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 ...

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 ...

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; ...

An extension of newborn screening to genome sequencing is now feasible but raises a number of scientific, organisational and ethical issues. This is being explored in discussions and in several funded trials, in order to ...

The detection and analysis of circulating tumour DNA and/or circulating tumour cells in the blood of cancer patients open new possibilities for cancer characterisation and management. The approach has generated much ...

A new genetic study focussing on the degree of violence in criminals and using both candidate gene and GWAS approaches finds statistically significant associations of extreme violent behaviour with low activity alleles of ...

There are now a number of cases in which non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) has detected signs of cancer in pregnant women. These unexpected findings raise a number of difficult questions regarding their communication ...