Cancer immunologists scooped the 2018 medicine noble prize for pioneering treatments that unleash the body’s own immune system to attack cancer cells. It represents a completely new principle which unlike the previous strategies that target the cancer cells, rather targets the brakes — the checkpoints — of the host immune system.

It’s widely believed that South Asians are born with a high risk for several non-communicable diseases (NCD) such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases etc, which often points to unhealthy lifestyle and environmental factors. For example, higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes is often over-attributed to overweight/obesity in Indians.

Genetic testing can prove to be a crucial element in clinical diagnosis as it offers critical insights that can help a clinician in managing, treating and even sometimes prevent an inherited condition. A specific diagnosis and treatment regimen can be determined once the clinician runs a specific array of genetic tests after knowing the detailed family history of the patient.

For the majority of people, the mere mention of snakes conjures involuntary shivers! These stealthy critters have a forked tongue, unblinking eyes and either have fangs that deliver venom to immobilize/kill prey or strong muscles to asphyxiate. Snakes have been around for millions of years, and have used this time to become incredibly effective predators and can be found on all continents except Antarctica.

Cancer vaccines are an upcoming therapeutic modality mobilizing body’s own immune system to eradicate advanced tumors and holds tremendous promise for cancer patients unresponsive to checkpoint inhibitors.

The GenomeAsia100K pilot project included 1,739 individuals of 219 population groups from 64 countries across Asia. The samples included 598 from India, 156 from Malaysia, 152 from South Korea, 113 from Pakistan, 100 from Mongolia, 70 from China, 70 from Papua New Guinea, 68 from Indonesia, 52 from the Philippines, 35 from Japan and 32 from Russia. The high-quality sequence data of Indian samples were generated from MedGenome’s sequencing lab located at Narayana Netralaya hospital in Bangalore, India.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we interact with our customers. The interactions of the commercial team with the customers and prospects are pushed to be more virtual. And with the pandemic, we are all discussing about the ‘new normal’ where a behavioral change in these interactions are expected to sustain and become a habit.

COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 Virus has emerged as a major challenge with no known vaccine available in the market so far. This pandemic has warranted scaling up of research efforts both by pharma companies and university research centres to develop a viable vaccine. Although there are many promising candidates in the pipeline, none will be available anytime soon making social distancing measures and quarantine as the only effective resort to contain this disease.

Biomarkers are biological indicators of early disease detection (diagnostic), disease progression and outcome (prognostic), and response to therapy (predictive). The inclusion of biomarkers in patient selection has led to superior drug response rates and increased overall survival in pivotal clinical trials. Also, use of biomarkers to select drug sensitive patients have greatly improved the quality of life by improving therapeutic efficacy and reducing toxicity. Biomarkers discovered and used in clinical trials have been approved as companion diagnostics and used routinely in making treatment decisions.

It is a miracle of billion-years evolution that vertebrates, including us – the humans, are constantly thwarting attacks from an ever-expanding universe of foreign invaders such as bacteria, viruses and other pathogenic organisms throughout our lifetime. The miracle that makes this happen is our adaptive immune system, comprising of B and T cells, and a host of other regulatory cell-types that function as a central command to activate, mobilize and eventually suppress the army of rogue killers, once the threat is eliminated.