CD GENOMICS

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – GenDx announced today that it has received IVD marking from South Korean regulators for its NGSgo human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typing workflow used in transplant medicine. According to the company, the workflow is now cleared by the South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety for the typing of HLA-A, B, C, DRB1, and DQB1 by next-generation sequencing on Illumina Miseq platforms, followed by analysis with GenDx's NGSengine software. HLA genes code for cell-surface antigen-presenting proteins, and HLA typing is an important genetic analysis in assessing compatibility between donor and recipient in stem cell and solid organ transplants since mismatches can result in transplant failure. "It took a great deal of work to complete the registration, and we are proud to be the first supplier that can offer IVD NGS products for HLA typing in South Korea," GenDx CEO Wietse Mulder said in a statement. Last week, GenDx   received   CE-IVD marking fo...

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Agena Bioscience said on Tuesday that it has signed a three-year agreement to provide its MassArray system for cystic fibrosis testing to the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), as part of the agency's newborn screening program. Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed. The MassArray system is designed to detect genetic variation using end-point PCR and label-free mass spectrometry. Agena's cystic fibrosis panel includes more than 70 mutations in the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene that have been linked to the disease. According to Agena, Illinois expanded its newborn testing program to include cystic fibrosis in 2008, focusing on CFTR variants recommended by the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Given the diversity of the state's population, the IDPH is now expanding cystic fibrosis screening to include 70 CFTR variants. "As w...

By analyzing genomic sequences from more than 400 strains of the bacterium that causes anthrax, researchers have provided the first evidence that the severity -- technically known as virulence -- of specific strains may be related to the number of copies of certain plasmids they carry. Plasmids are genetic structures of the cell that can reproduce independently, and are responsible for producing the anthrax toxin and other virulence factors. The research found that bacteria strains collected from humans and animals tended to have more copies of the virulence plasmids than those collected from environmental sources. The research, a collaboration between scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), used CDC's collection of   Bacillus anthracis   strains gathered from around the world beginning in the 1950s. "There is a hypothesis that the copy number -- number of copies of the plasmids -- plays a role in how vi...

A new clinical study published in the January issue of   Gene Therapy   reports the promising results of an innovative DNA-based gene therapy that may offer a potential therapeutic option for a disease with unmet medical needs. The study examined the safety and efficacy of gene therapy with a plasmid DNA containing human hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) gene, called VM202, in 52 patients with critical limb ischemia (CLI) at 16 hospitals and research centers in the United States and Korea. VM202 was found to be safe and well tolerated and showed clinical benefits in CLI patients who had no other treatment options. Both ulcer healing and tissue oxygenation improved significantly in patients who were given four series of VM202 injections (spaced 2 weeks apart) in the muscle of the diseased leg. "These positive results are exciting, and VM202 shows great promise for treating patients with this debilitating disease who often have limited therapeutic options," said Dr. Emerson C....

A report on how the scientists created and tested what they call "ImmunoMap" appeared Dec. 20 in   Cancer Immunology Research . "ImmunoMap gives scientists a picture of the wide diversity of the immune system's responses to cellular antigens," says Jonathan Schneck, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pathology, medicine and oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and a member of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. Receptors on T-cells recognize antigens, or pieces of other cells that trigger an immune response, particularly antibodies. If the antigens are foreign, T-cells raise the alarm within the immune system, which can distribute an "all-points bulletin" to be on the lookout for the unfamiliar antigens. Because diseases such as cancer tend to evade detection by T-cells' receptors, allowing a tumor to grow unchecked, scientists have long sought "intel" on this process as a means of developing therapies that targe...

The human body is made up of on the order of 13 billion cells - and each of them has a distinct molecular profile. Even cells in the same tissue can differ, often subtly, from one another, and their activities can vary over time. This is why single-cell analyses provide such a powerful tool for the characterization of cellular heterogeneities and the complex mechanisms that account for them. "Single-cell technologies are already revolutionizing biology", as LMU molecular biologist Professor Wolfgang Enard puts it. Enard and his group have now improved an already highly sensitive method in this field and present their findings in   Nature Communications . Single-cell RNA sequencing makes it possible to obtain a snapshot of the functional state of any given cell - a molecular fingerprint, as it were. Essentially, the technique determines the composition of the messenger RNA (mRNA) population present in a cell. mRNAs are copies ('transcripts') of defined segments of...

Abstract:  Monoclonal antibody (McAb) was produced by B cell hybridoma cell line. Single antibody monoclonal antibody technology targeting only one antigenic determinant was first initiated in 1975 by Koehler of Germany and Milstein of the United Kingdom. The basic principle of McAb technology is that mouse myeloma cells can proliferate indefinitely and secrete immunoglobulins without antibody activity in vitro and in vivo, while spleen cells of immunized mice have the ability to produce antibodies, but cannot proliferate indefinitely. These two cells are fused into hybridoma cells using a fusion agent (PEG, etc.). Such hybridoma cells have the major features of the parental cells. It can not only proliferate in artificial culture, but also produce specific antibodies. Clones grown from a single cell can be selected by limiting dilution. McAb has many advantages, such as: high unity and homogeneity; high titer; immune antigen does not need to be purified, but pure antibodies...