BiotechNews1

Originally published by Lydia Smith on August 13, 2025 The new proof-of-concept study points a way to curing diabetes without the need for immune-suppressing drugs .   A man with type 1 diabetes has become the first patient to produce his own insulin after receiving genetically engineered cell transplants , without needing drugs to prevent rejection. The case, published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine , marks a potential breakthrough in the treatment of the disease , which affects 9.5 million people worldwide . Type 1 diabetes occurs when a patient's immune system destroys specialized cells, called islet cells, in their pancreas that are responsible for producing insulin , the hormone that regulates our blood sugar levels. The condition c an be managed with regular doses of synthetic insulin, but there is no cure . Read more t  

A large language model can design and troubleshoot CRISPR protocols from scratch, allowing first-time researchers to achieve up to 90 percent editing efficiency. Originally written by Rebecca Roberts, PhD, for The Nutshell section of The Scientist, on Aug 5, 2025 CRISPR-GPT was trained on over a decade of expert discussions and evaluated against almost 300 test cases.   Image credit:©iStock, Shinsei Motions CRISPR technology has revolutionized biology , largely because of its simplicity compared to previous gene editing techniques . However, it still takes weeks to learn, design, perform, and analyze CRISPR experiments; first-time CRISPR users often end up with low editing efficiencies and even experts can make costly mistakes. In a new study, researchers from S tanford University , Princeton University , and the University of California, Berkeley , teamed up with Google DeepMind to create CRISPR-GPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can guide researchers through...

An infant with a severe genetic condition has shown signs of improvement after receiving a gene-editing treatment tailored to his specific mutation Originally published   by Michael Le Page at newscientist.com on 15 May 2025 Baby KJ after a gene-editing infusion with researchers Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas and Kiran Musunuru Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia A baby boy with a life-threatening genetic condition has become the first person to receive a bespoke CRISPR gene-editing treatment , giving a glimpse into what t he future of medicine might look like. It’s the first time anyone has been given a gene-editing treatment designed t o correct a disease-causing mutation found only in that individual, Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , told a press briefing. “He’s showing some early signs of benefit,” she says, but it is too soon to tell how well the treatment worked. The researchers published the details as soon as possible...

Originally published by Anne Trafton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology , on December 23, 2024  A study from MIT biological engineers has yielded new insight into how bacteria in the gut microbiome adapt their CRISPR defenses as they encounter new threats. Credit: Donny Bliss, NIH Within the human digestive tract are trillions of bacteria from thousands of different species . These bacteria form communities that help digest food, fend off harmful microbes, and play many other roles in maintaining human health. These bacteria can be vulnerable to infection from viruses called bacteriophages . One of bacterial cells' most well-known defenses against these viruses is the CRISPR system , which evolved in bacteria to help t hem recognize and chop up viral DNA . A study from MIT biological engineers has yielded new insight into how bacteria in the gut microbiome adapt their CRISPR defenses as they encounter new threats . The researchers found that while bacteria grown in t...