The recent development of a powerful and flexible genome editing technique (the CRISP-cas9 method) accelerates tremendously the production of animal models and will significantly enhance the perspectives of (somatic) gene ...

According to recent reports, the success rate of targeted therapy directed by “actionable mutations” found in tumour DNA is rather low (10 to 20%). Interesting attempts have been made to improve this by establishing mouse ...

A practical DNA sequencer based on nanopores has now demonstrated interesting performance and may be on the way to capturing a significant slice of the sequencing market while opening up new application fields thanks to ...

The “liquid biopsy” approach shows promise for characterization and monitoring of cancer during treatment; however a blood-based detection test for “high-risk” but asymptomatic individuals, recently introduced by Pathway ...

The summit organised in early December 2015 considered in depth the various issues (technical, scientific, societal and ethical) raised by the prospect of genome editing using the extremely effective CRISPR system. Germline ...

Two clinical trials using CRISPR technology to engineer the T cells of cancer patients by inactivating the gene for immune checkpoint molecule PD-1 are (almost) underway, one in the USA and the other in China. The less ...

The recently announced “Cancer moonshot” may be greeted with scepticism: the previous “War on cancer” (1971) was not very successful. However the current plan seems well targeted, with emphasis not only on research investment ...

The abundance of rare variants in human DNA is the consequence of tremendous recent expansion of our population. Careful measurement of neutral variants in a European population points to more recent and more rapid expansion ...

The recently proposed « HGP-write » project aims to synthetize a full human genome and to introduce it into cells. This ambitious endeavour is fraught with financial and technical uncertainties and, if successful, would ...