Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia in older adults. Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), which is characterized by the deposition of β-amyloid (Aβ) peptides within cerebral blood vessels, co-occurs with AD in 85-95% of AD cases and is an independent contributor to AD dementia.
Category Archives: Clinical & Research Blog
Selectively inhibiting protein function through proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs) has emerged as a novel cancer therapeutic strategy. PROTACs are small molecules with two active domains that bind to an E3 ubiquitin ligase and a protein of interest, which results in the ubiquitination and subsequent degradation of the protein of interest.
Endometrial polyps (EMPs) are localized overgrowths of endometrial tissue that are composed of endometrial glands, stroma, and blood vessels. The reported prevalence of EMPs increases with age and ranges from 8-35%, depending on the population studied. EMPs are generally considered to be benign, with risk of malignancy around 3%. However, EMPs have been associated with several endometrial cancers.
Mosaic loss of chromosome Y (mLOY) is the most common form of clonal mosaicism and is recurrent in the blood cells of adult males. This chromosome alteration typically increases with age and has been linked with aging-related diseases including clonal hematopoiesis (CH), in which a single hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell (HSPC) gives rise to a genetically distinct subpopulation of peripheral blood or bone marrow cells, and acute myeloid leukemia (AML).
The era of personalized medicine and genome-based cancer therapies has been accelerated by next-generation sequencing technologies, which allow for the identification of gene variants with clinical implications for diagnosis, prognosis, and patient care. However, many newly identified variants have yet to be linked to disease, and these are referred to as variants of uncertain significance (VUS).
hromosome breaks and translocations are often critical factors in tumorigenesis and cancer progression. One primary contributor to these types of chromosomal instability is the mis-regulation of histone proteins. Histones are responsible for packaging the human genome into chromatin and can be divided into five main families: H1/H5, H2A, H2B, H3, and H4.
Primary adrenal (PA) lymphoma is extremely rare, accounting for less than 1% of all non-Hodgkin lymphomas, yet is very aggressive and has a poor prognosis, with a general survival time of less than one year. In most cases, PA lymphomas are derived from B cells, with diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) being the most common phenotype.
July 20th, Buffalo, NY – Empire Genomics, a company that develops high-quality molecular probes for fluorescent and chromogenic in situ hybridization testing, has selected Andre Lubarsky to initiate the new North American business development strategy as Director of Sales. Andre is a seasoned sales director, most recently with System Biosciences, Inc., who will now be leveraging his experience to develop and execute key growth sales strategies in the United States and North America.
Pheochromocytoma, a neuroendocrine tumor of the adrenal medulla, and paraganglioma, a tumor derived from neural crest progenitor cells outside the adrenal gland, have a strong genetic basis, with up to 40% of cases displaying germline mutations and another 25-30% carrying a somatic mutation.
Retroviruses, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1), insert a copy of their genome into the host cell genome during a process called integration. This allows retroviruses to persist indefinitely in the infected cell as a provirus. During integration, the virally encoded integrase (IN) protein binds to various host factors that likely act as a tether between the viral IN protein and the host chromatin at the integration site.