Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
What started as a hallway conversation between colleagues is now an "engine for the discovery of new therapeutic targets in cells" thanks to Medicine by Design, says Shana Kelley, a University Professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto.
Kelley's lab was developing a portable, chip-like device that uses tiny magnets to sort large populations of mixed cell types as part of her Medicine by Design team project. She wondered if the device could be coupled with a CRISPR-based gene-editing technology developed by another Medicine by Design team leader, Jason Moffat, a professor in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research.
They reasoned that the two methods together could speed up combing through the human genome for potential drug targets.
"We casually agreed to combine our technologies – and it worked incredibly well," says Kelley.
"This is the advantage of being part of the dynamic research ecosystem of Toronto and Medicine by Design," she says. "I would have never known how to position this technology and link it with CRISPR if I did not have all these great people around to talk to."
The result of their joint effort, also in collaboration with Stephane Angers, a professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, and Ted Sargent, University Professor at the department of electrical and computer engineering, is called MICS, for microfluidic cell sorting, described in a study published Monday in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.
MICS will enable researchers to scour the human genome faster when searching for genes and their protein products that can be targeted by drugs.
In one hour, MICS can collect precious rare cells, in which CRISPR has revealed promising drug targets, from a large and mixed cell population. The same experiment would take 20 to 30 hours using the gold standard method of fluorescence-based sorting.
Barbara Mair, et. al High-throughput genome-wide phenotypic screening via immunomagnetic cell sorting. Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41551-019-0454-8
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @01:22AM (4 children)
That's right folks. You don't even need to wonder why your prescription drug plan won't cover your medications and you need to go into debt slavery in addition to working three full time jobs. Just look at the size of those tiny magnets that needed to be used to discover the active ingredient in your generic drug. Shame you can't afford to buy any with your poverty wages. You die now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @03:37AM
Fucking magnets, how do they work?
...
Y'all motherfuckers lying [soylentnews.org], and getting me pissed
(large grin)
(point: don't forget it happens only in one country in the world, and most of its inhabitants seems to enjoy being fucked by big-pharma)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @06:04AM (1 child)
This is only true in America. Notice how this R&D is being done in Canada. Notice how many of the discoveries mentioned here are being done in other countries. Healthcare and drugs cost a lot more in America so that other countries can make investments into R&D and then the U.S. pharmaceutical corporations can profit by overcharging consumers for the products that result from R&D done by other countries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @06:06AM
and then the sad part is that idiots like Trump are stupid enough to believe the pharmaceutical companies every time they lie and say that the reason the U.S. pays more than everywhere else is because all the R&D comes from the U.S.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @11:40AM
At least there is the alternative at the reach of average Joe, The Biomagnetic Bracelet.