Children with ADA-SCID, severe combined immunodeficiency due to adenosine deaminase deficiency, are extremely vulnerable to infection and usually live in isolation to minimise the risk, hence the nickname ‘baby in a bubble’. Up until now the only treatment has been a stem cell transplant but these are risky and it is not always possible to find a good match. Now NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) has approved a new treatment for those children who cannot

New York: Low socioeconomic status during childhood and poor family social support appear to prematurely age pregnant women on a cellular level, potentially raising the risk for complications, a new study has found. For the study, the researchers examined blood from pregnant women to evaluate the length of telomeres -- structures at the end of chromosomes that are used by scientists as a measure of biological (as opposed to chronological) age. Read more at: http://zeenews.ind

U.S. regulators on Wednesday approved a second gene therapy for a blood cancer, a one-time, custom-made treatment for aggressive lymphoma in adults. The Food and Drug Administration allowed sales of the treatment from Kite Pharma. It uses the same technology, called CAR-T, as the first gene therapy approved in the U.S. in August, a treatment for childhood leukemia from Novartis Pharmaceuticals. "In just several decades, gene therapy has gone from being a promising concept to

There’s growing evidence that exposure to air pollution can have a number of unhealthy consequences, from cancer to heart disease and respiratory illnesses. In recent years, researchers have also linked air pollution exposure to faster aging in adult cells. In a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics, an international group of researchers conducted the first detailed look at pollution’s effect on developing babies in utero. They found that the more pollution expectant moms w

On the 30th August 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a historic action making the first gene therapy available in the United States, ushering in a new approach to the treatment of cancer and other serious and life-threatening diseases. The FDA approved Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) for certain pediatric and young adult patients with a form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).“We’re entering a new frontier in medical innovation with the ability to reprogram a p