Feb 4, 2015 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
Concept is for patients to take a pill containing nanoparticles programmed to detect cancers or other disease symptoms and a wearable gadget would report their findings
Google is using the same biomarker molecules as clinical laboratories in an attempt to enable in vitro monitoring of an individual’s health status. The device is under development and represents yet one more effort by Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) to penetrate the market for consumer health services.
This futuristic project is under development by the Google X Life Sciences team. The goal is create a device that would allow patients to noninvasively self-diagnose most diseases and health conditions.
The team is led by Andrew Conrad Ph.D.. The device under development is called the NanoParticle platform. It is a tool that continuously monitors an individual’s health status from the inside and reports what it finds through a wearable, watch-like device. (more…)
Jan 26, 2015 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
The advent of the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic editing tool is already generating novel therapies for diseases and will create new opportunities for pathologists and medical laboratories
In just 24 months, a new gene-editing tool has become the hot topic worldwide among researchers working to understand DNA and develop ways to manipulate it for therapeutic purposes. It goes by the acronym CRISPR and it may soon become quite familiar to most pathologists and medical laboratory scientists.
CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. The gene editing platform is known as CRISPR/CAS9. (more…)
Dec 1, 2014 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
Scientists participating in the modENCORE study have the goal of understanding the causes of hereditary genetic diseases in humans
New discoveries about the interaction of genes and transcription factors in creating different types of RNA will be of interest to pathologists and clinical chemists performing genetic tests and molecular diagnostic assays in their medical laboratories.
The goal of this research is to better understand hereditary genetic disease in humans. The new knowledge is based on studies of the common fruit fly, or Drosophila melanogaster (D. Melanogaster), and to a lesser extent a tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). Both have been used as research models to study the human condition.
Research Could Give Pathologists New Diagnostic Tools (more…)
Nov 12, 2014 | Digital Pathology, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
Prenatal genome sequencing raises ethical issues for gene sequencing labs and clinical labs, since a baby’s genetic information may present lifelong consequences for that individual
Pathologists and clinical laboratory managers will be interested to learn that another milestone in genetic testing was reached earlier this year. A geneticist at the University of California at Davis, has sequenced the whole human genome of his unborn baby, the first time this feat has been accomplished.
Notably, it was geneticist and graduate student Razib Khan of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine who sequenced his unborn son’s genome during the third trimester of pregnancy using a sample of the fetus’ placenta. This is the first healthy person born in the United States with his entire genetic makeup deciphered prior to birth, noted a recent story published by the MIT Technology Review. (more…)
Oct 27, 2014 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
This new tool offers clinicians the dos and don’ts of genetic testing, what physicians need to know to do it properly
Clinical use of gene sequencing information has advanced to the point where a team of genetic experts has compiled and issued the Genetic Testing Handbook. The goal of the clinical genome and exome sequencing (CGES) handbook is to provide clinicians—including pathologists and clinical laboratory scientists—with a useful reference tool.
The authors of the Genetic Testing Handbook are Leslie G. Biesecker, M.D., of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in Bethesda, Maryland, and Robert C. Green, M.D., M.P.H., a geneticist who is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Primer Distills Human Genome Project Technologies for Practical Use
“The technologies that were used for the Human Genome Project are now distilled down to practical tools that clinicians can use to diagnose and, hopefully, treat diseases in patients that they couldn’t treat before,” stated Biesecker, who serves as Chief and Senior Investigator at the NHGRI’s Medical Genomics and Metabolic Genetics Branch, in a press release issued by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). (more…)
