As a young man, Olivier Boss’s idea of a good time was to spend a summer day cycling a few hundred miles through the mountains of Switzerland or France. La Marmotte, he says, was an especially fun day: a 108-mile road race with nearly 17,000 feet of climbing.
Category: Cambridge, MA
New gene therapy allows French teen to dodge sickle cell disease
A French teen who was given gene therapy for sickle cell disease more than two years ago now has enough properly working red blood cells to dodge the effects of the disorder, researchers report. About 90,000 people in the U.S., mostly blacks, have sickle cell, the first disease for which a molecular cause was found.
Gene therapy lets a French teen dodge sickle cell disease
A French teen who was given gene therapy for sickle cell disease more than two years ago now has enough properly working red blood cells to dodge the effects of the disorder, researchers report. About 90,000 people in the U.S., mostly blacks, have sickle cell, the first disease for which a molecular cause was found.
NASA takes a look back at Supernova 1987a
Three decades ago, astronomers spotted one of the brightest exploding stars in more than 400 years. The titanic supernova, called Supernova 1987A , blazed with the power of 100 million suns for several months following its discovery on February 23rd, 1987.
7 Earth-size planets identified in orbit around a dwarf star
‘A leap forward’: Scientists found that seven Earth-size planets orbit the dwarf star Trappist-1. If our sun were the size of a basketball, Trappist-1 would be a golf ball.
How UC-Berkeley’s CRISPR license could limit innovation
A smart biotech company could have a great idea for how to use gene editing to develop a new lifesaving therapy – but because of the way licensing deals have been cut by UC-Berkeley and Massachusetts’ Broad Institute, it would never get a chance to try it. That’s the assertion of intellectual property experts in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, who criticize the licensing landscape around the powerful new tool called CRISPR-Cas9, warning it could limit its promise.
UPDATE 2-Merrimack Pharma employee arrested on U.S. insider trading charge
Songjiang Wang, who Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Merrimack has employed as director of statistical programming since 2011, was charged with conspiring to commit securities fraud in a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Boston. He was arrested after prosecutors brought related charges in June against Schultz Chan, who had been the director of biostatistics at another Cambridge-based company, Akebia Therapeutics Inc ( Wang, 52, of Westford, Massachusetts, was released on a $750,000 bond after a court hearing on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb in Boston said.
Sumana Harihareswara’s keynote will close LibrePlanet 2017
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, USA – Wednesday, January 25, 2017 – The Free Software Foundation announced today that Sumana Harihareswara will be a keynote speaker at LibrePlanet, the annual free software conference, on Sunday, March 26th, 2017. The annual free software conference will close on the evening of March 26th with Harihareswara discussing her experiences within free software and the things she has learned over the years, in a talk tentatively titled “Lessons, Myths, and Lenses: What I Wish I’d Known in 1998.”
Driverless Cars Face a Moral Dilemma
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For driverless cars, a moral dilemma: Who lives or dies?
Imagine you’re behind the wheel when your brakes fail. As you speed toward a crowded crosswalk, you’re confronted with an impossible choice: veer right and mow down a large group of elderly people, or veer left into a woman pushing a stroller.
Secretive Biotech Unicorn Moderna Unveils Pipeline, Financials
Moderna Therapeutics Inc., one of the best-funded private biotechnology companies in the U.S., unveiled its long-secret research and development pipeline on Monday, including experimental vaccines, cancer treatments and a cardiovascular therapy. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup has about $1.3 billion in cash on hand from investors, pharmaceutical partners and government grants, according to a presentation Monday at the J.P.Morgan Chase & Co.
Biotechs are paying a price for their high drug costs
The biotech industry hit a speed bump in 2016 after logging accelerating growth for years. US drug approvals fell to just 22 – from 45 in 2015 – a six-year low.