereby providing a pre-RNA route to the RNA world," said Clark.

See the original post here:
New study hints at spontaneous appearance of primordial DNA

Montclair State University scientists have confirmed the jellyfish that washed up on the Jersey Shorelast year were venomous and dangerous sea creatures, reports say.

Through DNA testing, scientists have identified the beached crittersas box jellyfish, the Asbury Park Press is reporting, which won't put swimmers in the hospital but aremore dangerous than the average jellyfish at the shore.

Experts hope the rare sighting of the species stays rarein New Jersey, according to the report. The analysis showed a 93 to 94 percent match with genus Tamoya -- a jellyfish thatgenerally live in warm coastal waters with venom in its tentacles.

Craig McCarthy may be reached at CMcCarthy@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @createcraig. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Follow this link:
DNA tests confirm venomous jellyfish washed up on N.J. beach, report says