Biotechnology
The Jurassic Park of Modern Age: Endangered Animals and Stem Cell Technology
Who likes sci-fi movies? Sci-fi movies about awesome technology, giant mutant creatures, characters with extraordinary powers? In the 21st century, one can hardly find a scenario that is more appealing to the general public than that of crazy scientists pushing too far the boundaries of science and suffering the dangerous outcomes of their messing up [...]
Transdifferentiation－Exploring Biological Alchemy
How to turn lead into gold may still remain a mystery, but the discovery of what is equivalent to alchemy at a cellular level opens up a new range of possibilities. Contrary to previous belief that cellular differentiation is a permanent process, recent work has shown that differentiated cells under specific defined factors have the [...]
Precarious Preparations: The Advent of Affordable Care
Arguably the most important and polarizing policy issue of the Obama administration’s first term, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 – known together as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – will define the president’s time in office for the next four years. The [...]
Regenerative Medicine: A Peek into the Future
Regenerative medicine is a growing field that offers the potential to repair and replace damaged cells, tissues, and organs by using those that are specially grown. Thus, instead of merely providing treatments to heal damaged body parts, as with transplants, doctors would be able to treat the underlying cause of the disease. Scientists and researchers [...]
Organs-on-Chips: Rethinking Animal Testing
If a technology developed by a group at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering gains widespread adoption, it could disrupt the entire pharmaceutical research and development industry. In both academia and industry alike, research involving the discovery and development of drugs and toxins has almost always involved overcoming certain degrees of in vivo animal [...]
Building New Foundations: Recent Advances in Tissue Engineering
Since the development of in-depth stem cell research and particularly the ability to induce pluripotency – the ability to differentiate cells into many or all cell-types – the promise of generating replacement tissues and organs for patients has been a virtual “holy grail” for the field of regenerative medicine. Many advances have been made in [...]
Gene Patents: Sequencing Scientific Controversy
Do you have the rights to your own DNA? A question Genae Girard never considered until she was denied that right. How can someone else own your DNA? Current models estimate that as much as 20% of all human genetic material has been patented [1]. Recently this practice has entered the national spotlight with the landmark [...]
Your Genes Belong to Us: Gene Patenting and its Discontents
By Gengshi Chen Genae Girard, a 39-year-old woman living in the US, had to pay a staggering $3200 for a single genetic test for the BRCA gene associated with breast and ovarian cancer, only to find that she was unable to request a second opinion upon receiving the positive test result. After consulting with doctors, [...]
MicroRNA as an identifying biomarker for cancer
By Rohit Patil, George Washington University Ulysses S. Grant once explained that the “art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.” Cancer is a war, on its own. The patients have to [...]
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