A new gene therapy technique could increase the chances for heart bypass patients. Reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, heart specialists in a Massachusetts hospital and colleagues at Stanford University in California have used high levels of pressure to force antisense DNA into blood vessel cells...
Scientists have discovered a gene that could lead to a treatment for osteoporosis, the brittle bone disease, in three to five years. Researchers at Chiroscience, a UK-based biotechnology company, have identified the genetic code for a protein that appears to regulate bone mineral density. The gene was isolated from a...
A genetic test carried out on embryos during in vitro fertilisation has been used to prevent two carriers of sickle cell anaemia from passing the disease on to their children. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis for sickle cell disease has resulted in its fist success - the birth of healthy twin girls to...
The high level of fetal and neo-natal deaths in cloned animals may be linked to the disruption of a genetic mechanism known as 'imprinting,' according to American researchers interviewed last week for The Washington Post. Worrying rates of placental abnormalities, abnormal swelling and severe immunological deficiencies have been reported by...
The past month in Japan has seen a significant growth in the number of projects involved in genomic and other DNA research. This renewed effort comes in the wake of the government's attempts to commercialise biotechnology research and expand Japan's biotechnology market 25-fold over the next ten years. Commentators...
US scientists are working on a new form of gene therapy that targets the spinal cord in order to treat chronic pain. In the study, which is still at the animal testing stage, researchers used an adenovirus (similar to a cold virus) to deliver the beta-endorphin genes to the rats...
Last week's announcement that a Montreal-based biotechnology firm had successfully cloned three goats has rekindled concerns about human cloning in Canada. Despite the existence of a voluntary moratorium on human cloning, in late April the Canadian Health Minister Allan Rock announced the federal government's intention to introduce legislation criminalising certain...
The health care technology group, Nycomed Amersham, has agreed to sell a 70 percent stake in its pharmaceuticals business for £275m to a new company backed by Nordic Capital, a venture capital group based in Norway. Nycomed aims to concentrate on more profitable hi-tech operations such as X-ray imaging agents...
Cloned animals could suffer from serious genetic defects, according to a paper published in the Lancet. The authors report that a calf cloned from an adult cell may have died because of errors in its genetic reprogramming. Although there have been many reports of clones dying during or shortly after...
PPL Therapeutics, the Edinburgh-based biotechnology company that developed Dolly the sheep, reported that losses grew to £14.2m in 1998 from £10.2m in the previous year. These continued losses come as PPL continues to inject money into research and drug development. The company's biggest hope is the production of the protein...
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