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skrapetaks tsrehma dna orurt - Video

Prof Mike Lenardo

When the human genome, or DNA, was first sequenced, it took a huge international effort and about three billion dollars to get the project across the line in the early 2000s. Today, we can get genome data for a human within hours, and the cost ranks in thousands rather than billions.

Next week, immunologist Prof Mike Lenardo will be in Dublin to give a talk about how advances in DNA genomics are helping researchers to understand conditions such as cancer and Alzheimers, and how he uses those tools to figure out how changes in the immune system affect health.

My lab studies rare genetic diseases of the immune system, says Lenardo, who is based at the National Institutes of Health in the US. When we learn which genes are involved, we can get an idea in some cases about how to treat these rare disorders, and what we find can also point us to what goes wrong in more common allergies and how some people are more susceptible to infections. The scientific tools we have now, based on these new genomic technologies, are much more powerful today than they were even five years ago.

Prof Lenardo will present the free Irish Society for Immunology/ Irish Times /Science Gallery public lecture How the DNA Genomics Revolution Will Improve Your Future Health in the Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, at 7pm on Tuesday, April 29th. To book, email irishimmunology@gmail.com.

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DNA tools getting to the root of disease

Topics: court, crime, mackay, robbery, torture

DNA statements linked to an alleged torture, assault and robbery of a 40-year-old woman in South Mackay won't be available until August.

Matthew James Lester, Tracey Nadine Hart, Kylie Ann Graham and Laana Shanae Hall are co-accused in relation to the alleged incident on January 15.

All four are charged with torture, deprivation of liberty, assault occasioning bodily harm, two counts of robbery in company with violence and the unlawful use of a motor vehicle.

Hart and Lester and also charged with arson, and Lester is further charged with administering poison with intent to harm.

Magistrate Damien Dwyer said prosecution was "not clear" on when the brief of evidence, not including the DNA statements, would be available.

Prosecution had indicated the material should be available in June, the Mackay Magistrates Court was told.

Mr Dwyer adjourned the matters to May 1 so a date could be provided.

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DNA in relation to torture case delayed until August

WASHINGTON (AP) Federal health regulators have cleared a genetic test from Roche as the first ever U.S.-approved alternative to the Pap smear, the decades-old mainstay of cervical cancer screening.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Roche's cobas HPV test to detect the human Papillomavirus, or HPV, in women 25 and up. HPV causes nearly all cases of cervical cancer.

Doctors already use such DNA-based tools as a follow-up to confirm Pap test results. But Thursday's decision means Roche can now market its test as a stand-alone option for cervical cancer screening, ahead of the Pap test.

Roche supported its bid for expanded marketing with study results suggesting genetic testing is more accurate and objective at identifying cancerous growths than Pap smear which requires doctors to examine cervical cells under a microscope for signs of cancer.

The FDA approval comes despite pushback from a number of women's health groups, who warned regulators that approving the DNA test as an alternative to Pap testing could lead to confusion, higher costs and overtreatment. More than a dozen patient groups raised those concerns in a letter to the FDA last week. Specifically, they said HPV-only testing could lead to overtreatment of younger women who carry the virus but have little risk of developing actual cancer. Most sexually active young people contract HPV, though their bodies usually eliminate the virus within a few months. Only years-long infections develop into cancer.

FDA officials said in a statement Thursday that they approved the test because "Roche Diagnostics conducted a well-designed study that provided the FDA with a reasonable assurance of the safety and effectiveness." The trial included over 47,000 women who underwent cervical screening using either Pap or HPV screening. The test results were then checked for accuracy against final biopsy results that confirmed whether they actually had cancer.

For decades the Pap test was the only screening option for cervical cancer and it's had a remarkably successful track record. The number of cervical cancer cases reported in the U.S. has decreased more than 50 percent in the past 30 years, primarily due to increased Pap screening. Still, an estimated 12,000 cases of cervical cancer are expected to be diagnosed this year, a fact that has spurred development of HPV tests like those from Roche, Qiagen and other test makers. HPV test costs generally cost between $80 and $100, about twice as much as a $40 Pap.

Medical guidelines have been evolving rapidly to try and incorporate both techniques. Under the latest guidelines from the American Cancer Society, a Pap test is recommended every three years for women 21 to 29 years old. Women 30 and older should have both a Pap test and an HPV test every five years, or a Pap test alone every three years. HPV screening is not recommended for women in their 20s because it increases the odds of more invasive testing that can leave the cervix less able to handle pregnancy later in life.

But the FDA approval allows Roche to market its test for women as young as 25. Women who test positive for the most high-risk strains of HPV will be referred directly to colposcopy, an invasive test in which doctors view the cervix with a magnifying device and often collect a tissue sample for testing.

Groups including the Cancer Prevention and Treatment Fund, American Medical Women's Association and Our Bodies Ourselves questioned why the FDA would approve labeling that goes against medical society recommendations which only recommend HPV screening for women 30 and older.

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FDA OKs First-Ever DNA Alternative To Pap Smear

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Newswise Our DNA is under constant attack from many sources, including environmental pollutants, ultraviolet light, and radiation. Fortunately, cells have several major DNA repair systems that can fix this damage, which may lead to cancer and other diseases if not mended.

The effectiveness of these repair systems varies greatly from person to person; scientists believe that this variability may explain why some people get cancer while others exposed to similar DNA-damaging agents do not. A team of MIT researchers has now developed a test that can rapidly assess several of these repair systems, which could help determine individuals risk of developing cancer and help doctors predict how a given patient will respond to chemotherapy drugs.

The new test, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of April 21, can analyze four types of DNA repair capacity simultaneously, in less than 24 hours. Previous tests have been able to evaluate only one system at a time.

All of the repair pathways work differently, and the existing technology to measure each of those pathways is very different for each one. It takes expertise, its time-consuming, and its labor-intensive, says Zachary Nagel, an MIT postdoc and lead author of the PNAS paper. What we wanted to do was come up with one way of measuring all DNA repair pathways at the same time so you have a single readout thats easy to measure.

The research team, led by professor Leona Samson, used this approach to measure DNA repair in a type of immortalized human blood cells called lymphoblastoid cells, taken from 24 healthy people. They found a huge range of variability, especially in one repair system where some peoples cells were more than 10 times more efficient than others.

None of the cells came out looking the same. They each have their own spectrum of what they can repair well and what they dont repair well. Its like a fingerprint for each person, says Samson, who is the Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor, an American Cancer Society Professor, and a member of MITs departments of biological engineering and of biology, Center for Environmental Health Sciences, and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

Measuring repair

With the new test, the MIT team can measure how well cells repair the most common DNA lesions, including single-strand breaks, double-strand breaks, mismatches, and the introduction of alkyl groups caused by pollutants such as fuel exhaust and tobacco smoke.

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Fast Way to Measure DNA Repair