Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

The story of Sanofi-Aventis '  hostile bid for Genzyme Corp  continues,  Chief Executive Henri Termeer said he is willing to sell the company he built up over 25 years, but not for $69 a share.  In an interview with Reuters , Termeer said it was unlikely that French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis SA would go hostile with its $18.5 billion bid and that the two sides had a good chance of coming to terms, though negotiations could last months. On Monday, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech company rejected Sanofi's bid of $69 a share. Sanofi has hinted it may take its offer directly to Genzyme shareholders if the company refuses to enter discussions based on its current offer.  Genzyme, in turn, is working its way through a manufacturing crisis that has lead to shortages of two of its biggest-selling products. Genzyme shares closed at $70.11 on Tuesday. Investors and industry analysts polled by Reuters have said a deal could be clinched at close to $78 per share....

The personal genetics service firm 23andMe , the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, and the Parkinson's Institute and Clinical Center announced yesterday that they are enrolling 10,000 people to be part of a new Parkinson's disease community. The effort is aimed at establishing the resources necessary for future genome-wide association studies and other research initiatives. In an effort to entice individuals with Parkinson's disease to participate, 23andMe is slashing the price of its service from $399 to $25 for a limited time for up to 10,000 individuals with Parkinson's disease who sign up through the Parkinson's Institute or the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who is married to 23andMe co-founder Ann Wojcicki, will ante up an undisclosed amount of cash to subsidize the genotyping costs. To be eligible, individuals must have physician-diagnosed Parkinson's disease and agree to provide saliva samples and fill ...

Dr. Justin Sanchez discusses technologies that enable direct brain to computer interfacing, Dr. Justin C. Sanchez , Director of the Neuroprosthetics Research Group, Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neurology, Department of Neuroscience, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida. I really had no idea that the technologies that Justin has developed existed other than in science fiction. The possibilities are endless, and could change everything from computing, to flying planes, to simply changing the channel… Do you want to know more? Listen to Dr. Justin Sanchez! Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service , that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into ...

In their current study, published in the online edition of the journal Nature , Conboy and her team found that old muscle produces elevated levels of a molecule called TGF-beta, which is known to inhibit muscle growth. The researchers then showed that the muscle-deteriorating effects of TGF-beta can be reversed by blocking its pathway in old mice. In the experiments, the researchers used RNA interference, which can silence specific genes, to inhibit the molecules that act downstream of TGF-beta to prevent cells from multiplying. They then locally injured the muscles of treated mice, as well as untreated old and young mice, by injecting a small amount of snake venom, which killed muscle tissue in the immediate vicinity. After five days, the team found that the young mice were able to produce healthy cells to replace damaged tissue. The treated older mice, whose inhibitory pathways were suppressed, were able to regenerate new cells in much the same way. Not surprisingly, old untreate...

23andMe, a privately-held personal genetics company, and The Parkinson's Institute and Clinical Center ( “ Parkinson ’ s Institute ” ) today announced a research initiative under which Parkinson ’ s Institute patients, with financial support from The Michael J. Fox Foundation, will enroll in the 23andMe Personal Genome Service ™ to support the development of advanced methods for clinical and epidemiologic research for Parkinson ’ s disease. The new research initiative is designed to improve current methods of collecting information for Parkinson ’ s research by leveraging the internet to dramatically expand the involvement of Parkinson ’ s patients in clinical research and increase the frequency and quality of patient data collection. Specifically: Together, 23andMe and the Parkinson ’ s Institute will design and validate web-based clinical assessment tools ...