Biomarker Commons

The allure of personalized medicine has made new, more efficient ways of sequencing genes a top research priority. One promising technique involves reading DNA bases using changes in electrical current as they are threaded through a nanoscopic hole. Now, a team led by University of Pennsylvania physicists has used solid-state nanopores to differentiate single-stranded DNA molecules containing sequences of a single repeating base.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is a technique in which the nucleus of a donor cell is transferred to an egg cell whose nucleus has been removed, generating embryos that are almost an identical genetic match to the donor individual. For the first time, a team of scientists has used SCNT to produce human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). This milestone, published by Cell Press May 15th in the journal Cell, opens up new avenues for using stem cells to understand patient-specific causes of disease and for developing personalized therapies.

Patients with coronary artery disease who undergo treatment at the University of Maryland Medical Center now can receive long-term therapy based on information found in their genes. As part of a new personalized medicine initiative, the medical center is offering genetic testing to help doctors determine which medication a patient should take after a stenting procedure in order to prevent blood clots that could lead to serious – and potentially fatal – heart attacks and strokes.

Genomind, a personalized medicine company, has released a statement in response to the National Institute of Mental Health’s (NIMH) announcement by Director Dr. Thomas Insel that the organization will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories, supporting the move and its potential to influence improved treatment of patients with mental disorders.

The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) and the Ontario Genomics Institute (OGI) recently announced that Dr. Lincoln Stein, OICR’s Program Leader, Informatics and Bio-computing, has been awarded $250,000 through Genome Canada’s Bioinformatics and Computational Biology competition, in partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Dr. Stein and his colleague Dr. Guanming Wu, aim to develop software that will improve the treatment of cancer patients by enabling physicians to study and visualize the genomic aberrations of individual patients.