Researchers advance search for safer, easier way to deliver vision-saving gene therapy

In experiments with rats, pigs and monkeys, researchers have developed a way to deliver sight-saving gene therapy to the retina. If proved safe and effective in humans, the technique could provide a new, more permanent therapeutic option for patients with common diseases such as wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and it could potentially replace defective genes in patients with inherited retinal disease.

Read more

How fungus-farming ants could help solve our antibiotic resistance problem

For the last 60 million years, fungus-growing ants have farmed fungi for food. In their cultivation of those fungi, they've successfully relied on bacteria-produced antimicrobial ingredients to protect their crops from other species of parasitic fungi. Now, researchers say they are looking to these ants to find new ways to stop or slow the evolution of antibiotic resistance that now presents a threat to modern medicine.

Read more

Researchers uncover molecular changes associated with treating lymphatic filariasis

The Global Program to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis delivers mass drug administration to 500 million people each year, and adverse events are common following treatment. Now, researchers have reported that certain changes in gene expression are associated with these adverse events.

Read more

Researchers developing new 'DNA stitch' to treat muscular dystrophy

A new therapeutic being tested is showing early promise as a more effective treatment that could help nearly half of patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). The treatment — a cocktail of DNA-like molecules — results in dramatic regrowth of a protein called dystrophin, which acts as a support beam to keep muscles strong. The protein is virtually absent in those with DMD.

Read more

New method provides better understanding of gene 'enhancers' work

Using anew method called Net-CAGE, researchers identified as many as 20,000 new enhancers in humans. They found that while promoters are activated in a variety of cell types, enhancers tend to function in just 1 cell type, thus showing an important difference between the 2 types of region.

Read more