Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Parkinson's Breakthrough Could Lead To Potential Treatment
A University of Connecticut scientist has reportedly identified a key mechanism in Parkinson’s disease research. UConn Health, a branch of the university, said Tuesday that assistant professor of neuroscience Yulan Xiong and her team had discovered a regulator compound which holds the potential to treat the brain disorder. The work, identifying a regulator of a gene called LRRK2, was published in a recent study in The EMBO Journal. The gene, a section of DNA, is considered the basic unit of inheritance. (Musto, 8/2)
Early signs of Parkinson’s disease can be easy to miss. They may include tremors, small handwriting, voice changes and a rigid facial expression. (Roth, 7/30)
In cancer research —
The Biden administration is committing $5.4 million to support a cohort of 11 "cancer moonshot scholars" in a new early career fellowship aimed at building a more diverse cancer research workforce, officials told Axios first. The researchers come from backgrounds that are underrepresented in the biomedical, clinical, behavioral and social sciences research workforces. They will pursue projects to improve prevention and early detection of cancer in "underrepresented populations" and improve cancer outcomes for all populations, Biden officials said. (Reed, 8/3)
A simple, relatively inexpensive blood test can now check dozens of genes associated with different kinds of cancers — cancers of the breast, ovaries, colon, pancreas, stomach, prostate and more.But experts say that most people who should be offered this kind of genetic screening for inherited cancer risk never hear of it."It's an amazing scientific advance. And it's a shame that it's not being used as widely as it could be to realize its full impact," says Sapna Syngal of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. (Greenfieldboyce, 8/2)
On experimental pain therapies —
Vertex Pharmaceuticals has spent decades trying to develop molecules that reduce pain safely and potently, searching for success in a field its own executives have dubbed a graveyard for drug discovery. Detailed data published Wednesday lent support to that quest, with a pair of company-sponsored clinical trials showing an experimental non-opioid therapy reduced pain after surgery. (Wosen, 8/2)
