Tag: Video to Watch

「Video of the Week」A Comment On Social Medias

“The short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth, and it is not an American problem. This is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem. So, we are in a really bad state of affairs right now, in my opinion. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other. ”

“We curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection because we get rewarded in these short-term signals; hearts, likes, thumbs up. And we conflate that with value, and we conflate it with truth. And instead what it really is, is fake, brittle popularity. That’s short-term and that leaves you even more, and admit it, vacant and empty before you did it. Because then you’re in this vicious cycle, like, what’s the next thing I need to do now, because I need it back. Think about that compounded by two billion people, and then think about how people react then to the perceptions of others. It’s just a really bad thing, it’s really, really bad…”

「Video of the Week」CRISPR-edited Bacteria As A Storage of Data

First video stored in its digital form in bacteria’s DNA, with the help from CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing.

DNA as a storage is not an entirely new idea. Microsoft has been exploring this field with Twist at least since 2016. They have successfully stored music (audio) performances in DNA in 2017.

Now (in the video), researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute are using live organisms.

「Video of the Week」First FDA-Approved Gene Therapy by Spark And Its First Patient in US (Spark being acquired today)

Roche to acquire Spark with a 122% premium of it previous closing price, with a deal valued of ~$4.3 billion.

Spark won FDA’s first approval on gene therapy for genetic disease more than one year ago, treating retinal dystrophy (by mutations on the RPE65 gene) with LUXTURNA. The treatment carries a list price of $850,000, or $425,000 per eye.

Besides, Spark Therapeutics has SPK-8011 in clinical trials, a novel gene therapy for the treatment of haemophilia A, which is expected to start Phase 3 in 2019.

Here is a brief video of the procedure for it first patient in US last March.