To understand the link between aging and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, scientists from the National Institutes of Health compared the genetic clocks that tick during the lives of normal and mutant flies. They found that altering the activity of a gene called Cdk5 appeared to make the clocks run faster than normal, and the flies older than their chronological age. This caused the flies to have problems walking or flying later in life, to show signs of neurodegeneration, and to die earlier.

NIH-funded researchers at Stanford University used the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to rapidly identify genes in the human genome that might modify the severity of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) caused by mutations in a gene called C9orf72. The results of the search, published in Nature Genetics, uncovered a new set of genes that may hasten neuron death during the disease.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved the Imugen Babesia microti Arrayed Fluorescent Immunoassay (AFIA), for the detection of antibodies to Babesia microti (B. microti) in human plasma samples, and the Imugen Babesia microti Nucleic Acid Test (NAT), for the detection of B. microti DNA in human whole blood samples. These tests are intended to be used as donor screening tests on samples from individual human donors, including volunteer donors of whole blood and blood components, as well as living organ and tissue donors.

Familial human prion diseases are passed within families and are associated with 34 known prion protein mutations. To determine whether three of the unstudied mutations are transmissible, scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, exposed research mice to brain samples from three people who died from a familial prion disease. After observing the mice for about two years, they found two of the mutations, Y226X and G131V, are transmissible.

After receiving a course of antiretroviral therapy for their HIV-like infection, approximately half of a group of monkeys infused with a broadly neutralizing antibody to HIV combined with an immune stimulatory compound suppressed the virus for six months without additional treatment, according to scientists supported in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The therapy may have targeted the viral reservoir - populations of long-lived, latently infected cells that harbor the virus and that lead to resurgent viral replication when suppressive therapy is discontinued.

A team from a Harvard Medical School affiliate saw its way clearly to victory at last night’s MIT Sloan Healthcare Innovation Prize competition, with contact lenses that deliver medications directly to the eye over days or weeks.