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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

One of the initial motivations for the Genome project was to improve the detection of possible mutations in children of atomic bomb survivors. In fact it has proved very difficult to find any genetic effect in these ...

After clearing many hurdles, gene therapy is now reaching the commercialization stage and can be expected to make a modest but real contribution to treatment in the near future.

A newly established company called Grail and spun out from Illumina promises to develop a “liquid biopsy” test suitable for asymptomatic cancer detection and general screening. While the necessary sensitivity may be ...

Targeted modification of genes (“gene editing”) is made much easier by the recently developed CRISPR-Cas9 system. This has raised alarm about possible uses of this technology for germline modification of the human genome; ...