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Clinical genetics news

Consent and its discontents: UK Biobank projects may breach trust of thousands of participants

UK Biobank is a major biomedical database and research resource, holding the genetic, health, and lifestyle information of half a million adult volunteers. Its datasets are accessible to approved researchers from academic, ...

mRNA therapy restores fertility in genetically infertile mice

Researchers have found that targeted delivery of messenger RNA (mRNA) can restore sperm production and fertility in genetically infertile male mice. The findings, published in Stem Cell Reports, demonstrate that transient ...

Life-changing drug identified for children with rare epilepsy

A new experimental treatment for children with a hard-to-treat form of epilepsy is safe and can reduce seizures dramatically, helping them lead much healthier and happier lives, according to the findings of a UCL (University ...

A promising potential therapeutic strategy for Rett syndrome

A team of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the Duncan Neurological Research Institute (Duncan NRI) at Texas Children's Hospital reports in Science Translational Medicine a potential new approach to treat Rett ...

Tracking mysteries of loss of Y chromosome, cancer

The Y chromosome is among the smallest in the human body and carries the fewest genes. Researchers are paying renewed attention to its role in cancer—specifically, what happens when it vanishes.

What is a 'cancer gene'? How genetic mutations lead to cancer

An estimated 170,000 Australians were diagnosed with cancer in 2025. Many people know the causes of cancer are partly genetic. But how do your genes, which contribute so much of what makes you you, change what they do and ...

Vitamin B3 therapy offers hope for fatal childhood disease

Scientists at Gladstone Institutes have flipped the traditional approach to finding potential treatments for deadly diseases. Instead of starting with a disease and hunting for a cure, they began with vitamins and systematically ...

Engineers sharpen gene-editing tools to target cystic fibrosis

Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania and Rice University have refined a technology for editing individual genetic "base pairs" to a new level of precision, opening the door to safer, more reliable therapies for a wide ...

How errors in the cytoskeleton lead to a smaller brain

Why do some children develop a brain that is too small (microcephaly)? An international research team involving the German Primate Center—Leibniz Institute for Primate Research (DPZ), Hannover Medical School (MHH), and ...

FDA approves Itvisma for spinal muscular atrophy

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Itvisma (onasemnogene abeparvovec-brve) for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) in patients 2 years and older with confirmed mutation in the survival motor neuron ...

Single enzyme failure found to drive neuron loss in dementia

Researchers at Helmholtz Munich, the Technical University of Munich and the LMU University Hospital Munich uncovered a mechanism that protects nerve cells from premature cell death, known as ferroptosis. The study provides ...

Backup DNA repair system could be cancer's weak spot

The DNA inside our cells is constantly being damaged, and one of the worst kinds of damage is a double-strand break—when both sides of the DNA helix are cut at once. Healthy cells can normally fix these breaks using highly ...