April 2012 brought news of the latest shot fired over the bow of genetic inheritance as we know it. Ever since the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953 and the subsequent elucidation of the triplet nature of the genetic code by Marshall Nirenberg and others in the early 1960s, many scientists have fantasized about obtaining mastery over this primordial biomolecule.

An interim pinnacle of achievement in this hopeful process would be to create a DNA-like molecule whose information content would be both heritable and evolvable. Synthetic Genetic Polymers Capable of Heredity and Evolution presents elegant work along this path which may signal a substantive shift in humankind’s ability to manipulate the language of life.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

Hannah Sames, here with her dog Ginger, awaits gene therapy. (photo: Dr. Wendy Josephs)

The pharmaceutical industry rightly calls the stage in drug development between basic research and clinical trials the “Valley of Death.” This is when a potential treatment that’s worked in mice, monkeys, and the like catapults to a phase 1 clinical trial to assess safety. It’s rare.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

In Fasil Tekola Ayele’s native Ethiopia, the people call it “mossy foot.” Medical textbooks call it podoconiosis, non-filarial elephantiasis, or simply “podo.”

The hideously deformed feet of podo result not from mosquito-borne parasitic worms, as does filarial elephantiasis, nor from bacteria, like leprosy. Instead, podo arises from an immune response to microscopic slivers of mineral that penetrate the skin of people walking barefoot on the damp red soil that tops volcanic rock. Podoconiosis means “foot” and “dust” in Greek.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

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Dr. Ricki Lewis is a science writer with a Ph.D. in genetics. Her newest book, The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It, a narrative nonfiction book from St. Martin’s Press, is arriving in stores on March 13.

In our wide-ranging interview, Dr. Lewis discusses

• How gene therapy can extend a child’s life, in some cases by years
• Issues encountered in deciding whether a child should enroll in a gene therapy trial
• How participants should be chosen for clinical trials
• How problems with the informed consent process initially derailed gene therapy
• "Therapeutic misconception"
• How gene therapy may benefit patients with Parkinson's disease and macular degeneration

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

“Are you still collecting stories about DTC testing? I've got one for you!” my grad student L.W. e-mailed a few days ago. Little did I know her family's experience would change my mind about direct-to-consumer genetic testing.

L.W. had taken my online course “Genethics” in 2008 for the master’s program at the Alden March Bioethics Institute of Albany Medical College. For one assignment, students choose a DTC testing company, peruse the website, and indicate 3 tests that they would take and 3 that they wouldn't – and why. 

As a class activity, L.W. didn’t really approach the testing seriously. “It's fun cocktail party info. ‘Why, yes, I'd love another mocha cappuccino at 9 pm. No problem... I'm a fast caffeine metabolizer!’” 

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

"Research shows genes influence criminal behavior," proclaims a January 25 news release, setting my genetic determinism detector on high alert. 

I flashed back to the cover of the May 18, 1970 Newsweek, “Congenital Criminals?” which probed the work of Patricia Jacobs. Here’s what my human genetics textbook says on the study provoking the 1970 headline: 

“In 1965, researcher Patricia Jacobs published results of a survey among 197 inmates at Carstairs, a high-security prison in Scotland. Of twelve men with unusual chromosomes, seven had an extra Y.” 

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

In this age of expiring drug patents and stalled pipelines, I was pleasantly surprised to find in my morning batch of news releases four reports of promising, eclectic ways to fight diverse diseases. The efforts represent the entire trajectory in drug discovery, from the most basic research to a stage 3 clinical trial. Read on!

STRATEGY: Alter the insect vector
A genetically modified mosquito might sound like something from a science fiction film, but it is a powerful intervention in the horrific cycle that is malaria. George Dimopoulos and colleagues from the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute altered a gene in the Anopheles mosquito in a way that ramps up its immune response against the parasite that causes malaria. The GM mosquitoes live as long as and lay as many eggs as their non-manipulated brethren. Perhaps with a few more tweaks they can take over, biting but not infecting.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

We humans might not be able to regrow a leg, as can a cockroach or salamander, or regenerate a missing half, like a flatworm, but our organs can replenish themselves – thanks to stem cells. Two new reports about opposite ends of the respiratory system may pave the way for replacement breathing parts.

A 36-year-old grad student from Eritrea was facing certain death from a golf-ball-sized tumor obstructing his trachea and sending tentacles towards his bronchi, the paired tubes that lead into the lungs. He was saved with a “tailored bioartificial nanocomposite” replacement trachea seeded with his own bone marrow stem cells, reported in The Lancet.

Cancer of the trachea is often inoperable and rapidly fatal because even a ventilator can’t push air into the lungs. But the combination of a glass-like tube standing in for the natural cartilage plus the patient’s own stem cells lets biology take over. Extracellular matrix spread over the tube, new capillaries sprouted, and a coat of epithelium knitted itself. The man is now well and lived to see the birth of his child, thanks to the tissue engineers at the Karolinska Institute and the University of Iceland.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

Gene therapy is experiencing a renaissance, with many of the recent successes in children. For some conditions, the younger the child, the better the genetic correction, because affected tissues degenerate with time. This is the case for adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), the “Lorenzo’s Oil” disease that strips the insulation from brain neurons. One goal of the not-for-profit Stop ALD is to team gene therapy with newborn screening, to help boys before they begin to lose abilities. 

Should gene therapy be attempted even earlier? Before birth?

Fetal gene therapy is already being done in non-human animals, presumably in preparation for phase 1 clinical trials. Gene therapy is technically more challenging than inserting a shunt to drain a hydrocephalic brain or repairing an open spine, because it entails delivering gene-carrying viruses to affected cells and not anywhere else. It is fetal medicine on a different scale. 

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

Montreal, Oct. 11, 2011 -- James Watson joined a panel of “genome pioneers” at the opening session of the 12th International Congress of Human Genetics today. He was invited, besides his fame, because he was the second person to have his genome sequenced (Craig Venter was first), but his comments revealed that perhaps his most telling qualification is that he has a son who has schizophrenia. Known for his controversial views, Dr. Watson did not disappoint. 

Here are a few of Dr. Watson’s comments, highly edited but context maintained, and remarks that might offend omitted. (Kevin Davies, author of “The $1,000 Genome,” moderated.)

WHY DID YOU DO IT? “I thought, why not? I had no objection, with the exception of not wanting to know ApoE4. My grandmother had Alzheimer’s in her 90s, and the fact that I was in my 70s and didn’t have it didn’t reassure me I wouldn’t in my 90s.” (ApoE4 and the surrounding DNA were deleted from Watson’s published genome sequence. People with two copies of a variant of this gene have a 15-fold increased risk of Alzheimer’s and people with one copy have a 3-fold increased risk.)

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.