Monthly Archives: February 2012

BARCELONA, Spain & AARHUS, Denmark--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Today European scientists are meeting to kick off the 4DCellFate project, funded by the European Commission under the FP7 program. The 4DcellFate project will tackle the question of how the Polycomb Repressive Complex (PRC) and Nucleosome Remodelling and histone Deacetylase (NuRD) complexes function across the genome and time during differentiation, by applying cutting-edge technologies, such as structural biology, microscopy, proteomics, high-throughput sequencing, and computational modeling. "Understanding how the PRC and NuRD complexes determine cell fate is a prerequisite for developing models for diseases, such as cancer, that can be used both for further research and for developing personalized medicine therapies." states Director of R&D at CLC bio, Dr. Roald Forsberg, and continues, "The 4DCellFate project is a truly interdisciplinary and innovative project that will generate a wealth of experimental data. We look forward to applying our expertise in building integrated bioinformatics frameworks for handling, visualizing, and integrating all this data and to build new computational models of diseases to help researchers better understand these mechanisms." ICREA Research Professor and group leader at the CRG in Barcelona, Luciano Di Croce, adds, "This network has brought together the optimal mix of expertise, laboratories, techniques, and resources … Continue reading →

MARLBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. (“ACT”; OTCBB: ACTC), a leader in the field of regenerative medicine, announced today the dosing of third patient in its Phase 1/2 trial for Stargardt’s macular dystrophy (SMD) using retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). The patient was treated on Monday (Feb. 6) by Steven Schwartz, M.D., Ahmanson Professor of Ophthalmology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and retina division chief at UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute. The outpatient transplantation surgery was performed successfully and the patient is recovering uneventfully. “With the treatment of this third Stargardt’s patient at Jules Stein Eye Institute, we have now completed the treatment of the first cohort of patients under our clinical protocol for phase I/II of our U.S. SMD trial,” said Gary Rabin, chairman and chief executive officer of ACT. “We will continue to regularly monitor the three SMD patients in this trial, and by early spring anticipate review of their progress and safety-related data by the Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB). With approval of the DSMB, we would then advance to the next cohort of patients and administer a … Continue reading →

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Feb. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Everist Genomics, a rapidly growing personalized medicine company, today announced that world-renowned scientist and genome sequencing pioneer Dr. J. Craig Venter will be the keynote speaker for its March 26th Gala Dinner at the Field Museum in Chicago.   (Photo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120213/NY52008&nbsp😉 (Logo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110110/NY26865LOGO&nbsp😉 Dr. Venter achieved global prominence in 2001 for being the first to sequence the human genome, accomplishing this feat two years in advance of the government-sponsored Human Genome Project and at a fraction of the cost. He received acclaim again in 2010 for leading a team of scientists to create the first synthetic life form, a single-cell bacterium known as Mycoplasma laboratorium. His contributions to the field of genomics—including the decoding of his own genome—have enabled the new era of personalized medicine, in which treatment of medical conditions are tailored to individual patients. Dr. Venter, who was twice named to Time magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people, founded the J. Craig Venter Institute, a research organization with more than 500 scientists and staff dedicated to human, microbial, plant, synthetic and environmental genomic research and the exploration of social and ethical issues in genomics. Dr. Venter is also … Continue reading →

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Foundation Medicine, Inc., a molecular information company that brings comprehensive cancer gene analysis to routine clinical care, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute today announced the Nature Medicine publication of results from their collaborative next-generation sequencing (NGS) study to assay cancer-relevant genes in 24 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and 40 colorectal cancer (CRC) cases. In this study, 59% of the samples were found to have genomic alterations directly associated with a clinically-available targeted therapeutic or a relevant clinical trial of a targeted therapy. Two novel gene fusions, KIF5B-RET in NSCLC and C2orf44-ALK in CRC, were discovered among the potentially druggable alterations identified in the study. Both of these findings may expand therapeutic options for a subset of cancer patients. This publication demonstrates that using targeted NGS to profile patient tumors for molecular alterations associated with therapeutic responses may have an important clinical impact in cancer treatment. “In this collaboration, we detected clinically-relevant genomic alterations in more than half of the samples profiled, and, because Foundation Medicine’s NGS assay detects all classes of alterations with clinical-grade sensitivity, this research was able to identify both expected as well as completely novel alterations,” said Maureen Cronin, Ph.D., senior vice president, research … Continue reading →