Counsyl, a Silicon Valley company that screens prospective parents for their risk of passing on rare inherited diseases, has expanded its genetic testing service to assess your inherited risks for breast, ovarian, prostate, and pancreatic cancers. The expanded testing, which arrived on the heels of $28 million in new funding raised from Goldman Sachs and others, comes in the midst…
In November 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered the company 23andMe to stop offering its direct-to-consumer DNA testing service, which provided individuals with $99 assessments of their genetic risk for almost 200 disorders. Experts now examines whether this move by FDA is a violation of the First Amendment, or a necessary step to protect consumers. 23andMe seemingly…
A mother’s diet before conception can permanently affect how her child’s genes function, according to a study published in Nature Communications. The first such evidence of the effect in humans opens up the possibility that a mother’s diet before pregnancy could permanently affect many aspects of her children’s lifelong health. Researchers from the MRC International Nutrition Group, based at the London…
Cochlear implants are among the most successful bionic devices ever developed. Available since the 1970s, they have restored some measure of hearing to more than 300,000 people around the world. Now, scientists from the University of New South Wales have found a way of making the implants even more effective—by turning them into delivery vehicles for genes that promote the…
Scientists have grown stem cells from adults using cloning techniques for the first time — bringing them closer to developing patient-specific lines of cells that can be used to treat a whole host of ailments, from heart disease to blindness. The research, described in Thursday’s online edition of the journal Cell Stem Cell, is a controversial advance likely to reopen…
A team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Center for Cancer Systems Biology (CCSB) at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has uncovered a new aspect of autism, revealing that proteins involved in autism interact with many more partners than previously known. These interactions had not been detected earlier because they involve alternatively spliced…