Articles related to Medical Genetics

Messenger RNA (mRNA) is in the spotlight right now as the basis of the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines for COVID-19. Thanks to this newfound prominence, its profile has been raised as a powerful tool in cancer research as well. As a courier of genetic information and protein assembler, mRNA can tell scientists which genes are active within a cell and produce the proteins that alert the immune system to the presence of cancer.

There are several reasons why the COVID-19 Delta variant – responsible for the COVID crisis in India – has public health experts and doctors concerned, including its transmissibility and disease severity. You likely already know the Delta “variant of concern” is more contagious than previous variants (denoted by the Greek alphabet), but here are five other important details you should be aware of.

The 27-member petition, which is led by Dr. Linda Wastila, a professor of pharmaceutical health services research at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, calls the notion of approval to stimulate vaccination rates “backward logic.” The group of clinicians and researchers claim data should be from completed phase III trials, not interim results. “Slow down and get the science right,” the group wrote in a blog post published in The British Medical Journal.

The investigational new drug (IND) application is for GDX012, which also received an FDA orphan drug designation for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The drug’s manufacturer, GammaDelta Therapeutics, is developing the T-cell platform in partnership with Takeda and will initiate a phase I study in late 2021 that will evaluate the treatment’s safety and activity in patients with measurable residual disease-positive AML.

An update from the original ASCO guideline on this topic published in 2012, 60 studies, primarily retrospective, were included in the review. New to this version of the guideline, the Panel offers recommendations on approved doses of immunotherapy and targeted therapies that can be offered to obese patients with cancer.

In this JAMA Original Investigation, the researchers studied 19,529 patients with Medicare coverage who initiated first systemic therapy for advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) using 1 of 4 regimens of checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy, cytotoxic chemotherapy, and combined chemoimmunotherapy. The goal? To gauge the uptake and effectiveness of immunotherapy among older patients outside clinical trials.