The European Medicines Agency has just recommended extending use of an existing drug, nitisinone (Orfadin), to treat alkaptonuria (AKU). AKU holds a…
-
post Long-Awaited Drug for Alkaptonuria (AKU), the First “Inborn Error,” On the Way to Approval in Europe
-
post 5 COVID-19 Updates: Cats, Kids, Seniors, Blood, and an Old Vaccine
Times have been strange for us all, weird indeed for science journalists. The initial manageable flow of news alerts to the media…
-
post A Cloned Przewalski’s Horse Evokes Memories of the Catskill Game Farm
On August 6, the first cloned Przewalski’s horse was born in Texas. Kurt began with a cell nucleus from another of his…
-
post How the Various COVID Vaccines Work
COVID vaccine hesitancy is on the rise, perhaps in the wake of pressure to speed approval beyond scientific reason. But I think…
-
post Extinction of the Woolly Rhino: Ancient Genomes Point to Climate Change, not Overhunting
Two views of the forces behind extinction of the woolly rhino elegantly illustrate how scientific thinking shifts to embrace new knowledge –…
-
post Progress and a Setback in Treating Rare Genetic Diseases: Hemophilia A, CLN1, SMA, and DMD
In these strange days of the pandemic, it’s easy to forget that people are still sick with the illnesses that we’ve always…
-
post How COVID-19 Arose and Amplified Along the Meat Supply Chain
Early in this unforgettable year, a wet market in Wuhan, China, emerged as a possible step along the way, if not the…
-
post She Had Her Own Mutation, Sequencing Led to a Treatment and Major Genetic Discovery – Then She Died of COVID
It isn’t often that an investigation of a single patient who has a devastating, unrecognized disease leads to finding an existing drug…
-
post COVID Genomes Paint Portrait of an Evolving Pathogen
The COVID-19 pandemic is an unfolding story told in numbers. While news reports focus on the number of tests, cases, hospitalizations, and…
-
post Can Past Coronavirus Infection Protect Against COVID-19? Hints from Smallpox Vaccine
In ordinary times, a new report describing experiments on bits of smallpox scabs nestled in Civil War museum artifacts would have been…
-
post A Tale of Two Clinical Trials: Gene Therapy for a Rare Disease and a Vaccine for COVID-19
Encouraging preliminary findings in a phase I clinical trial for a COVID-19 vaccine were widely reported as soon as the paper appeared…
-
post Gastruloids Stand In for Early Human Embryos
Remember human embryonic stem (hES) cells? We don’t hear much about them anymore. And so I was surprised to see an application…