Category Archives: Transhuman News

GREENWOOD Self Regional Hall, a new 17,000-square-foot, state-of-the art facility that will house the Clemson University Center for Human Genetics, has opened on the campus of the Greenwood Genetic Center.

Self Regional Hall, a new 17,000-square-foot, state-of-the art facility that will house the Clemson University Center for Human Genetics. Image Credit: Craig Mahaffey / Clemson University

The facility will enable Clemsons growing genetics program to collaborate closely with the long tradition of clinical and research excellence at the Greenwood Genetic Center, combining basic science and clinical care. The center will initially focus on discovering and developing early diagnostic tools and therapies for autism, cognitive developmental disorders, oncology and lysosomal disorders.

Opening Self Regional Hall means that we will be able to do even more to help children with genetic disorders, and their families, and to educate graduate students who will go out into the world and make their own impact, said Clemson University President James P. Clements.

As the parent of a child with special needs the kind of research that you are doing here is especially meaningful and important to me and my family, Clements said during the event. As you all know, an early diagnosis can make a huge difference for a child and their family because the earlier you can figure out what a child needs the earlier you can intervene and begin treatment.

Jim Pfeiffer (left), president and CEO of Regional Healthcare, and Clemson President James P. Clements unveil a commemorative plaque. Image Credit: Craig Mahaffey / Clemson University

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in six children between the ages of 3 and 17, roughly 15 percent, suffers from a developmental disorder.

Self Regional Hall is a state-of-the-art facility that provides the resources our scientists need to understand the genetic underpinnings of disorders, said Mark Leising, interim dean of the College of Science at Clemson. This facility, and its proximity to the Greenwood Genetic Center, elevates our ability to attract the brightest scientific talent to South Carolina and enhances our efforts to tackle genetic disorders.

The building will house eight laboratories and several classrooms, conference rooms and offices for graduate students and faculty.

The facilitys name recognizes the ongoing support from Self Regional Healthcare, a healthcare system in Upstate South Carolina that has grown from the philanthropy of the late James P. Self, a textile magnate who founded Self Memorial Hospital in 1951.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony was originally scheduled for September 2016, but was delayed because of the death of state Sen. John Drummond, an ardent supporter of the Greenwood Genetic Center who helped bring Self Regional Hall to fruition.

Image Credit: Craig Mahaffey / Clemson University

Self Regional Healthcares vision is to provide superior care, experience and value. This vision includes affording our patients with access to cutting-edge technology and the latest in healthcare innovation and genomic medicine, without a doubt, is the future of healthcare, said Jim Pfeiffer, president and CEO of Self Regional Healthcare. The research and discoveries that will originate from this center will provide new options for those individuals facing intellectual and developmental disabilities, and will provide our organization with innovative capabilities and treatment options for our patients.

We are pleased to welcome Clemson University to Greenwood as the first academic partner on our Partnership Campus, added Dr. Steve Skinner, director of the Greenwood Genetic Center. This is the next great step in a collaboration that has been developing over the past 20-plus years. We look forward to our joint efforts with both Clemson and Self Regional Healthcare to advance the research and discoveries that will increase our understanding and treatment of human genetic disorders.

END

Greenwood Genetic CenterThe Greenwood Genetic Center (GGC), founded in 1974, is a nonprofit organization advancing the field of medical genetics and caring for families impacted by genetic disease and birth defects. At its home campus in Greenwood, South Carolina, a talented team of physicians and scientists provides clinical genetic services, diagnostic laboratory testing, educational programs and resources, and research in the field of medical genetics.GGCs faculty and staff are committed to the goal of developing preventive and curative therapies for the individuals and families they serve.GGC extends its reach as a resource to all residents of South Carolina with satellite offices in Charleston, Columbia, Florence and Greenville. For more information about GGC, please visitwww.ggc.org.

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Clemson Center for Human Genetics unveils new facility on Greenwood Genetic Center campus - Clemson Newsstand

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Diabetes in your DNA? Scientists zero in on the genetic signature of risk Science Daily ... that increase risk of Type 2 diabetes appear to disrupt a common regulatory grammar in islet cells," says Stephen C.J. Parker, Ph.D., an assistant professor of computational medicine and bioinformatics, and of human genetics, at the U-M Medical School. Gene variants associated with body shape increase risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetesEurekAlert (press release) all 42 news articles »

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Diabetes in your DNA? Scientists zero in on the genetic signature of risk - Science Daily

Illustration: Angelica Alzona/Gizmodo

Recently, Vitaliy Husar received results from a DNA screening that changed his life. It wasnt a gene that suggested a high likelihood of cancer or a shocking revelation about his family tree. It was his diet. It was all wrong.

That was, at least, according to DNA Lifestyle Coach, a startup that offers consumers advice on diet, exercise and other aspects of daily life based on genetics alone. Husar, a 38-year-old telecom salesman, had spent most of his life eating the sort of Eastern European fare typical of his native Ukraine: lots of meat, potatoes, salt and saturated fats. DNA Lifestyle Coach suggested his body might appreciate a more Mediterranean diet instead.

They show you which genes are linked to what traits, and link you to the research, Husar told Gizmodo. There is science behind it.

DNA Lifestyle Coach isnt the only company hoping to turn our genetics into a lifestyle product. In the past decade, DNA sequencing has gotten really, really cheap, positioning genetics to become the next big consumer health craze. The sales pitcha roadmap for life encoded in your very own DNAcan be hard to resist. But scientists are skeptical that weve decrypted enough about the human genome to turn strings of As, Ts, Cs and Gs into useful personalized lifestyle advice.

Indeed, that lifestyle advice has a tendency to sound more like it was divined from a health-conscious oracle than from actual science. Take, for instance, DNA Lifestyle Coachs recommendation that one client drink 750ml of cloudy apple juice everyday to lose body fat.

Millions of people have had genotyping done, but few people have had their whole genome sequenced, Eric Topol, a geneticist at Scripps in San Diego, told Gizmodo. Most consumer DNA testing companies, like 23andMe, offer genotyping, which examines small snippets of DNA for well-studied variations. Genome sequencing, on the other hand, decodes a persons entire genetic makeup. In many cases, there just isnt enough science concerning the genes in question to accurately predict, say, whether you should steer clear of carbs.

We need billions of people to get their genome sequenced to be able to give people information like what kind of diet to follow, Topol said.

Husar stumbled upon the Kickstarter page for DNA Lifestyle Coach after getting his DNA tested via 23andMe a few years earlier. He wondered whether there was more information to be gleaned from his results. So six months ago, he downloaded his 23andMe data and uploaded it to DNA Lifestyle Coach. Each test costs between $60 and $70.

Im always looking for some ways to learn about my health, myself, my body, said Husar, who contributed to the companys Kickstarter back in 2015.

The advice he got back was incredibly specific. According to DNA Lifestyle Coach, he needed to start taking supplements of vitamins B12, D and E. He needed more iodine in his diet, and a lot less sodium. DNA Lifestyle Coach recommended that 55 percent of his fat consumption come from monounsaturated fats like olive oil, rather than the sunflower oil popular in Ukraine. Oh, and he needed to change his workout to focus more on endurance and less on speed and power.

He switched up his workout and his diet, and added vitamin supplements to his daily routine. The results, he found, were hard to dispute: He lost six pounds, and for the first time in memory didnt spend Kievs long harsh winter stuck with a bad case of the winter blues.

For now, DNA Lifestyle Coachs interpretation engine only offers consumers advice on diet and exercise, but in the coming months it plans to roll out genetics-based guidance on skin care, dental care and stress management. The company wants to tell you what SPF of sunscreen to use to decrease your risk of cancer, and which beauty products to use to delay the visible effects of aging. Its founders told Gizmodo that eventually they envision being able to offer their customers recipes for specific meals to whip up for dinner, optimized for their genetic makeup.

DNA Lifestyle Coach joins a growing list of technology companies attempting to spin DNA testing results into a must-have product. The DNA sequencing company Helix plans to launch an app store for genetics later this year. One of its partners is Vinome, a wine club that for $149 a quarter sends you wine selected based on your DNA. Orig3n offers genetics-based assessments of fitness, mental health, skin, nutrition and evenobviously unscientificwhich superpower you are most likely to have. The CEO of the health-focused Veritas Genetics told Gizmodo that the company hopes to create a Netflix for genetics, where consumers pay for a subscription to receive updated information on their genome for the rest of their life.

Its not going to happen overnight, but we believe that DNA will become an integrated part of everyday life, Helix co-founder Justin Kao told Gizmodo. The same way people use data to determine which movie to see or which restaurant to eat at, people will one day use their own DNA data to help guide everyday experiences.

Few would debate that our capability to decipher information from our genetic code is getting a lot more sophisticated. Just a decade ago, a bargain-basement deal on whole genome sequencing would run you $300,000. Recently, DNA sequencing company Illumina announced plans do it for just $100 within the next decade. Every day, researchers discover new links between our health, our environment, and our genetics.

But much of this research is still preliminary, and many of the studies are small. DNA Lifestyle Coachs advice to drink 750ml of cloudy apple juice for fat loss, for instance, stemmed from a study of just 68 non-smoking men. Those results, while promising, still require much larger studies to confirm. Suggesting that the same regiment might work for consumers is a little like reading the leaves at the bottom of a tea cupextracting meaning from patterns that arent necessarily there.

Not to mention that the information our genes offer up is probabilistic, not deterministic. You may have run into this if youve done an ancestry DNA test and received results indicating that your parents are only very likely your parents. More often than not, many genes contribute to a specific traitlike tasteand how those genes all interact is complex and poorly understood web. To complicate matters further, the expression of genes is often impacted by our behavior and the environment. If you have a gene that raises the risk for skin cancer, but live in overcast Seattle and dont ever go outside, your chances of getting cancer are probably slimmer than someone who lives in Los Angeles and spends every day in the sun without slapping on some sunblock.

DNA Lifestyle Coach, though, wants to offer its customers simple, actionable advice, and so omits all this confusing gray area from its results. Instead, the recommendations are clear and specific, from how much Vitamin A to take to how many cups of coffee a day are most beneficial. Its a bit reminiscent of a long-term weather forecast spitting out predictions for sunshine or rain 30 days in advanceyes, such predictions can be made, but most meteorologists will tell you theyre borderline useless.

We use a series of algorithms which rank studies by reliability of results, the company website explains. Studies are then analyzed for their relation to real-world dietary and nutritional needs, and the user is given straightforward recommendations.

Pressed on the questionable nature of that apple juice study, DNA Lifestyle Coachs founders responded that the data is not as strong as the the other studies it pulls from. But it is a harmless recommendation, the company said.

When asked whether it was possible that DNA Lifestyle Coachs claims might have any validity, Topol laughed.

One day, he said, its likely well have some genomic insight into what types of diets are better suited for certain people. But, he added, its unlikely that we will ever accurately predict the sort of granular details DNA Lifestyle Coach hopes to, like exactly what SPF of sunscreen you should be using on your skin.

There are limits, he said.

DNA Lifestyle Coach was founded by a chemist and a business consultant who met over an interest in the biohacker scene, a subculture focused on ideas like DIY life extension. The company that runs DNA Lifestyle Coach, Titanovo, actually started as a blog. The name is meant to invoke superhumans. Its like the rise of the titans, said Corey McCarren, the business side of the duo, when Gizmodo met with him at a health moonshots conference last month.

Their first foray into genetics was a home telomere length test, which launched in 2015 with help of $10,000 raised on Indiegogo. Telomeres are little bits of DNA at the end of chromosomes. Each time a cell divides, its telomeres get shorter, and so they provide some insight into our biological age. Titanovo wanted to develop an easy test to tell consumers how long or short their telomeres were. The company initially pitched the test as a way to measure both longevity and health, but eventually was forced to clarify for customers that it is not at present possible to discern biological age from telomeres alone, after receiving emails from customers panicked about their own short telomeres.

Instead, they suggest, the $150 telomere testing kit is a way to discern information about health. One finding from their data: vegetarians and vegans who use the service have, on average, longer telomeres. The company recommends going veg if you find your telomeres are in need of a boost. Even this, however, seems like a stretch: data on telomere length, like genomics, is not quite ready for public consumption. For every paper that finds a potential cause of telomere shorting, theres one that finds the opposite effect.

Undaunted by the rocky rollout of its telomere testing kit, Titanovo is now pressing forward into genomics. The Kickstarter campaign for DNA Lifestyle Coach wound up raising more than $30,000. The company says it now has more than 1,000 customers who either pay $215 for the full DNA testing kit along with one panel, or the $60 to $70 to run panels with data from services like 23andMe.

While it might seem harmless to take part in a little science-based superstition and find out whether youre more Batman or Superman, such indulgence can have serious side effects. For years, weve been sold on DNA as the answer to almost everything. Decode the human genome, and decode the mysteries of the human spirit. This gives companies like DNA Lifestyle Coach dangerous authority. If your DNA testing results say youre prone to obesity, why spend time exercising and eating right when your health seems beyond your control?

Joshua Knowles, a Stanford Cardiologist who studies applied genetics, told Gizmodo that he recently had a patient who was unwilling to try a certain class of drug based on their genotyping, even though they had a high risk of heart disease that might be drastically reduced by use of those medications.

Were doing a poor job of educating patients on risk-benefit analysis, Knowles said. In some cases, when it comes to genetics, were placing a lot of weight on some things that have very small overall effects.

In 2008, an European Journal of Human Geneticsarticleargued for better regulatory control of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, asking whether in the end, tests ran the risk of being little better than horoscopes that told people information they were already predisposed to believe.

It was these kinds of concerns that moved the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on 23andMe in 2013, ordering the company to cease providing analyses of peoples risk factors for disease until the tests accuracy could be validated. The company now provides assessments on a small fraction of 254 diseases and conditions it once scanned forit still processes the same information, but is restricted in what it can tell consumers. Where it once reported health risks alongside specific tips and guidance on how to reduce them, it now reports on your carrier status, framing the results in terms of whether you might pass down a specific genetic variant to your offspring rather that whether you might develop the condition yourself.

Companies like DNA Lifestyle Coach have moved in offer the sort of tips 23andMe no longer can.

We have much too many companies doing nutrigenomics and other unproven things like that, said Topol. That can give consumer genomics a really bad name. Thats unfortunate.

Kao, of Helix, said that educating consumers on what these results really mean alongside actionable information will be the industrys greatest challengeand what distinguishes it from just another pseudoscientific health fad.

Its typically been very hard to interpret DNA information, Kao said. DNA is most valuable with context, rather than as the only piece of the puzzle.

The industry, he argues, is young, but will get more accurate the more consumers use DNA-testing products. Just as Netflix improves the more you rate shows you watch, so would many DNA-based products, he said.

Husar told Gizmodo that he got blood work done to confirm what he could about his DNA Lifestyle Coach results. The tests indeed confirmed that he was low on vitamins B12, D and E, as DNA Lifestyle Coach had suggested. Of course, Hussar still cant be sure his genes are responsible. It could be that hes simply not eating enough meat or cheese. Still, the blood work was enough to convince Husar that DNA Lifestyle Coachs analysis was worth taking seriously. And, for the most part, the results felt rightit made sense that a boost of vitamin B12 might counteract the emotional toll of winter, and that cutting out potatoes and saturated fats might be benefical.

The testss fitness results though, he did find a tad shocking.

I was really surprised to learn that Im not fast or powerful, but I have a high endurance, he said. I can do Iron Man. This is what my genetics say. Im trying to change my workout to see if thats true.

Husar may never be sure whether the advice divined from his genetics was really helpful. He can only hope it doesnt hurt.

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The Next Pseudoscience Health Craze Is All About Genetics - Gizmodo

Thirty-three years ago, scientists knew the genomic location of exactly one disease-causing gene the gene that causes Huntingtons disease. But since that time, they have discovered thousands more disease-causing genes, as the field of human genomics has accelerated at a pace previously unimaginable, MIT Professor Eric Lander told a packed audience at yesterdays James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award Lecture.

On any given day, you may be incredibly frustrated by how slow its going: Things are failing, youre not making progress. But over the course of years, decades, its stunning. For me, this is so much faster than I could have ever imagined. Thats whats so special about science, said Lander, an MIT professor of biology and the recipient of the 2016-2017 Killian Award.

Established in 1971 to honor MITs 10th president, James Killian, the Killian Award recognizes extraordinary professional achievements by an MIT faculty member. Lander was selected for the award for his own contributions to the rapid growth of human genomics, as well as his accomplishments in teaching and science policy. He is the president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and also served as co-chair of the Presidents Council of Advisors on Science and Technology under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.

Professor Landers contributions to science are deep and wide-ranging, including scientific discoveries, writing of crucial science policy, leadership in both the local and global research communities, and a long history of inspiring a love of biology in students, says the award citation, read by Krishna Rajagopal, chair of the MIT faculty, before yesterdays lecture.

Rajagopal paused for a serenade from the a cappella group the MIT Logarhythms, which performed a rendition of Signed, Sealed, Delivered (Im Yours) for a delighted Lander, who continued the Valentines Day theme with his lecture.

A love letter

Lander began his talk, which was held on Valentines Day, with a love letter to MIT and the lecture hall where he spoke, Room 10-250. That room played a key role in launching a career in human genetics that once seemed improbable for Lander, who earned his BA in mathematics from Princeton University in 1978 and his PhD in mathematics from Oxford University in 1981 as a Rhodes Scholar.

Some people have their careers planned out in advance, Lander said. That was not me. I knew I didnt want to do mathematics as a career, but I had no idea what I really wanted to do.

After earning his PhD, Lander taught managerial economics at Harvard Business School for a couple of years, but his heart wasnt in it. At the suggestion of his brother, Arthur, he started sitting in on neuroscience classes at Harvard, which eventually led him to a course in genetics, where he found his true love.

In 1984, he took a leave of absence from Harvard and began working on worm genetics in the lab of MIT Professor Robert Horvitz. One day in 1985, Professor Barbara Meyer, who had a lab next door, introduced him to David Botstein, another biology professor, who was trying to develop approaches to mapping human genetic diseases. That conversation, which Lander described as a key turning point in his life, took place outside Room 10-250.

I pretty much dropped everything else I was doing in the world in order to work on this idea of whether you could map genes in humans for complex traits, Lander recalled.

Lander was appointed to the faculty of MITs Department of Biology in 1990, and once again, Room 10-250 played a key role in his career as the place where he began co-teaching 7.01/7.012 (Introductory Biology), a course that he co-developed in 1991-1992 with Professor Emerita Nancy Hopkins. In recognition, Hopkins and Lander were named Class of 1960 Fellows for outstanding teaching and course development. Lander still teaches that course, although it has now moved to a larger lecture hall.

The gift of teaching is the gift of being re-inspired by young people every year, again and again. Teaching has been such an amazing part of my life at MIT. It is why were here, and Im enormously grateful for that opportunity, said Lander, who has also developed a popular edX version of Introductory Biology.

Lander also credited MIT, in particular former President Charles M. Vest and former Provost Robert Brown, for their roles in the founding of the Broad Institute, which opened in 2004 to build on the progress made by the Human Genome Project. Getting Harvard and MIT to join forces, along with several other Boston-area institutions, was not an easy task, he recalled.

MIT has a long history of being able to make the right thing happen, Lander said. Had it not been for MIT sticking with the idea from beginning to end, this could never have happened.

An adventure story

Lander described the arc of his career as a biological adventure story that demonstrates how much farther things can go than you could ever possibly imagine.

In 1985, when he began working with Botstein, only one human disease-causing gene, the Huntingtin gene, had been mapped to a specific chromosome. The location of the gene mutation that causes cystic fibrosis was also soon identified, but scientists were unsure whether they would ever be able to locate genes involved in complex disorders such as heart disease or Alzheimers disease, which are influenced by many genes.

A major step forward in being able to identify such genes occurred with the completion of the Human Genome Project, led by Lander and others, in 2003. That map has allowed scientists to identify 4,000 genes that cause disease on their own; it also gave scientists the opportunity to start discovering genes associated with multigene diseases.

As the cost of sequencing genomes came down (its now about $1,500 per genome), scientists were able to sequence thousands of genomes to identify common genetic variants that are linked to specific diseases. Using this approach, scientists, including many at the Broad Institute, have found 108 variants associated with schizophrenia, 200 associated with inflammatory bowel disease, and thousands more linked to other human disorders including heart disease and Alzheimers disease.

Its possible to dissect and find for a typical common disease 50, or 100, or 150 genes in the human genome that have an effect on that disease. That took, from a conversation in the hallway outside 10-250 in 1985, to somewhere around 2010, based on the whole scientific community working together. Its mind-blowing, Lander said. We never thought wed ever get to this point.

A trip report

Lander concluded his lecture with a trip report of the eight years that he served as a co-chair of the Presidents Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

During that time, the council wrote 38 reports on topics ranging from antibiotic resistance and the H1N1 flu outbreak, to advanced manufacturing and nanotechnology. Many of those reports have formed the basis of new executive orders or major policy initiatives.

Lander also noted that the very first iteration of PCAST, established in 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was chaired by none other than James R. Killian Jr., who was then MITs president. During Landers tenure, the council included six MIT faculty, alumni, and Corporation members, demonstrating the important contribution that MIT continues to make in informing national policy, he said.

MIT has played such a major role over the course of decades in ensuring that science has its rightful place in society, Lander said. While MIT does not have politics, we do have values. Those include the power of knowledge and truth, and the power of diversity. That is what is powering science. This great institution has contributed so much to those principles, which have largely driven the economic growth, security, and health of this country. I have no doubt in the years ahead that those values will outlast anything.

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Chronicling the rapid pace of genomics - MIT News