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Genetics/Epigenetics

HSCI-supported research leads to new class of therapeutics

December 13, 2018

Biotech company Moderna, co-founded by HSCI scientist Derrick Rossi, is set to bring a new class of treatments to patients.

Summary

  • Derrick Rossi’s research into using mRNA as a new kind of therapeutic was initially supported by HSCI seed funding, and gave rise to biotech company Moderna Therapeutics.
  • Moderna’s public offering of $600 million is the largest ever of a venture-capital-backed biotechnology company, reflecting the potential of its new technology: mRNA therapeutics
  • Moderna’s success in creating therapies that will benefit patients reflects the crucial role of HSCI in enabling early-stage, high-risk research.

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Reinventing painkillers

November 5, 2018

Clifford Woolf wants to reboot drug discovery to find a new way to treat pain: effectively and responsibly.

  • Woolf’s goal is to stop the opioid crisis by rejecting the conventional approach to drug discovery and developing painkillers that do not harm people or communities. 
  • He is using stem cells to create models of pain, outside the body and in a dish, that can be used to screen for drugs swiftly and on a large scale.
  • The new approach requires ‘all hands’: expertise, equipment, and collaboration in stem...
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Assassinating cancer

November 1, 2018

Mario Suva and Ramesh Shivdasani are tackling some of the toughest, meanest cancers to clear a path to better treatments.

  • Suva and Shivdasani are using every approach in their arsenal to figure out what makes cancer cells arise from healthy tissue.
  • Armed with enough new knowledge about how cancer arises, they want to take truer aim at cancer cells, the cancer cell lineage, and factors that make cells go awry.
  • Their new approach to cancer management would combine gene and cell therapies to kill the cancer...
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Cell therapy for all

November 1, 2018

Chad Cowan is on a quest for the universal donor, which would make cell therapy available to populations – not just individuals.

  • Harvard scientist Chad Cowan aims to make off-the-shelf cellular products, and democratize access to new medicines.
  • His lab is working to make cellular therapies that can work for anyone, not just a single patient. 
  • Their ambitious goal is to modify therapeutic cells that can be transplanted into many people, without being rejected.

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