Latest Epigenetics Stories

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Epizyme, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company leading the creation of personalized therapeutics to treat genetically defined cancers, today announced the publication of a contemporary review on targeting protein methyltransferases for personalized cancer therapeutics in the Nature Publishing Group journal Oncogene. "This publication provides a comprehensive review of the histone methyltransferase (HMT) target class, the genetic alterations...

A new discovery from researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah concerning a fundamental understanding about how DNA works will produce a "180-degree change in focus" for researchers who study how gene packaging regulates gene activity, including genes that cause cancer and other diseases. The discovery, by Bradley R. Cairns, PhD, Senior Director of Basic Science at HCI and a professor in the Department of Oncological Sciences, is reported in this week's online...

IPSWICH, Mass., Nov. 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- New England Biolabs (NEB) has recently received a $640,000 Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to expand its research and product development of novel enzymatic tools for epigenetic analysis. This latest grant adds to the more than $1.1 million of SBIR funds awarded for this research since 2009. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090921/NE79207LOGO-b ) Since its establishment in 1974, NEB has been dedicated...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Our primate cousins share over 90% of our DNA, but the expression or activity patterns of genes differ across species in ways that explain the distinct biology and behavior of each species. In a presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics 2012 meeting, University of Chicago associate professor of human genetics Yoav Gilad, Ph.D. described the DNA factors that contribute to the differences. Up to 40 percent of the...

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Nov. 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Rubicon Genomics, Inc. today announced that it has partnered with Diagenode SA to integrate Rubicon's ThruPLEX(TM) technology into Diagenode's epigenetics platforms to increase the efficiency and quality of DNA sample preparation for chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) applications. The new agreement allows Diagenode to incorporate the Rubicon ThruPLEX-FD technology into its new MicroPLEX Library Preparation Kit for ChIP-seq studies...

Researchers find that babies born to mothers who lost weight after bariatric surgery have fewer cardiovascular risk factors than siblings born before the surgery Kids born to moms who have lost a substantial amount of weight after undergoing bariatric surgery have fewer cardiovascular risk factors than their siblings who were born before the weight loss surgery. This is because the metabolic changes and weight loss that occur after the surgery have a positive effect on inflammatory...

New insight into the aggressive behavior of certain adult B-acute lymphoblastic leukemias has provided researchers with a potential new prognostic biomarker and a promising new therapeutic target. The research, conducted by Ari Melnick, M.D., associate professor of medicine and director of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Center for Biomedical and Physical Sciences at Weill Cornell Medical College and a hematologist-oncologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center,...

Researchers locate molecules that drive the development of 3 forms of deadly white blood cell cancers, pointing researchers to new potential therapeutic targets A team of national and international researchers, led by Weill Cornell Medical College scientists, have decoded the key "software" instructions that drive three of the most virulent forms of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). They discovered ALL's "software" is encoded with epigenetic marks, chemical modifications of DNA and...

A University of British Columbia and Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT) study has revealed that childhood poverty, stress as an adult, and demographics such as age, sex and ethnicity, all leave an imprint on a person’s genes. And, that this imprint could play a role in our immune response. The study was published last week in a special volume of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that looks at how experiences beginning before birth and in the years...

It can be detected an epigenetic alteration associated with an increased risk of breast cancer in the sick twin a few years before the clinical diagnosis Monozygotic twins have the same genome, that is, the same DNA molecule in both siblings. Despite being genetically identical, both twins may have different diseases at different times. This phenomenon is called "twin discordance". But how can people who have the same genetic sequence present different pathologies and at different ages?...