Category Archives: Human Genetic Engineering

Using immunotherapy with genetically modified T cells that express chimeric antigen receptors or CARs designed to target tumor-associated molecules, have impressive efficacy in the treatment hematological malignancies.

A CAR is a synthetic construct that, when expressed in T cells, mimics T cell receptor activation and redirects specificity and effector function toward a specified antigen.[1]

In the treatment of cancer, this process is accomplished by linking an extracellular ligand-binding domain specific for a tumor cell surface antigen to an intracellular signaling module that activates T cells upon antigen binding.[1]

The presented studies include results from emerging second-generation cellular immunotherapy products that strive to overcome the limitations of existing products such as resistance and reduce toxicity and simplify treatment.

Cellular immunotherapy uses genetic engineering to enhance the ability of the immune system the bodys defense system against infection and disease to kill malignant cells in the blood, the bone marrow, and other sites, in order to keep cancer from coming back.

CAR T-cell TherapyChimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies, better known as CAR T-cell therapies, are developed by harvesting a patients own T-cells, the immune systems primary cancer-killing cells, engineering them to target proteins specific to the surface of cancer cells, and reintroducing these modified T-cells back into the patients immune system to kill the cancer cells.

First generationFirst-generation CAR T-cell therapies primarily target CD-19, a protein found on the surface of most normal and malignant B cells in B cell cancers such as lymphoma. These therapies have been shown to produce long-term remissions in about one-third of patients with B-cell lymphomas that have not responded to prior therapies.

We are now seeing efforts to enhance the effectiveness of CAR T-cell therapy by designing products capable of attacking multiple targets, expand the availability of cellular immunotherapy to other blood cancers such as multiple myeloma and replace the complex manufacturing process required for CAR T-cell therapy with a uniform off-the-shelf product, noted Gary Schiller, MD, UCLA Health, an academic medical center which includes a number of hospitals and an extensive primary care network in the Los Angeles, California, region.

One of the phase I studies evaluates an off-the-shelf cellular immunotherapy product that targets two proteins found on the surface of lymphoma cells, including its potential to revive previously administered CAR T-cells that have stopped working.

Another study presents preclinical results for one of the first cellular immunotherapies to be based on off-the-shelf natural killer (NK) cells and the first, according to its manufacturer, to be genetically engineered to contain three active anti-tumor components.

The other two studies, also phase I studies, assess novel CAR T-cell therapies for multiple myeloma that test different dual-target strategies.

One investigational agent is genetically engineered to contain two proteins that attach to BCMA, a protein found almost exclusively on the surface of plasma cells, the immune-system cells that become cancerous in multiple myeloma.

The other is designed to target both BCMA and CD-38, another protein found on the surface of plasma cells. In both studies, many patients achieved minimal residual disease (MRD) negativity, which means that using highly sensitive testing fewer than one myeloma cell per 100,000 cells was identified in the bone marrow. Previous studies have shown that patients who achieve this milestone have a lower risk of relapse after more than three years of follow-up.

Dual-targeted CAR T-cell therapiesThe three phase I studies also hint at the possibility that dual-targeted CAR T-cell therapies might result in fewer patients experiencing moderate to severe cytokine release syndrome (CRS), a known adverse effect caused by an immune response in the body to the activated T cells that are attacking the cancer. CRS causes flu-like symptoms such as fever, body aches, and fatigue, and in severe cases can be life-threatening. Treatment with the drug tocilizumab can reduce CRS symptoms.

Dual-Targeted Antibody Elicits Durable ResponsesPatients with B-cell Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) that had returned after or failed to respond to a median of three prior therapies showed complete responses (CR) and durable remissions after being treated with an investigational drug called mosunetuzumab (RG7828; Genentech/Roche). [2]

This investigational agent is a humanized, T-cell bispecific antibody designed to engage T cells and redirect their cytotoxic activity against malignant B cells. The drug works by activating the patients own T-cells, stimulating them to attack and kill cancerous B cells to which they have been introduced by the novel antibody.

Mosunetuzumab simultaneously binds to CD3 epsilon (CD3), a component of the T-cell receptor (TCR) complex, and to CD20, a B-cell surface protein expressed in a majority of B-cell malignancies. This results in crosslinking of the TCR, inducing downstream signaling events that leads to B-cell killing.

Among patients whose lymphoma progressed after treatment with CAR T-cell therapy, 22% had complete remissions when treated with mosunetuzumab. This new drug targets two proteins, one on the surface of tumor cells and the other on the surface of the recipients Tcells.

Unlike CAR T-cell therapy, mosunetuzumab is an off-the-shelf immunotherapy product that can be given to patients without having to genetically modify their T cells, noted lead author Stephen J. Schuster, MD, of Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Mosunetuzumab generates long-lasting responses with a very tolerable safety profile in patients with B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas for whom multiple prior treatments have failed and whose prognosis is poor. Of particular interest, we are seeing durable complete remissions in patients whose lymphomas progressed after CAR T-cell therapy, he added.

The researchers observed many remissions continue after patients stop receiving the drug.

I have stopped therapy in some patients after six months and they have remained in remission. Some patients have remained in remission without additional therapy for more than a year, Schuster said.

New treatment options are needed not only for patients in whom CAR T-cell therapy has failed, but also for those patients whose lymphomas are getting worse so quickly that they cannot wait for CAR T-cell manufacturing, which takes several weeks, Schuster explained.

The data presented during the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology included 270 patients (median age 62, 172 men) enrolled in the phase I trial in seven countries (the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, South Korea, Spain, and the United Kingdom). All participating patients had B-cell lymphomas that had come back or not responded to a median of three prior therapies. Two-thirds of patients (67%) had fast-growing lymphomas; 85 (31%) patients had more slow-growing forms of the disease. In 30 patients (11%), the cancer was resistant to or returned after an initial response to CAR T-cell therapy; in 77 patients (29%), the disease had progressed after a stem cell transplant.

All patients were treated with mosunetuzumab by intravenous infusion. They had an imaging test at either six weeks or three months after starting therapy to assess the initial response to treatment, and responses continued to be followed every three months thereafter.

Forty-six of 124 patients with fast-growing lymphomas (37%) had measurable decreases in the extent of their cancer (objective response); 24 of 124 patients (19%) saw all detectable tumors disappear (complete response). A higher response rate was observed in patients with higher exposure to mosunetuzumab. Among patients with slow-growing lymphomas, 42 of 67 (63%) had objective responses and 29 of 67 (43%) had complete responses. Both objective response rate and complete response rate were maintained in subgroups of patients at high risk for relapse.

Complete remissions appear to be long lasting, Schuster said.

With a median follow-up of six months since first complete remission, 24 of 29 patients (83%) who achieved complete remissions of their slow-growing lymphomas and 17 of 24 patients (71%) who achieved complete remissions of their fast-growing lymphomas remain free of disease. In some patients whose cancers progressed after receiving CAR T-cell therapy, highly sensitive molecular testing showed that the previously administered CAR T cells increased in number.

This suggests that, in addition to its ability to kill cancerous B cells, mosunetuzumab may also help augment the effect of the prior CAR-T treatment, Schuster noted.

Cytokine-release syndromeIn this study, 29% of patients treated with mosunetuzumab experienced cytokine-release syndrome that was mostly mild.

Cytokine release syndrome or CRS is caused by a large, rapid release of cytokines into the blood from immune cells affected by the immunotherapy. While most patients have a mild reaction, sometimes patients may have a severe, life threatening, reaction.

In 3% of patients, CRS was treated with tocilizumab (Actemra; Genentech/Roche). Four percent of patients experienced moderately severe neurologic side effects. Patients who received higher doses of mosunetuzumab were no more likely to have CRS or neurologic side effects than patients treated at lower doses.

A study of a higher dose of mosunetuzumab is now enrolling patients and long-term follow-up of these patients will ultimately help to better evaluate the durability of response data.

Larger, randomized trials are needed to further confirm these promising data and determine whether the treatment benefit of mosunetuzumab is enhanced when it is used earlier in the course of lymphoma therapy or in combination with other agents, Schuster concluded.

Novel Off-the-Shelf CARPreclinical studies provide the first evidence that cellular immunotherapy for B cell cancers could ultimately become an off-the-shelf product, capable of being uniformly manufactured in large quantities as prescription drugs are.

We have taken the concept of traditional pharmaceutical drug development and applied it to cellular therapy, explained senior author Bob Valamehr, Ph.D, of Fate Therapeutics, a San Diego biopharmaceutical company.

The product called FT596, is among the first cellular immunotherapies to be based on off-the-shelf NK cells the first line of defense of the immune system and is the first cellular immunotherapy to be genetically engineered to contain three active anti-tumor components, Valamehr explained.

Comparable with standard CAR T-cell therapyFT596 demonstrated comparable ability to kill cancerous white blood cells as standard CAR T-cells and, when combined with the drug rituximab (Rituxan; Genentech/Roche), killed cancerous white blood cells that were no longer responding to standard CAR T-cell therapy due to loss of the CD19 antigen target.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Fate Therapeutics Investigational New Drug Application for FT596 in September 2019 and the company hopes to begin a first-in-human phase I clinical trial for the treatment of B-cell lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia in the first quarter of 2020.

The primary purpose of this trial will be to assess the safety and activity of FT596 in patients.

ManufacturingThe development and manufacturing of FT596 begins with human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) that are uniquely capable of unlimited self-renewal and can differentiate into more than 200 types of human cells. These iPSCs are genetically engineered, after which a single genetically engineered cell or clone is selected and multiplied in the laboratory to create a master engineered cell line that can be repeatedly used to generate cancer-fighting immune-system cells such as NK and T cells.

Natural Kiler Cells or NK cells are a type of lymphocyte and a component of innate immune system, the bodys first line of defense against infection and disease. Unlike T-cells, which have to be trained to recognize their target and can kill only cells that display that target on their surface, NK cells do not need special preparation before going on the attack and can kill many different types of transformed or infected cells.

NK cells are multifaceted and can be viewed as a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to protecting the host, whereas T cells can act in only one way, Valamehr explained.

But NK cells are also different in other ways. They are inherently limited in their capacity to multiply and expand when infused into patients, and they have a shorter lifespan.

Valamehr and his colleagues used genetic engineering to address these shortcomings. In addition to engineering FT596 to carry a CAR targeting the CD19 protein, which is produced by nearly all B-cell lymphomas and leukemias, they inserted two other novel proteins: CD16, which boosts and broadens the NK cells ability to kill cancer cells, and IL15, which stimulates FT596 to proliferate and persist.

Valamehr explained that FT596 has been designed to address two more limitations of CAR T-cell therapy .

The investigational agent is an off-the-shelf product. As a result, it significantly improves the current patient-by-patient CAR T-cell treatment paradigm by eliminating the time-consuming and costly process that is currently required to treat a patient with CAR T-cells.

The addition of the CD16 protein gives FT596 broader therapeutic activity and versatility. In combination with rituximab, FT596 has the potential to lead to deeper and more durable responses and overcome resistance that hampers the long-term efficacy of CAR T-cell therapy.

Eliminating the high production cost, weeks of manufacturing time, and complex manufacturing process required for CAR T-cell therapy and replacing it with a mass-produced, off-the-shelf product, promises to expand access to effective cell-based cancer immunotherapy to many more patients who may benefit from it, Valamehr concluded.

Results from CARTITUDE-1 in R/R Multiple MyelomaPatients with multiple myeloma who had received a median of five prior therapies, and for whom standard-of-care treatments were no longer working, had a high response rate when treated with the investigational CAR T-cell therapy JNJ-68284528 (JNJ-4528), which targets BCMA, a protein commonly found on the surface of multiple myeloma cancer cells.

These patients participated in a clinical trials (NCT03548207), supported by Janssen Research & Development, designed to characterize safety of and establish the recommended Phase II dose (RP2D) (Phase Ib) and to evaluate the efficacy of JNJ-68284528 (Phase II).

We are seeing a high response rate, with most patients achieving MRD negativity, noted lead study author Deepu Madduri, MD, of The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai in New York.

Considering these patients have all received multiple prior therapies, these results are extremely encouraging, Madduri added.

All evaluable patients receiving this CAR T-cell therapy have achieved MRD-negative disease state and 27 of 29 patients are progression free at a median follow-up of six months, Madduri said.

Multiple myeloma is a cancer of plasma cells, which are found in the bone marrow and are part of the immune system, the bodys defense system against infection. Typical signs and symptoms of multiple myeloma may be bone pain or fractures, high levels of calcium in the blood, kidney damage, and anemia. Multiple myeloma affects an estimated 160,000 people each year, occurs most often in people over 60. The disease is slightly more common in men than in women.

Although new therapies for multiple myeloma have recently become available that can extend patients life expectancy, a cure for the disease remains elusive.

We can get the disease into remission, but most patients unfortunately relapse, and outcomes are very poor for patients who have relapsed multiple times, she said.

Researchers explained that JNJ-4528 is a novel CAR T-cell therapy featuring two molecules that bind to BCMA, a protein found on the surface of multiple myeloma cells.

We are learning that every CAR T-cell therapy is different, Madduri said.

JNJ-4528 has a unique CAR T-cell composition in patients, preferentially enriched in CD8 T cells, which are believed to be one of the most important T cells in killing cancer cells, she noted.

This phase Ib/II trial is continuing to enroll patients.

During the 2019 annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology, Madduri reported results for the first 29 patients enrolled.

Patients T-cells were collected and sent to a laboratory where they were genetically engineered to express JNJ-4528. Prior to re-infusing these CAR T-cells, the patients received three days of chemotherapy to make room in their immune systems for the engineered T-cells.

Following chemotherapy, each patient received a single infusion of the JNJ-4528 CAR T-cells.

After a minimum of 28 days, these patients had blood and bone marrow exams, which was followed by exams at six months, and one year after treatment to assess their response. The primary aims of the trial are to assess the therapys safety and to confirm the dose to be tested in a larger, phase II trial.

The median follow-up time in the current analysis is six months. Overall, 100% of patients had a clinical response to JNJ-4528. Moreover, 66% had a stringent complete response, meaning that sensitive laboratory and microscopic tests found no evidence for myeloma proteins or cells in blood, urine, or bone marrow.

Most patients (93%) experienced some form of CRS. One patient had severe (grade 3) CRS, and one patient died from its complications 99 days after the CAR T-cell infusion. In 76% of patients, CRS was treated with tocilizumab.

To see some patients in this heavily pretreated population surviving for a year or more with a one-time treatment and a manageable safety profile is remarkable, Madduri explained.

These patients feel that they have their quality of life back. They no longer have to come into the clinic for weekly treatments and some are well enough to travel, Madduri concluded.

The phase II portion of this study is ongoing to evaluate the overall response rate of patients treated with JNJ-68284528 (JNJ-4528). Additional clinical studies are evaluating the safety and efficacy of JNJ-4528 in different multiple myeloma treatment settings.

BreakthroughEarlier this week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation for JNJ-68284528 (JNJ-4528).

The granting of Breakthrough Therapy Designation for JNJ-68284528 (JNJ-4528) is a significant milestone as we continue to accelerate the global development of this innovative CAR-T therapy in collaboration with Legend Biotech, noted Sen Zhuang, MD, Ph.D., Vice President, Oncology Clinical Development, Janssen Research & Development.

We look forward to continuing to work closely with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to advance the clinical development program for JNJ-68284528 (JNJ-4528) and ultimately bring this BCMA-targeted immunotherapy to patients living with multiple myeloma who are in need of a new therapeutic option, Zhuang concluded.

Encouraging Results for Dual-Targeted CAR T-Cell TherapyMore than three out of four patients with multiple myeloma that returned or did not respond to at least two therapies remained in remission seven months after treatment with a novel CAR T-cell therapy targeting two proteins that are frequently found on myeloma cells.

Nine patients experiencing sustained remissions in this study, which ws supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Major Technological Innovation Special Project fund of Hubei Province of China, and Cellyan Therapeutics, were diagnosed with a difficult-to-treat form of multiple myeloma in which the disease has spread beyond the bone marrow.

Roughly one in 10 patients with multiple myeloma develop tumors in the organs or soft tissues such as the blood vessels, muscles, and nerves. These so-called extramedullary tumors respond poorly to treatment, and patients who develop them have a poor outlook and poor health related quality of life (hrQoL)

Our results show that this CAR T-cell product can effectively achieve elimination of extramedullary tumors, said study author Yu Hu, MD, Ph.D, of Union Hospital, Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China.

Although these are preliminary data, they are encouraging for patients with multiple myeloma who have not responded to other therapies, Hu added.

Hu and his colleagues are developing the first CAR T-cell therapy to be genetically engineered to target BCMA and CD38, two proteins found on the surface of plasma cells. Multiple myeloma is a cancer of plasma cells, which are found in the bone marrow and are part of the immune system, the bodys defense system against infection and disease.

Our thinking was that targeting both of these proteins would improve treatment efficacy without increasing toxicity, and induce deeper, more durable remissions, Hu noted.

The first-in-humans phase I trial enrolled 22 patients whose average age was 59, of whom 11 were men. All had multiple myeloma that had returned or not responded to at least three therapies. Nine of the 22 patients had extramedullary tumors. The study aims were to determine the safest and most effective dose of the CAR T-cell therapy as well as to initially evaluate its effectiveness.

Just like in other trials with CAR T-cell therapies, the participating patients received three days of chemotherapy to make room in their immune systems for the engineered T-cells. Then each patient was infused with the dual-targeted CAR T cells. Patients were divided into five groups, with each group receiving a higher dose than the previous one. Depending on the cell dose, patients received either one or two infusions.

At a median of 36 weeks of follow-up, 18 patients (90.9%) had MRD-negative disease. Twelve patients (54.5%) had a stringent complete response, meaning that no plasma cells were detected in the bone marrow. Seven patients (31.8%) had a good or very good partial response, meaning that the level of M-protein (an abnormal protein produced by cancerous plasma cells) in the blood or urine was reduced but still detectable. In eight of the nine patients with extramedullary lesions, these tumors were undetectable on their computed tomography scans. For the 17 patients who remained in remission at seven months after treatment, the median duration of response was 28.8 weeks.

The adverse events observed included 20 patients who experienced CRS, of whom six needed treatment. No serious adverse neurologic effects such as seizures, movement impairment, difficulty speaking or understanding speech, or fatal swelling in the brain were reported.

With this dual-targeted CAR T-cell therapy, we have demonstrated a high response rate, especially a higher rate and longer duration of stringent complete response, compared with other therapies, as well as effective elimination of extramedullary lesions, with no serious neurologic adverse effects and manageable levels of other adverse effects, Hu concluded.

The investigators continue to follow the patients for the next two years. They are also planning to conduct a phase II trial in both China and the United States to test the treatments effectiveness in a larger number of patients.

Clinical trialsA Study of JNJ-68284528, a Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell (CAR-T) Therapy Directed Against B-Cell Maturation Antigen (BCMA) in Participants With Relapsed or Refractory Multiple Myeloma (CARTITUDE-1) NCT03548207

References[1] Srivastava S, Riddell SR. Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell Therapy: Challenges to Bench-to-Bedside Efficacy. J Immunol. 2018;200(2):459468. doi:10.4049/jimmunol.1701155 [Abstract][2] Schuster SJ, Bartlett NL, Assouline S, Yoon SS, Bosch F, Sehn LH, Cheah CY, Shadman M, et al. Mosunetuzumab Induces Complete Remissions in Poor Prognosis Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Patients, Including Those Who Are Resistant to or Relapsing After Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell (CAR-T) Therapies, and Is Active in Treatment through Multiple Lines. 61st annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology. Program: General Sessions. Session: Plenary Scientific Session. Hematology Disease Topics & Pathways: antibodies, Follicular Lymphoma, CRS, Diseases, Biological, Therapies, neurotoxicity, Adverse Events, CAR-Ts, Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, DLBCL, immunotherapy, Lymphoid Malignancies. [Abstract][3] Goodridge JP, Mahmood S, Zhu H, Gaidarova S, Blum R, Bjordahl R, Cichocki F, et al. FT596: Translation of First-of-Kind Multi-Antigen Targeted Off-the-Shelf CAR-NK Cell with Engineered Persistence for the Treatment of B Cell Malignancies. 61st annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology. Program: Oral and Poster Abstracts. Type: Oral. Session: 625. Lymphoma: Pre-ClinicalChemotherapy and Biologic Agents: Targeting Apoptosis Pathways in Lymphoma.[Abstract][4] Madduri D, Usmani SZ, Jagannath S, Singh I, Zudaire E, Yeh TM, Allred AJ, Banerjee A, et al. Results from CARTITUDE-1: A Phase 1b/2 Study of JNJ-4528, a CAR-T Cell Therapy Directed Against B-Cell Maturation Antigen (BCMA), in Patients with Relapsed and/or Refractory Multiple Myeloma (R/R MM). 61st annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology. Program: Oral and Poster Abstracts. Type: Oral Session: 653. Myeloma: Therapy, excluding Transplantation: Novelty in CAR T in Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma. [Abstract][5] Li C, Mei H, Hu Y, Guo T, Liu L, Jiang H, Tang L, Wu Y, et al. A Bispecific CAR-T Cell Therapy Targeting Bcma and CD38 for Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma: Updated Results from a Phase 1 Dose-Climbing Trial61st annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology. Program: Oral and Poster Abstracts. Type: Oral. Session: 653. Myeloma: Therapy, excluding Transplantation: Novel Therapy for Relapsed Myeloma. Hematology Disease Topics & Pathways: Biological, Diseases, Adult, Therapies, Lymphoma (any), Adverse Events, CAR-Ts, Elderly, Biological Processes, Technology and Procedures, Cell Lineage, Study Population, Clinically relevant, Lymphoid Malignancies.

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ASH 2019: Second-gen CAR T-Cell Therapy Overcome Resistance, Reduce Toxicity and Simplify Treatment - OncoZine

Bengaluru: What must it have felt like to be a cotton spinner or an iron maker in England in the 1820s in the midst of an industrial revolution? Exactly 200 years later, we may be on the verge of another era of momentous change: the internet revolution. With internet access expanding dramatically post the early 1990s, a slew of new technologies have now matured to a point where fundamental change constantly seems to be right around the corner.

On the doorstep of a brand new decadethe 2020swhat new frontiers may Artificial Intelligence (AI) or gene editing open up? Will we soon have robot bosses? Will mixed reality change the way we consume entertainment and sports? Will we be able to cure 90% of all genetic diseases by the end of the decade? We take a look at five technologies that could alter India and the world. This may not be a definitive or even exhaustive list, but it is a list of things that could change the way we live, work, and play sooner than we think.

Mixed reality

Imagine watching a football match, not on your TV but on a virtual reality (VR) headset that streams the match live and projects interesting stats on the fly with the help of augmented reality (AR). Mumbai-based VR startup Tesseract, now owned by Mukesh Ambanis Reliance Jio, is promising a future like that with its Quark camera, Holoboard headset, and the high internet speeds of Jio Fiber. Similarly, a Hyderabad-based mixed reality startup called Imaginate enables cross-device communication over VR and AR wearables for better enterprise collaboration in the industrial sector.

Despite the much-hyped yet unmet expectations from the likes of Google Glass, Microsoft HoloLens and Facebooks Oculus, Tesseract and Imaginate simply underscore how the fusion of AR and VR technologies the combination of which is popularly known as Mixed Reality or MR is coming of age and is no longer in the realm of just sci-fi movies like Blade Runner 2049, where Officer K played by Ryan Gosling develops a relationship with his artificial intelligence (AI) hologram companion Joi.

For instance, AI-powered chatbots today can not only conduct a conversation in natural language via audio or text but they can be made more powerful with a dose of mixed reality. Last May, Fidelity Investments created a prototype VR financial advisor named Cora to answer client queries using a suite of tools from Amazon Web Services. Researchers in Southampton have built a device that displays 3D animated objects that can talk and interact with onlookers.

The Chinese government-run Xinhua News Agency has the worlds first AI-powered news anchor, whose voice has been modelled to resemble a real human anchor working for the agency. Going a step further, Japan-headquartered DataGrid Inc. uses generative adversarial networks (GANs) to develop its so-called whole body model automatic generation AI" that automatically generates full-length images of non-existent people with high resolutions.

Nevertheless, challenges abound when dealing MR-and AI-powered robots, humanoids, and human avatars. For one, whenever a company generates human bodies and faces, concerns over deep fakes and cheap fakes will always rear their heads. Second, data collection will continually raise concerns over security and privacy. Third, theres always the concern regarding the fairness of an AI algorithm when it is deployed to do human tasks like giving financial advice. Last, but not the least, theres also the question of whether AI bots should be allowed to pose as humans. This will continually pose a challenge and opportunity for technologists and policy makers.

Future of solar

Heliogen, a company that has billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates as one of its investors, says it has created the worlds first technology that can commercially replace fuels with carbon-free, ultra-high temperature heat from the sun. With its patented technology, Heliogens field of mirrors acts as a multi-acre magnifying glass to concentrate and capture sunlight.

This is just a case in point that solar technologies have evolved a lot since they first made their debut in the 1960s. For instance, solar roadwayspanels lining the surface of highwayshave already popped up in the Netherlands. Floating solar, on its part, is providing a credible option to address land use concerns associated with wide scale solar implementations. A French firm called Ciel et Terre, for instance, has projects set up in France, Japan, and England. Other parts of the world, including India and California in the US, are piloting similar floating solar initiatives.

Space-based solar technology is another exciting arena. India, China and Japan are investing heavily in these technologies right now. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agencys (JAXA) Space Solar Power Systems (SSPS) aims to transmit energy from orbiting solar panels by 2030. Further, researchers at the VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland have used solar and 3D printing technologies to develop prototypes of what they have christened as energy harvesting trees".

With solar power cheaper than coal in most countries in the world, its worth scaling up these technologies.

Indians and robot bosses

Between 400 and 800 million individuals around the world could be displaced by automation and would need to find new jobs by 2030, predicted a December 2017 survey by consultancy firm McKinsey. The Future of Jobs 2018 report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) suggests that 75 million jobs may be lost to automation by 2022, but adds that another 133 million additional new roles will be created.

Given that many of the automated jobs are being taken away by AI-powered chatbots and intelligent robots, would humans eventually have to work for a robo boss? This, however, may not be as big a concern as it is made out to be. According to the second annual AI at Work study conducted by Oracle and Future Workplace, people trust robots more than their managers. The study, released this October, notes that workers in China (77%) and India (78%) have adopted AI over 2X more than those in France (32%) and Japan (29%). Further, workers in India (60%) and China (56%) are the most excited about AI, while men have a more positive view of AI at work than women.

Oracle and Future Workplace also found that 82% of the workers believe robot managers are better at certain tasks, such as maintaining work schedules and providing unbiased information, than their human counterparts. And almost two-thirds (64%) of workers worldwide say they would trust a robot more than their human manager. In China and India, that figure rises to almost 90%.

On the other hand, the respondents felt managers can outdo robots when it comes to understanding their feelings, coaching them, and creating a healthy work culture. Whether humans eventually serve a robo boss or not remains to be seen. However, we can be certain of one thing: in the near future, we will increasingly see humans collaborating with smart robots.

Future of payments

Everyone can be a merchant, and every device can be an acceptance device," Accenture noted in its 2017 Driving the Future of Payments report. This trend has only accelerated over the last two years, especially with banks coming to terms with the fact that young customers, especially those living in urban areas, prefer net banking and mobile banking and would seldom, or never, want to visit a bank branch if offered that choice.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency investors, for instance, have not lost faith in this disruptive currency despite the run with volatility, and despite the industry being viewed with a lot of suspicion by most governments around the world, including India. Fintechs too, with their innovative technology solutions like AI-powered bots and contactless payments to name a few, have only made the payments ecosystem more inclusive, disruptive, and challenging. In India, especially, the governments Aadhaar-enabled payments system and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) have revolutionized the payments ecosystem. The total volume of UPI transactions in the third quarter of calendar 2019 touched 2.7 billiona 183% rise over the same July-September quarter a year ago. In terms of value, UPI clocked 4.6 trillionup 189% over the same period a year ago, according to the Worldlines India Digital Payments Report-Q3 2019.

However, the number of transactions done on mobile wallets was 1.04 billiononly a 5% rise over the previous year period.

QR codes, according to the report, will continue to be used for payments, and the internet of things (IoT) is set to dominate micro payments by transforming connected devices into payment channels, though the pace of adoption of 5G by countries like India will be the key.

Nevertheless, cash that has been in existence for over 3000 years in different forms is not going to disappear in a hurry. Trust and security will continue to remain the operative words in digital payments.

Making sense of gene editing

When Dolly the sheep made news for becoming the first mammal ever to be cloned from another individuals body cell, many expected human cloning to follow soon. Dolly died over 16 years ago, and subsequently animals, including monkeys and dogs, continue to be cloned successfully. Yet, no human being has yet been cloned in real life.

While human cloning, which may or may not eventually happen, is bound to raise a lot of alarm bells given the moral implications surrounding the issue, the fact is that human genomes, or genes, are being routinely edited in a bid to find solutions for what are today considered to be incurable genetically inherited diseases.

Researchers are using a gene editing tool known as CRISPR-Cas9. CRISPR, which stands for Clusters of Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, is a tool that allows researchers to easily alter DNA sequences and modify gene function. The protein Cas9 (CRISPR-associated, or Cas) is an enzyme that acts like a pair of molecular scissors capable of cutting strands of DNA.

CRISPR-Cas9 is primarily known for its use in treating diseases like AIDS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Huntingtons disease. Two patients, one with beta thalassemia and one with sickle cell disease, have potentially been cured of their diseases, reveal results from clinical trials that were jointly conducted by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics. The results released this November involved using Crispr to edit the genes of these patients.

Researchers are now looking to extend its use to tackle famine, lend a hand in creating antibiotics, and even wipe out an entire species such as malaria-spreading mosquitoes. Further, by genetically engineering a persons bone marrow cells, researchers can reprogram their immune and circulatory systems. Some new cancer treatments are based on this. Moreover, looking at the DNA of the collection of microbes in your gut can help with digestive disorders, weight loss, and even help understand mood changes.

Closer home, scientists at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) and the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (CSIR-IICB) are trying to correct genetic mutations in their laboratories using CRISPR Cas9 with encouraging preliminary results. But due to regulatory and ethical concerns, it may take a while before they can use this on humans.

IGIB also sells CRISPR products such as Cas9 proteins and its variants to educational institutes at reduced prices in a bid to encourage use of the technology.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), on its part, considers any use of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing in humans to be gene therapy and rules that the sale of DIY kits to produce gene therapies for self-administration is illegal. India, too, has banned the use of stem cell therapy for commercial use following concerns over rampant malpractice".

CRISPR-Cas9, thus, remains a work in progress and countries should have policies to govern its use. Meanwhile, one can watch out for an upgrade to CRISPR called Prime, which theoretically has the ability to snip out more than 90% of all genetic diseases.

Originally posted here:
Five technologies that may alter India in 2020 - Livemint

The average American consumes about one ton of food each year. Livestock chomp on approximately 50 billion servings of grain and other foods annually. Together, these figures represent trillions of meals since 1996, when crops modified by biotechnology, mostly corn and soybeans, but also alfalfa, potatoes, squash and papaya, went on sale in the United States.

How many deaths or illnesses have been linked to genetically modified crops? Not one. Not so much as a sniffle.

Thats not a surprise to scientists, as almostevery food-related expert and every major oversight or regulatory body in the world has concluded that biotech crops are as safe for human and animal consumption as food grown conventionally or organically. These conclusions should have put the GMO controversy to rest years ago, but misinformation still swirls. And as anyone familiar with Europes continued opposition to cultivating GMO and gene-edited crops knows, skepticism of genetic engineering shows no signs of fading.

Some crops have been approved for cultivation in the EU but few are grown. Spain is the largest producer, with GMO corn representing about 20% of its output. Smaller amounts are grown in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Portugal, Romania and Poland. But because of near-hysterical consumer and political opposition, almost no GMO-derived foods are available in supermarkets (the relatively small amount of maize is used for animal feed). Because of its role as a major global trading partner, and the oversized influence of its anti-biotechnology environmental groups, Europe has spread its ideology to much of Africa and Asia.

So, how did a movement so at odds with accepted science catch on and continue to thrive?

According to a November 2019 study published in European Management Journal by Bayer Crop Science researchers, the answer can mostly be explained by the impact of social media, which thrives on disinformation. After examining the popularity of 94,993 unique online articles about GMOs between 2009 and 2019, the researchers concluded that this digital landscape has attracted organizations (such as the Non-GMO Project) and ideologically sympathetic activists who have used social media to dominate the discussion about crop biotechnology. These groups and individuals represent:

. a new kind of competitor that seeks to monetize attention to disrupt, disparage, and support alternative campaigns through misleading information . Preliminary results suggest that a small group of alternative health and pro-conspiracy sites received more totals engagements on social media than sites commonly regarded as media outlets on the topic of GMOs.

Some people may immediately challenge the study, as it was written by researchers at Bayer Crop Science, which was previously Monsanto. Despite the obvious concern that the authors conclusions are self-serving after all, Monsanto has been the target of anti-GMO activists for more than two decades there is much in this report worth pondering. The study examines the strategies and incentives driving the mobilization of disinformation, and highlights data that illustrate how effectively crop biotech critics undermine the publics confidence in mainstream science.

In the era of fake news dominated by partisan coverage of impeachment hearings, perhaps the most important takeaway from the analysis is that consumers are increasingly dependent on unaccountable social media platforms that reward the spread of sensationalism and disinformationoften with devastating results.

Social media allows its users to interact with more people than ever before and consume information from an effectively unlimited number of sources, the authors note. These arent inherently negative attributes; indeed, this kind of open access enables people to educate themselves and network in ways that werent possible just two decades ago. But theres a steep downside. In the environment created by Facebook, Twitter and other platforms, people who can weave convincing narratives (whether true or not) exploit consumers confirmation biases and desire to share the same views as their tribal peers, as the researchers explained:

Users or readers tend to believe what they see on their computer screen . Humans are story seekers, so intuitively follow a (compelling) storyline . Adding to all of this are the base human cognitive habits of confirmation bias, bandwagon effect, or herd mentality where citizens tend to conform their beliefs about science, society, and risks to beliefs that predominate among their peers.

For example, the Non-GMO Project took totweeting about five countries supposedly imposing bans on glyphosate, a controversial herbicide paired with biotech crops. The tweet itself was misleading as two of the countries (Austria and Thailand) have since halted their bans, and a third, Germany, imposed a ban that takes force four years from now, and scientists are already unified in challenging it.

But no matter. The clever post served its purpose. Those in the US who read the tweet, and it was aimed at them, were unlikely to question its veracity and even less likely to seek out evidence analyzing the rationale for such a ban. The Non-GMO project has no incentive to play straight with the facts and Twitter users have no reason to scrutinize the Tweet. GLP reached out to the Non-GMO Project for its response to the study, but received no reply.

The example illustrates how social medias free-for-all-environment rewards attention seeking over factual communication. This effect is often magnified because Twitter prioritizes loud and provocative over measured and balanced; disinformation captures attention. The scale of the problem is immense as almost 3.5 billion people use social media daily.

The popular appeal and often sensational nature of disinformation attracts millions of readers,' the researchers noted. And because it attracts the masses, it can be weaponized to undermine or target products, people, and ideas and ultimately used for monetary gain.

While legacy news outlets like the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal attract a sizable readership when they cover crop biotechnology, the numbers pale in comparison to alternative news sources that rely on social media to amplify their message. These include well-trafficked activist sites like Mercola, Natural Newsor Sustainable Pulse, and news sites like RT (formerly Russia Today), which has been lambasted by biotech experts for its dubious coverage of agriculture. All these outlets advance counter-consensus narratives about GMO safety, thus influencing the broader discussion about biotechnology, and turn a profit while doing it. As Cami Ryan, a social scientist with Bayer and one of the studys co-authors, told the GLP by email:

In the case of GMOs, its likely that motivations behind this movement include efforts to both sway public opinion and for monetary gain. Based on our initial analysis of the data, it appears that for the $26B non-GMO project to be as successful as it is, there needed to be a market for it. And that market was built on disinformation.

Scientific consensus vs social consensus

If you want to encourage a certain behavior, you pay people to engage in it. Social media platforms in effect pay activists (already motivated by ideology) to spread questionable narratives by rewarding deceptive messaging with higher readership, advertising revenue and natural product sales. This incentive structure helps create a scenario in which societys views on a given issue are increasingly divorced from the relevant facts, and the consequences can be devastating, as the authors concluded:

The socioeconomic costs of disinformation campaigns as illustrated in the case of GMOs are significant . [L]ess visible costs are diminished confidence in science, and the loss of important innovations and foregone innovation capacities. The most deleterious effect . may be to smallholder farmers in developing countries. Unnecessary social and political controversy about GM crops create barriers to access to technologies for those that stand to benefit from them the most.

Can anything be done to clean up our corrupted public discourse about biotechnology?

We are not making recommendations on how to stop [online disinformation] nor would we presume to know where to begin, Ryan added in her email to the GLP. Critical thinking is required to differentiate between what is disinformation and what is not and that always starts with increased awareness that it even exists in the first place. Scientists have accelerated this awareness effort by getting on social media, starting podcasts and writing directly for the public, but this has yet to solve the problem.

One other possibility not discussed in the new study is that the benefits of new technologies may eventually overwhelm the fear that stifles innovation. The plant-based Impossible Burger, for instance, has proven enormously popular with American consumers because of its remarkable similarity to beef and perceived environmental benefits, even though it contains GMO-derived soy. Gene-edited crops with qualities that appeal to consumers offer a related case study of how innovation could counter the effects of social media disinformation. Yet useful products arent a surefire solution to anti-science activism, as the medical community has discovered with vaccines.

So, while progress has been made in countering the spread of online disinformation, the fact remains that social media is still a relatively new phenomenon whose effects on human behavior are not fully understood. As a result, the unsatisfactory answer to how do we control the spread of disinformation? may be we dont know yet.

Cameron J. English is the GLPs senior agricultural genetics and special projects editor. He is a science writer and podcast host. BIO. Follow him on Twitter @camjenglish

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'Natural health' and conspiracy sites exploit social media to fester opposition to GMO crops. Here's a study about what can be done to stop it -...

In September 2017, when temperatures in Pakistans Gilgit-Baltistan region were mild and the thick snow blankets that block passage around the Himalayas later in the season were a still-distant threat, Sadar U. Siddiqui and his companions trekked up through the mountains on a mission to find a wild variety of chickpea. Back in Islamabad, hed visited the National Herbarium and gotten a good look at the plant species called Medicago sativa subsp. falcata that had sickle-shaped fruit and thin, spiky leaves. If the plant was somewhere out there on the precipitously rocky slopes, Siddiqui, Genebank curator of Pakistans Plant Genetic Resources Program (PGRP), had yet to find evidence of it.

One day, though, driving along no roads, only dangerous jeep tracks as the afternoon waned, Siddiqui and his companions spotted a goat finding something to eat, he says. That something was Medicago sativa subsp. falcata. The goat had ravaged the shrubby clump of plants until all that remained were a few pods and leaves. Siddiqui and his companionstaxonomist Amir Sultan and biologist Shakeel Ahmad Jatoichased the animal off. They poured seed from two or three of the remaining pods into paper sacks and counted themselves lucky. Jatoi had gone on a similar expedition to Balochistan and had found, rather than Octhochloa compressa and other species, A housing colony, cemented roads, and not a single plant, says Siddiqui.

Siddiquis efforts ran parallel to those of seed collectors from 24 developing countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, who have spent the last several years in a race against ravenous livestock, habitat loss, and the effects of climate change as they search for wild relatives of crops vital to human diets. The endeavor, called Crop Wild Relatives Project (CWRP) and overseen by the Crop Trust in Bonn and Kews Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) outside London, has three phases. Phase one was a gap analysis to identify what critical seeds were missing in gene banks in certain regions. Phase two, which Siddiqui took part in, entailed seed collecting and distribution to international gene banks. Phase three, currently ongoing, focuses on pre-breedingidentifying desirable characteristics in those collected wild seeds.

As phase three begins, the question is: Were these efforts enough to ensure longterm global food security in the face of climactic upheaval?

For all the evident diversity in your supermarket shopping cart, agriculture has a dirty secret hidden in plain sight. Only nine crops out of a 120 cultivated worldwide supply three-quarters of the energy we get from plant-based foods. A mere three cropswheat, rice, and maizesupply half of that, according to the UNs Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). By comparison, when our ancestors began to transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture some 13,000 years ago, they were eating thousands of different plants.

Once upon a not-so-distant time, there was also much greater variety in the species of seeds that produced our wheat, rice, and maize. Wheat is the main staple crop in Pakistan, which once grew hundreds of varieties of it. That number has dwindled to 95. Almost all the remaining varieties of wheat were genetically modified to be high-yield and disease-resistant monocultures, and to grow with chemical inputs. This story repeats in many countriesChina had 10,000 varieties of wheat in 1949, but only 1,000 in 1970, and considerably fewer now. Chickpeas, barley, lentils, sorghum, pigeonpeas, carrots, apples, millet, alfalfa, sweet potatoes, and rye have all been whittled down to a handful of mostly-engineered species. Theyre controlled by massive international agrochemical conglomerates: Dow/Dupont, ChemChina/Syngenta, Bayer/Monsanto.

This precipitous drop in diversity began in the 1950s and 60s, during the Green Revolution. Confronted with a burgeoning global population, governments worked furiously to ramp up crop production in order to feed more people. A super-productive rice breed called IR8, for example, was hailed as a miracle seed and credited with staving off starvation in India, even producing enough for export; traditional rice varietals were then abandoned in its favor.

Crop-by-crop, country-by-country, weve achieved a worldwide homogeneityand genetic erosion. Its a massive threat to food security, according to a paper published in 2014 by the National Academy of Sciences that was co-written by Hannes Dempewolf, Crop Trusts senior scientist. In the words of Indian environmental activist Vandana Shiva, weve hit a state of seed emergency.

Crop monocultures that rely on chemical inputs are destructive to soil, water, air, and biodiversity, says the Union of Concerned Scientists. Reduced crop diversity is also bad for human health, and has been linked to upticks in conditions of over-nourishment like diabetes and obesity. Agriculture is already experiencing negative impacts from climate changefloods, droughts, extreme temperature fluctuations, earlier or later growing seasons, soil erosion, decreased pest and disease resilience, reduced nutritional value of crops. That makes this global monoculture of monocultures, all created from the same genetic building blocks, a few perfect storms or floods or fires away from being wiped out. Our commercial crops lack resistance, and theres not enough genetic diversity in the seeds weve got left to cultivate new strains to fight new battles on our fields.

This is where crop wild relatives, which geneticist Jack Harlan credited with standing between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine, come in. If we can collect enough wild seeds before the goats eat them all, we might regain the diversity we need to develop hardy crops, locally, that can weather whatever future hardships are in store on our rapidly morphing planet.

During phase twos collecting years, CWRP expeditions yielded 4,644 collections, from 371 species and 28 crop gene pools. Some of these are already being pre-bred in their countries of origin; scientists are determining their particular traits and developing germplasmliving genetic materialthat can be used to create resilient hybrids. (Notably, not all modified crops are engineered to be, say, Roundup-ready; individual farmers have been selectively breeding seeds to tap their useful properties for millennia.)

Under the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, signatory countries and gene banks agree to freely share seeds to improve crops. Companies making commercialized hybrids from these resources must contribute a portion of profits to promote sustainable farming or conservation of genetic diversity in developing countries, according to Science News.

In joining the CWRP, Pakistan stood out compared to other countries in how the project [got] a conversation going about the importance of crop wild relatives, says Dempewolf. It stimulated a national movement to conserve and collect material and use it in pre-breeding. Over two years, Siddiqui and his team bolstered Pakistans depleted seed bank collections with 2 million wild seeds from 32 species of 18 crops.

The effort was fraught with challenges on multiple fronts, though. Siddiquis gene bank staff is comprised largely of a shifting cast of temp workers; teaching them basic protocolslike how to not mislabel materialsis an ongoing struggle. The vehicles at his disposal for collecting expeditions (they continue to collect seeds on their own) are prone to breakdowns and his state funders think its luxurious for government servants to buy a double-cab 4-wheel-drive car that can [make it] into the mountains, and not get stuck in sand, he says.

Help came in various forms from the CWRP. Siddiqui and Jatoi, along with another researcher, travelled to the Millennium Seed Bank for training in seed processing, handling, germination, and viability testing. MSB also compiled a Pakistan-specific collecting guide that provided taxonomical details, info on where plants have historically been found, and when they bloom. Says Kews CWRP coordinator Christopher Cockel, such guides are valuable so you dont waste so much time going out on speculative trips.

Siddiqui did find the guide helpful, even though its accuracy could be hobbled by unexpected variables. Sometimes we couldnt [collect] seed because theyd matured earlier than expected, and sometimes we found drought conditions [and no seed], he says. Sometimes, enthusiastic locals unwittingly sent him on long wild goose chases.

Still, the team managed to collect Pakistans first-ever wild rice specimen, Oryza coarctata, in a delta near the Arabian Sea. It was the end of the season and we were not sure we could find anything, he says. But there the panicles stood in brackish water amid the tides, being munched by buffalo, with what Siddiqui feels sure is a salt-tolerant gene that will be very important for us as sea levels rise. Not least because, as a new study out of the University of Minnesota found, in developing countries like Pakistan, crop yields are already plummeting and hunger is inching upward.

Two-thirds of Oryza coarctata and all the seed Siddiqui collected were sent back to MSB. It stores ideally, 10,000 per species and sends about 100 on to crop-specific gene banks. Cereals go to the International Center for Agriculture Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), apples, carrots, and peas to the USDA, and bananas to KU Leuven in Belgiumbecause the worlds banana experts are based there, says Cockel. The gene banks grow out the seeds to actively regenerate them, providing them with enough to work with. Collections of these new lines of seed, which inevitably lose some of their wild traits when regenerated, are sent to the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, for additional backup.

One-third of Siddiquis collected seed remains in Pakistan. The National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering in Faisalbad has started pre-breeding a chickpea wild relative; Sargodha University in Punjab is pre-breeding Daucus carota carota, a wild carrot relative. It can take a decade or longer to get them to a point where they can be crossed with modern varieties from there.

What Siddiqui really wants is a pre-breeding lab of his own, to make up for gaps in our knowledge of how to use crop wild relatives effectively. Hes got his eye on an x-ray machine like one he trained on at MSB, to determine if seed contain intact embryos that can germinate; and a hyper-efficient Austrian cooling system that uses only 1 kilowatt of energy to keep an entire stored seed collection at optimum temperature.

The collection phase of the CWRP is over. But Siddiquis ongoing 12 expeditions a year target, not just wild relatives, but indigenous heirloom varieties grown by small farmers who continue to play a key role in maintaining biological diversity, according to FAO. A new accession now growing in PGRPs botanical garden is a primitive wheat landrace found in Balochistan that contains twice the world average of zinc and iron.

Some critics of the CWRP fear the likes of Bayer/Monsanto using crop wild relatives to usher in a new era of chemical-dependent monocultures. Rescuing seeds has effectively configured a use pipeline to guide genetic resources away from the farming communities and toward breeders and biotechnologists, whose craft is strongly shaped by private sector interests in sellable seed, writes Maywa Montenegro in Gastronomica.And although the Plant Treaty stipulates that genetic materials from wild relatives cant be patented in the form received, Montenegro points out that their derived products can be. What threats to seed sovereigntythe right to collect, grow, and exchange seedfor non-commercial-scale farmers will that engender?

Dempewolf of Crop Trust maintains that seed collections are a key public good and that its the responsibility of public institutions to get engaged and not leave it to private institutions to do the right thing. But whether a large-scale model of agriculture can now be built in which agrochemical companies do not dominate, and at a scale that can make a difference, remains to be seen. At the very least, capturing some wild and landrace varietals before they vanish along with all our genetic inheritance, as Dempewolf puts it, has been accomplished.

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Can Crops' Wild Relatives Save Troubled Agriculture? - JSTOR Daily

Cuba is advancing in the development of a therapeutic HIV/AIDS vaccine that has concluded the preclinical studies phase in lab animals and testing in about 20 human volunteers, with results of safety, tolerance and without adverse effects, according to the project leaders.

The product named Teravac-HIV is essentially aimed at inducing an anti-HIV cellular response to reduce the burden of the virus on patients by promoting a functional cure, said principal project specialist Enrique Iglesias.

Cuba has a low incidence of HIV/AIDS epidemic, but there is a high resistance to some of the antiviral compounds we use. In that context, a therapeutic vaccine could contribute to the management of the epidemic, Iglesias told the state newspaper Juventud Rebelde in an article published this Sunday.

There are 26,952 persons on the island infected with the HIV/AIDS virus, 80 percent are male and 82 are between 20 and 54 years old, according to the latest official data on the epidemic released last week.

Of these, 86 percent receive free and controlled antiretroviral therapy, based on a combination of Cuban and other imported antiretroviral drugs, certified by the World Health Organization.

Among those diagnosed, the most affected are transsexual women, with 19.7%, men who have sex with other men (MSM)5.6%and people who practice prostitution, which are 2.8%.

Cuba starts giving out free preventive HIV pill

A genetically engineered vaccine

The Cuban Doctor in Biological Sciences said that the vaccine candidate that the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) has been developing for several years contains three genetically engineered proteins.

One of these proteins generates the specific immune response against the virus, and two other hepatitis B virus (HBV) proteins were includedone is the active ingredient of the prophylactic vaccineand both can generate immunity against HBV.

The specialist said that at the end of the research phaseof preclinical and toxicological tests in lab animalsa study was designed that included more than 20 HIV-positive patients in good health distributed in two groups.

One group received intranasal and subcutaneous inoculations with Teravac and the other with a placebo. The results of the vaccine candidate showed its safety and tolerance without significant adverse events being reported, said the specialist.

He also indicated that future studies should be aimed at optimizing the dose and immunization plan, among other variables, before there can be certainty of the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Although it is recognized as partially effective, some of the benefits of the future therapeutic vaccine are that it could reduce the financial cost of the therapies, allow their temporary recesses to counteract their side effects and could also reduce transmission by sexual contact.

In addition, it is credited with the possibility of reducing viral diversity in patients, as well as the appearance of resistance mutations, which would enhance the effectiveness of therapies.

Coinciding with the world day against AIDS this December 1, the islands public health authorities affirm that Cuba is the country in Latin America with the lowest prevalence of the virus, and highlighted that they maintain control in transmission in children under 14, heterosexual men and women, among other results.

TERAVAC-VIH: solucin cubana contra el SIDA?

Continued here:
Cuba advances in therapeutic HIV/AIDS vaccine project - OnCubaNews

A medical technician prepares embryo and sperm samples for freezing at the Laboratory of Reproductive Biology CECOS of Tenon Hospital in Paris, France, September 19, 2019. (Benoit Tessier/Reuters)

A two womb baby has been born proving to me that the new reproductive advances promote profound solipsism. From the I-News story:

Scientists have claimed a breakthrough after delivering the worlds first two-womb baby to a British lesbian couple.

Otis, who was born in London in July, grew from a fertilised egg created using IVF treatment incubated in both womens wombs during the course of their pregnancy.

Here is how it was done:

The procedure is carried out by incubating the fertilised egg in one partners uterus rather than in an artificial environment for the first 18 hours following fertilisation, before being transferred to the second partners womb for the duration of the pregnancy.

The mothers are very pleased:

Mothers Donna and Jasmine Francis-Smith were overjoyed by the birth.The procedure really made me and Donna feel quite equal in the whole process and has emotionally brought us closer together, said Jasmine.

Ah, did you catch it? The procedure made them feel equal and closer together. That is a vanity desire that has absolutely nothing to do with the health, safety, and welfare of the gestating baby.

Thats where the focus should be when judging the wisdom of this procedure. We already know that babies born from IVF have a poorer health outlook than babies conceived naturally. This multi-stage process can only increase the potential for problems.

Think about what the entirety of the undertaking: First, the technologists make an embryo in a dish instead of the natural environment of the fallopian tube. Perhaps that is accompanied by PGD that removes a cell for quality control testing. Then, at about ten days development, the embryo is transferred to the first uterus. A day and a half later for no medical purpose the embryo is removed from the first uterus and implanted in the second uterus. As the cherry on top, if many embryos are implanted to ensure that a pregnancy is achieved which is often part of the IVF approach perhaps selective reduction will later be undertaken to prevent multiple births.

Thats a lot of manipulation of life at its most delicate and vulnerable stage! Oh well, if things go wrong, the abortion option is always available.

Those who shush critics of the new reproductive technologies such as three-parent embryos, and human CRISPR germ line genetic engineering by claiming such innovations will only be about health, are full of beans. This technique was designed solely to benefit the mothers, not the baby.

Big fertility desperately needs regulating. But it wont happen. Our contemporary me-me, I-I values wont permit it.

Continued here:
The Vanity of the Two Womb Baby - National Review