Artificial intelligence tackles life science

Look under the hood of many of this years headline-making discoveries in biology and youll find machine learning, a tool thats gaining ground in the life sciences thanks to growing computational power and the availability of big datasets needed for training. Among other advances in 2019, researchers reported successfully using machine learning to screen images for signs of cancer or infection by pathogens, and to identify epigenetic markers in blood samples that are associated with vascular complications in people with diabetes. Check out our special issue on AI for more examples of how the tool is transforming biology.

Even as computers take on more of the tasks once done by hand, engineers are exploring DNAs capacity to adopt a function usually associated with machines: information storage. This summer, researchers in Boston reported a way of harnessing DNA, together with CRISPR-like base editing machinery, to make a record of events inside living cells that can then be decoded via sequencing. Study coauthor Timothy Lu of MIT told The Scientist that its potential applications include detecting environmental toxins and recording developmental processes.

Another creative spin on CRISPR-Cas9 editing to come out this year is a detection device for particular DNA sequences. Here, the Cas9 enzyme is bound to an RNA and to a graphene chip and engineered not to make cuts in DNA. If the RNA-Cas9 complex connects to its target DNA sequence, it causes a change in the chips electric field and thus a positive readout. The chips developers suggest it could one day be used for quick DNA tests in clinical settings.

Among the endless variations of CRISPR scientists are engineering, one developed this year purports to reduce its off-target effects by avoiding double-strand DNA breaks. The technique, known as prime editing, uses the same Cas9 nuclease as frequently deployed in the CRISPR system but combines the enzyme with a guide RNA called pegRNA and a reverse transcriptase that initiates the addition of a new sequence or base into the genome. Once the new genetic material is incorporated into a cut strand of DNA, the prime editor nicks the unedited strand, signaling to the cell to rebuild it to match the edited strand.

As some researchers worked on their own variations of genome editing, others made an important edit of a recipe for induced pluripotent stem cells. First published by Shinya Yamanaka (now of Kyoto University) in 2006, the method overexpresses genes for four transcription factors in differentiated cells to reset them to a pluripotent state, creating what are known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The most important of the four overproduced factors was thought to be Oct4. But last month, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine announced theyd not only managed to make mouse iPSCs without tweaking Oct4 levels, but that the process was more efficient that way. If this works in adult human cells, it will be a huge advantage for the clinical applications of iPS cells, Yamanaka wrote in an email to The Scientist.

Shawna Williams is a senior editor atThe Scientist. Email her at swilliams@the-scientist.com or follow her on Twitter @coloradan.

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Top Technical Advances of 2019 - The Scientist

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Major Players included in this report are as follows Fujifilm Holding CorporationAstellas PharmaFate TherapeuticsBristol-Myers Squibb CompanyViaCyteCelgene CorporationAastrom BiosciencesAcelity HoldingsStemCellsJapan Tissue EngineeringOrganogenesis

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Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Market Structure, Industry Inspection, and Forecast 2025 - Filmi Baba

In 2010, Gwyneth Paltrows wellness brand, Goop, was just starting to get its goop-y mojo rolling. Tom Bradys lifestyle company, TB12, wasnt around, so we had no way of learning about bogus fitness concepts like muscle pliability. And Jessica Albas The Honest Company, a fearmongering and pseudoscience-based business that is currently worth over a billion dollars, was still one year away from inception.

But what a difference 10 years has made. Now all of these companies are thriving and many other celebrities, including Victoria Beckham and Kate Hudson, have started similar wellness brands.

But it is hard to deny that things are qualitatively different now. This has been the decade of misinformation. And, in the context of health, celebrities have led the charge.

Yes, pseudoscientific health claims have been with us for a long time. And celebrities have often embraced them. (Apparently, Greta Garbo never met a fad diet she didnt like or, at least, try.) But it is hard to deny that things are qualitatively different now. This has been the decade of misinformation. And, in the context of health, celebrities have led the charge.

Weve had the vagina steam (thanks, Gwyneth), jade vagina eggs (ditto), the vampire facial (Kim Kardashian West), bird poop facials (David and Victoria Beckham), facials made with discarded foreskin stem cells (Sandra Bullock), drinking your own urine (Madonna), placenta smoothies (more Kardashians) and too many crazy diets, cleanses and detoxes to mention. I could go on and on and on.

It seems entirely appropriate that we are closing this ridiculous decade with the too-absurd-to-be-true (but it is true) news that Josh Brolin burned his anus trying the latest wellness trend, perineum sunning.

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Some may dismiss the critique of celebrities and the associated health fads as a waste of time. Few people take this stuff seriously, it is argued. Bigger fish to fry. Fish in a barrel.

This perspective is mistaken.

Celebrity health noise has had (and continues to have) a large and measurable impact. There is a growing body of literature that has demonstrated celebrity marketing, musing and news coverage can have an influence on a range of health related behaviors, including dieting, cancer screening, smoking and suicide. Pop culture coverage of a health topic, like Angelina Jolies decision to get genetic testing, can affect, for better or worse, the utilization rates of health services. And there seems little doubt that many current evidence-free and potentially harmful health trends such a IV vitamin therapy, nonceliac gluten-free diets, cryotherapy and detoxification diets and procedures would not be nearly as popular but for the associated celebrity endorsements.

In addition, all this celebrity noise and wellness-related pontificating adds to an already noisy health information environment. Studies have consistently found that the public is increasingly confused about what a healthy lifestyle entails this, despite the fact that for most people the essential ingredients are straightforward and well established (dont smoke, exercise, eat real food, sleep, maintain a healthy weight, and drink alcohol in moderation or not at all).

When it comes to public discourse, few entities have the volume and reach of celebrities. As I write this, Katy Perry has 108 million Twitter followers; the World Health Organization has 5 million. In 2010, Instagram was just getting started. Ten years later, Instagram has emerged as a significant source of health misinformation and much of the messaging on the platform is dominated by celebrities (currently 17 of the top 20 Instagram accounts are run by either a musician, an actor or a sports star). When Katy Perry tweets about her love of supplements or Tom Brady posts science-free diet advice, it is seen by tens of millions.

Just being around this social media-fueled celebrity health noise can have an impact on our health behaviors and beliefs. The more we hear about something, the more believable it becomes. This is how and why fake news works. Indeed, research led by Canadian psychologist Gordon Pennycook has found that even a single exposure to misinformation can affect perceptions of accuracy.

And when celebrities do provide health advice be it about the effectiveness of an extreme diet, a ridiculous waist-training device, anti-vaccine baloney, or the need to screen for prostate cancer it is often packaged in the form of a compelling story. Narratives, especially highly memorable ones, can be extremely influential. A persuasive testimonial can displace a mountain of scientific data. Indeed, a 2016 study found that anecdotal stories impede our ability to reason scientifically.

A persuasive testimonial can displace a mountain of scientific data. Indeed, a 2016 study found that anecdotal stories impede our ability to reason scientifically.

I believe this is one of the reasons why celebrities hold so much sway. Celebrity wellness gurus are not truly health experts. But their messaging still has power because it plays to our cognitive biases, including the mere-exposure effect and our hardwired tendency to be influenced by stories.

What is a celebrity endorsement, after all, but a glossy, high profile and impressive testimonial from someone who is often a genetic outlier in areas such as appearance and athletic ability? When Tom Brady recommends that we avoid the consumption of dairy, it may feel like a good idea because it seems to have worked for him. Do not be fooled. You arent Tom Brady (unless you are, in which case, enough with the diet nonsense).

Of course, this decade of celebrity health hogwash should also be considered in the broader context. This is the era of misinformation, a time when trust in public institutions is declining and people feel uncertain about what to believe about, well, everything. Celebrity wellness hype contributes to this culture of untruth by both inviting a further erosion of critical thinking and promoting what is popular and aspirational rather than what is true.

In the coming decade let's do our best to ignore the celebrity noise (a man can dream!). We need everyone who cares about accurate representations of science and health issues including researchers, public health advocates, health care institutions, universities and, hopefully, you to use creative communication strategies, engaging story telling and social media-friendly imagery to get across the good science. Lets fight the celebrity-fueled misinformation tire fire with a fact-filled fire of our own.

More from our decade reflections project:

THINKing about 2010-2019: Where we started, how we grew and where we might go

White Christian America ended in the 2010s

Timothy Caulfield is a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta, author of Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: How the Famous Sell Us Elixirs of Health, Beauty & Happiness (Beacon, 2015) and hostof A Users Guide to Cheating Death onNetflix.

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Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow made the 2010s the decade of health and wellness misinformation - NBCNews.com

Victoria Gray's recovery from sickle cell disease, which had caused her painful seizures, came in a year of breakthroughs in one of the hottest areas of medical research -- gene therapy.

Picture: Supplied.

WASHINGTON, United States - In the summer, a mother in Nashville with a seemingly incurable genetic disorder finally found an end to her suffering -- by editing her genome.

Victoria Gray's recovery from sickle cell disease, which had caused her painful seizures, came in a year of breakthroughs in one of the hottest areas of medical research -- gene therapy.

"I have hoped for a cure since I was about 11," the 34-year-old told AFP in an email.

"Since I received the new cells, I have been able to enjoy more time with my family without worrying about pain or an out-of-the-blue emergency."

Over several weeks, Gray's blood was drawn so doctors could get to the cause of her illness -- stem cells from her bone marrow that were making deformed red blood cells.

The stem cells were sent to a Scottish laboratory, where their DNA was modified using Crispr/Cas9 -- pronounced "Crisper" -- a new tool informally known as molecular "scissors."

The genetically edited cells were transfused back into Gray's veins and bone marrow. A month later, she was producing normal blood cells.

Medics warn that caution is necessary but, theoretically, she has been cured.

"This is one patient. This is early results. We need to see how it works out in other patients," said her doctor, Haydar Frangoul, at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville.

"But these results are really exciting."

In Germany, a 19-year-old woman was treated with a similar method for a different blood disease, beta-thalassemia. She had previously needed 16 blood transfusions per year.

Nine months later, she is completely free of that burden.

For decades, the DNA of living organisms such as corn and salmon has been modified.

But Crispr, invented in 2012, made gene editing more widely accessible. It is much simpler than preceding technology, cheaper and easy to use in small labs.

The technique has given new impetus to the perennial debate over the wisdom of humanity manipulating life itself.

"It's all developing very quickly," said French geneticist Emmanuelle Charpentier, one of Crispr's inventors and the cofounder of Crispr Therapeutics, the biotech company conducting the clinical trials involving Gray and the German patient.

CURES

Crispr is the latest breakthrough in a year of great strides in gene therapy, a medical adventure started three decades ago when the first TV telethons were raising money for children with muscular dystrophy.

Scientists practising the technique insert a normal gene into cells containing a defective gene.

It does the work the original could not -- such as making normal red blood cells, in Victoria's case, or making tumour-killing super white blood cells for a cancer patient.

Crispr goes even further: instead of adding a gene, the tool edits the genome itself.

After decades of research and clinical trials on a genetic fix to genetic disorders, 2019 saw a historic milestone: approval to bring to market the first gene therapies for a neuromuscular disease in the US and a blood disease in the European Union.

They join several other gene therapies -- bringing the total to eight -- approved in recent years to treat certain cancers and inherited blindness.

Serge Braun, the scientific director of the French Muscular Dystrophy Association, sees 2019 as a turning point that will lead to a medical revolution.

"Twenty-five, 30 years, that's the time it had to take," he told AFP from Paris.

"It took a generation for gene therapy to become a reality. Now, it's only going to go faster."

Just outside Washington, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers are also celebrating a "breakthrough period."

"We have hit an inflection point," said Carrie Wolinetz, NIH's associate director for science policy.

These therapies are exorbitantly expensive, however, costing up to $2 million -- meaning patients face gruelling negotiations with their insurance companies.

They also involve a complex regimen of procedures that are only available in wealthy countries.

Gray spent months in the hospital getting blood drawn, undergoing chemotherapy, having edited stem cells reintroduced via transfusion -- and fighting a general infection.

"You cannot do this in a community hospital close to home," said her doctor.

However, the number of approved gene therapies will increase to about 40 by 2022, according to MIT researchers.

They will mostly target cancers and diseases that affect muscles, the eyes and the nervous system.

**BIOTERRORISM **

Another problem with Crispr is that its relative simplicity has triggered the imaginations of rogue practitioners who don't necessarily share the medical ethics of Western medicine.

Last year in China, scientist He Jiankui triggered an international scandal -- and his ex-communication from the scientific community -- when he used Crispr to create what he called the first gene-edited humans.

The biophysicist said he had altered the DNA of human embryos that became twin girls Lulu and Nana.

His goal was to create a mutation that would prevent the girls from contracting HIV, even though there was no specific reason to put them through the process.

"That technology is not safe," said Kiran Musunuru, a genetics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, explaining that the Crispr "scissors" often cut next to the targeted gene, causing unexpected mutations.

"It's very easy to do if you don't care about the consequences," Musunuru added.

Despite the ethical pitfalls, restraint seems mainly to have prevailed so far.

The community is keeping a close eye on Russia, where biologist Denis Rebrikov has said he wants to use Crispr to help deaf parents have children without the disability.

There is also the temptation to genetically edit entire animal species -- malaria-causing mosquitoes in Burkina Faso or mice hosting ticks that carry Lyme disease in the US.

The researchers in charge of those projects are advancing carefully, however, fully aware of the unpredictability of chain reactions on the ecosystem.

Charpentier doesn't believe in the more dystopian scenarios predicted for gene therapy, including American "biohackers" injecting themselves with Crispr technology bought online.

"Not everyone is a biologist or scientist," she said.

And the possibility of military hijacking to create soldier-killing viruses or bacteria that would ravage enemies' crops?

Charpentier thinks that technology generally tends to be used for the better.

"I'm a bacteriologist -- we've been talking about bioterrorism for years," she said. "Nothing has ever happened."

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2019: The year gene therapy came of age - Eyewitness News

Juvenescence is pleased to continue its commitment to AgeX through this additional drawdown under the loan facility, commented Gregory Bailey, MD, Chairman of AgeX and CEO of Juvenescence. Juvenescence remains committed to funding the future development plans of AgeX through further advancements under the loan facility or otherwise. Since Juvenescences initial investment in AgeX in June 2018, AgeX has been an important element in the Juvenescence mission and strategy. Juvenescence is also investing its time and personnel to support AgeXs business development initiatives which have impressive potential. We look forward to AgeX announcing its plans for 2020 as it pursues tissue regeneration in Reverse Bioengineering, while advancing the development of BAT and VASC 1, the coupling of HLA-G with PureStem-derived cells for transplant therapies, and exploring partnerships with third parties.

This round of funding will allow us to continue to execute on our strategic plan to provide therapies for certain chronic and degenerative diseases through cellular regeneration and replacement, commented AgeXs founder and CEO Michael D. West, PhD.

As announced in the companys news release on August 14, 2019, AgeX has obtained a $2 million credit facility from Juvenescence to finance AgeXs operations and advance its product development programs.

About AgeX Therapeutics

AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. (NYSE American: AGE) is focused on developing and commercializing innovative therapeutics for human aging. Its PureStem and UniverCyte manufacturing and immunotolerance technologies are designed to work together to generate highly-defined, universal, allogeneic, off-the-shelf pluripotent stem cell-derived young cells of any type for application in a variety of diseases with a high unmet medical need. AgeX has two preclinical cell therapy programs: AGEX-VASC1 (vascular progenitor cells) for tissue ischemia and AGEX-BAT1 (brown fat cells) for Type II diabetes. AgeXs revolutionary longevity platform induced Tissue Regeneration (iTR) aims to unlock cellular immortality and regenerative capacity to reverse age-related changes within tissues. AGEX-iTR1547 is an iTR-based formulation in preclinical development. HyStem is AgeXs delivery technology to stably engraft PureStem cell therapies in the body. AgeX is developing its core product pipeline for use in the clinic to extend human healthspan and is seeking opportunities to establish licensing and collaboration agreements around its broad IP estate and proprietary technology platforms.

For more information, please visit http://www.agexinc.com or connect with the company on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements that are not historical fact including, but not limited to statements that contain words such as will, believes, plans, anticipates, expects, estimates should also be considered forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements and as such should be evaluated together with the many uncertainties that affect the business of AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. and its subsidiaries, particularly those mentioned in the cautionary statements found in more detail in the Risk Factors section of AgeXs Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commissions (copies of which may be obtained at http://www.sec.gov). Subsequent events and developments may cause these forward-looking statements to change. AgeX specifically disclaims any obligation or intention to update or revise these forward-looking statements as a result of changed events or circumstances that occur after the date of this release, except as required by applicable law.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191226005045/en/

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AgeX Therapeutics Announces Drawdown of Second Tranche of Loan Facility from Juvenescence Ltd. - BioSpace