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That was illegal - are these proceedings legal?
fyi -
Brian Altounian - the biggest shareholder didn't start to sell until 1.35 during the last run up.
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/39/6012.html
Lost in this discussion is the science.
In my view what happened at CYGX is the CEO walked into the scientists office and said – “What do you need to succeed?” The Scientist said “I need a sterile lab to produce this product!” With the help of GE Medical and others they already created a machine to produce DNA snippets. Their hope is to produce a machine to manufacture perfect copies of millions of molecules which could provide for miracle cures to human disease. They need a new lab to eliminate contamination of the product.
The CEO went to the accountants and said he was going to build a new lab. The accountants said “no way- we can’t afford it!” The CEO persevered then the accountants aggressively moved to stop the building of the lab. The accountants lost the argument and were forced out of the company.
In the interim what we are witnessing IMO is right out of the series “Dallas”. On one side an imperfect management is trying to keep the company moving forward, on the other vengeful men are attempting to subvert and delay the companies’ progress toward achieving a noble good.
My bet is the scientist win in the end.
Thanks.
The solar energy field is hot! Here are a few market caps of others in the field:
SPWR 7.8B
ESLR 1.06B
FSLR 19.5B
XSNX 68.5M
IMO XSNX has upside potential.
IMO there is still time to get in:
Market caps of a few in the field:
SPWR 7.8B
ESLR 1.06B
FSLR 19.5B
XSNX 68.5M
If XSNX executes their business plan they should capture market share.
Take a look at XSNX. New plant coming on line in 2008, analyst recommendation to $1.50. Looks like pre-gold rush.
Does anyone agree?
IMO this product list is impressive. I wonder what new products will be announced at the 2008 CES?
http://www.computersplusnyc.com/productfind/searchname.asp?&req=1&manf=KLEGG
Could this be why we are up 10% on higher than average volume?
With our new lab we should be able to "cook up" whatever they order.
Interesting interview. I wonder if CYGX could support something like this with their new lab.
One of the scientists who decoded the human genome, Dr Craig Venter, says he is about to create the first artificial life form:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7120000/newsid_7126500/7126505.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&asb=1&news=1&bbcws=1
Does anyone understand what is happening here:
0.10 10000 OTO 15:59:14
0.11 400 OTO 15:59:14
0.12 9600 OTO 15:59:14
0.10 400 OTO 15:41:21
0.12 400 OTO 15:41:21
0.09 1135 OTO 09:30:43
It looks to me like one market maker is buying shares from another to fill the orders, at quite a premium.
Rebel-Klegg reccently announced their NetDisk network storage product is now available at over 900 OfficeMax stores. What do you think their potential market cap could be after Christmas sales are reported? They are presently at about 4M.
Strong-Klegg reccently announced their NetDisk network storage product is now available at over 900 OfficeMax stores. What do you think their potential market cap could be after Christmas sales are reported? They are presently at about 4M.
Klegg Electronics Announces the Availability of NetDisk at OfficeMax Stores Nationwide
Monday November 26, 6:30 am ET
LAS VEGAS, NV--(MARKET WIRE)--Nov 26, 2007 -- Klegg Electronics, Inc. (Other OTC:KLGG.PK - News) has announced that their NetDisk network storage product is now available at over 900 OfficeMax stores.
Klegg's NetDisk was designed for ease of use for consumers and small business users alike. NetDisk utilizes Ximeta's
patented Network Direct Attached Storage (NDAS) technology to provide a high performing, easy to use, secure and
versatile storage solution.
NetDisk adds instant, high-speed storage to a LAN via an Ethernet connection, without the need for complicated
network configuration. The Netdisk provides all PCs in the home access to a shared disk, making it easy for all family members to share MPEG4 Movies, MP3s, and any other Media or Data file. It can also be connected directly to a PC or laptop via a USB connection for a convenient storage solution. The additional storage appears as a local drive and users simply drag and drop files between their PCs or laptops and NetDisk. The Netdisk offers virtually limitless storage since additional drives can continually be aggregated to further increase the capacity of the existing drive configuration. The proprietary NDAS technology eliminates performance degradation issues and provides a virtually hacker-proof wall of security. NetDisk can also serve as a network or local data backup device utilizing the free backup software that is included.
"We are excited to partner with OfficeMax to provide a solution for the growing demand of network and personal
storage," says Dennis Gentles, CEO of Klegg Electronics. "OfficeMax's has a strong reputation for providing their customers with a selection of the finest products at the best value. NetDisk provides an attractive solution for
those who need a simple to use, feature-rich network storage solution at a great price."
OfficeMax will offer a number of NetDisk models including:
-- the NetDisk enclosure -- housing in which you can add your own Hard Drive
-- NetDisk 250GB -- 250GB of individuals or shared network storage
More information about NetDisk and NDAS technology can be found at www.klegg.com
OfficeMax Incorporated is a leader in both business-to-business office products solutions and retail office products.
The OfficeMax mission is simple. OfficeMax helps their customers to do their best work. The company provides office
supplies and paper, in-store print and document services through OfficeMax ImPress(TM), technology products and
solutions, and furniture to consumers and to large, medium and small businesses. OfficeMax customers are served by
approximately 35,000 associates through direct sales, catalogs, e-commerce and more than 900 stores. To find the
nearest OfficeMax, call 1-877-OFFICEMAX.
Looks like Klegg has finally taken over ...
eciraje08-10-2007, 07:23 AM
Hello
I received one email today from Ximeta group.
Dear customers of Ximeta, Inc
Thank you for your support for Ximeta, the creator of NDAS technology. Due to the change of business model of Ximeta, Inc, Ximeta is going to focus on developing NDAS technology and licensing its NDAS technology to many OEM partners. We are very thankful for your support for the product "NetDisk" since 2003. We are pleased to announce that Klegg Electronics takes over the brand "NetDisk" under Klegg and continue to bring the value added product to the market under the brand name of "NetDisk" of Klegg. (Please visit, www.klegg.com.)
In order to appreciate your support for Ximeta's NetDisk brand since 2003, Ximeta wants to run the following "liquidation sales of Ximeta "netdisk" brand" until its inventory lasts.
It is the program of "First come, First served" for limited time with limited inventory of Ximeta' netdisk brand.
Thank you again for your unceasing support for NDAS products. Ximeta is totally committed to complete "ndas" technology to meet the needs of our clients.
Looks like Klegg has updated its media server with its UTEK communication system:
Klegg MediaShare
You can save all of your files to one place and access them from your computer, or play them on your television or digital sound system, all at blazing speed.
The NDAS-enabled MediaShare will work faster than any other product on an Ethernet network. On a 100 Mbps Ethernet, all other devices work at 55 Mbps. NDAS goes 80. On a 1 Gbps Ethernet, all other devices work at 25 MB/s. NDAS does 60.
http://www.kleggusa.com/product_mediashare.html
When I was a young man at 18 this was a free country.
Today in so many ways ...this is no longer the case.
In my opinion TruthHurts has accomplished nothing here.
We have a situation here where two inconsequential “got paid for it” financial types disagreed with the scientists and lost.
As a stock holder I am willing to contribute $500 to any legal fund to silence these naysayers. It is not about winning or losing, it is all about risk and reward. I think we should just financially tie these naysayers up, legally drag it out, and suck them dry...
I plan to stay and see where this goes ...
The Science of Synthetic Genomics
In the last two decades the field of genomics has undergone a revolution. Scientific discoveries have come at a dazzling pace. These breakthroughs were made possible by advances in underlying enabling technologies such as high-throughput DNA sequencing, high-performance computing and bioinformatics. Many of these advances are directly attributable to the innovation of Dr. Venter and his teams. With the genomes of more than 300 organisms and millions of newly discovered genes readily available, genes now have the potential to be the design components of the future industrial world.
http://www.syntheticgenomics.com/science.htm
Now that all depends on which pope you are talking about:)
In Truth's statement:
"Do you know how unusual that is for a legitimate company to be fired by its accounting/auditor firm? Not once but twice."
In fact accountants, controllers, and accounting firms come and go in many firms in the USA. Many of the large corporations put a time limit on how long someone stays in one job at a specific location. This is considered good business practice. This offers a fresh eyes look at a company’s finances and adds legitimacy to published financial results.
My wife works for a pharmaceutical company which makes drugs for the big boys. The tier 1 provides the formula, the chemists at tier 2 design a process and manufacture the product. This is commonplace in the industry.
I do not advocate the lack of patent protection; my point is a company can make millions by producing other company’s products.
As for pumping, IMO a 35 million market cap is probably about right for CYGX at this point in time. After reading many of the negative posts on this board one could think this company is poised for insolvency. I believe CYGX will soon have many other opportunities to generate capital, and if one or more of the patents come thru all things are possible.
Not-so-little League
Think the big guys control the gadgets market? Think again.
By Sara Wilson Entrepreneur Magazine - October 2007
Think the big guys control the gadgets market? Think again.
When iPods quickly topped must-have gadget lists, many assumed Apple had the MP3 market cornered. But Dennis Gentles, founder of Klegg Electronics in Las Vegas, believed otherwise. In 2005, he launched his own version: the Klegg Mini. Within months of its debut, the Mini had sold out. Today, MP3 players make up 15 percent to 20 percent of the consumer electronics manufacturer's business.
Klegg Electronics sized up to Apple by sizing down its MP3 player. Gentles says the Klegg Mini is the smallest MP3 player that offers an FM radio and color displays. The company also competes with its lower prices and flexible approach. As Gentles, 33, explains, "We have the ability to come out with new adjustments and products quickly and find areas that Apple hasn't been able to infiltrate yet." With 2007 sales expected to reach between $3 million and $4 million, Klegg is coming into its own as a force to be reckoned with.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2007/october/184438.html
IMO if those numbers are even close we are severely undervalued here.
I will say it again. As a tier two supplier, or tier one supplier CYGX will do just fine. We do not need patents to be successful here.
I was surfing last night and stumbled across what looks like a Cytogenix government grant application. Maybe someone can help make sense out of whatever this may or not be, new or old.
List of Grantee Organizations Registered in NIH eRA Commons
Total number of registered institutions = 10,255
** Note: For electronic application submission, organizations also must be registered with Grants.gov **
IPF Code DUNS ID Organization Location
4412301 949590087 CYTOGENIX, INC. HOUSTON, TX 77042
http://era.nih.gov/userreports/ipf_com_org_list.cfm
Like $152 pps. Yea, and I'm dreaming.
Yes, but how far will it go? I think it is over sold and will eventually end up in the $5-$7 range. What do you think?
When this stock will go back up is anyone’s guess.
From the website - It looks like the patent attorneys have been busy:
Avian Flu
US-SN 60/921,581 "Novel Sequence and Nucleic Acid Based Vaccine Against Avian Flu" 4/3/07 PENDING USA
Anti-Microbials
US-SN 60/994,042 "Novel Antibacterial Aptamers" 9/17/2007 PENDING USA
US-SN 11/664,052 "Single-Stranded Antimicrobial Oligonucleotides and Uses Thereof" 3/28/07 PENDING USA
US-SN 10/574,254 "Nucleotides for Prevention and Treatment of Bacterial and Fungal Pathologies" 3/30/06 PENDING USA
Single Stranded-DNA Expression Vector
US-SN 11/586,797 "Production of ssDNA In Vivo" 10/26/06 PENDING USA
I guess this is why we need the lab:
synDNA™
In addition to use of synDNA™ in CytoGenix's products, we have begun marketing it to other companies. Our present
capabilities are production of research grade material. We have identified outside sources that can produce "certified good manufacturing practice" (cGMP) material. This is the standard for clinical grade material. The Company is developing relationships with these sources to utilize their facilities if the need for cGMP material is required before our own production facility is completed and certified.
After having just reviewed the Point & Figure View it is my estimation that we could go up as high as $2.00 from this point.
No insider information.
Why would you build the facility if you thought you were doomed to failure? Don't they need the new lab to sell the product commercially? With the consultants and the lawyers wouldn't they delay the facility if they thought there was no market for the product? IMO there are no guaranteed paths to success, however at present I think the science is on the right path and this process is superior.
It is late ... until another day.
If the process is superior and continually improved and the cost of manufacuring is competative there will be those who will purchase the product. The company is sustained and it grows.
Henry Ford answered that question in 1903. He created a manufacturing process based on the concept of perfect copies and interchangeable parts. In 1908 he introduced the Model T based on that concept. IMO egg based biological processes are susceptible to randomization, in theory the CYGX process reduces randomization and is therefore superior.
Is process patentability really essential to the success of this company? IMO there are many companies who are successful which do not hold patentable processes.
Only for those who are willing to take the risks to do great things.
The Year of Miracles Part 3
I am comfortable with my investment here. IMO the naysayers here are just plain wrong.
The Year of Miracles Part 2
Scientists could ignore these signs largely because they seemed to be making progress. By combining new DNA-sequencing tools ith studies of inherited diseases in large families, medical geneticists identified the genetic culprits responsible for
cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and a host of other diseases. Each of these "all or none" diseases is caused by a mutation in a single protein-coding region of the DNA. Few diseases, unfortunately, work so neatly. In particular, the search for genetic bases of common diseases that affect large numbers of aging people came up empty.
During this lull, a visionary physician-scientist named Leroy Hood, now at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, was growing impatient. Genetics, he recognized, was still a cottage industry of government-funded university professors, who each
directed a small group of students and technicians to study an isolated gene. At the pace research was progressing, it would have required 100,000 worker-years of concerted effort to decipher just one complete human genome.
Hood thought it was absurd that genetic scientists spent nearly all their lab time performing tedious and repetitive
mechanical and chemical procedures. At the same time, he grasped the far-reaching implications of a fundamental fact: while even the simplest organism is immensely complicated, the primary structures of its most complicated parts—DNA and proteins—are very simple. The alphabet of DNA contains only the four chemical letters (or bases) A, C, G and T, and proteins are made from just 21 amino acids. Hood saw that this simplicity would make it possible for robots and computers to read and write DNA and proteins more quickly, accurately and cheaply than human beings.
The rest of the biomedical community refused to believe that robots could analyze something as complex as a living system.
And in any case, no practicing geneticist had the capacity to design such machines. Unable to obtain government grants, Hood
secured private funding to bring together dozens of scientists, engineers and computer programmers (far larger and more
diverse than any other genetics team). They proceeded to invent the first generation of molecular-biology machines. Two read
and recorded information from DNA and proteins respectively (a process known as sequencing), and two others worked backward,
converting digital electronic information into newly written sequences of DNA or protein.
Hood completely transformed the biomedical enterprise. DNA-writing machines give genetic engineers an unlimited capacity to create novel genes that can be studied in test tubes or added to the genomes of living organisms. And protein-writing and - reading machines provided drug firms with the ability to create a new generation of protein-based drugs. The DNA-reading machines suddenly made it conceivable to crack the 3 billion-base sequence of an entire human genome. In 1990 the U.S.
government embarked on a 15-year, $3 billion project to do just that.
Eight years later, however, the project—parceled out to many U.S. scientists—was still less than 10 percent complete. Now it
was biotech entrepreneur Craig Venter who was frustrated. Convinced that government-funded workers were the problem rather than the solution, Venter enlisted private funding of $200 million to build an enormous lab filled with hundreds of automated machines, working 24/7, overseen by a handful of technicians. Within three years, the first reading of a human genome was essentially complete.
Armed with data from the genome project, scientists figured they'd surely be able to crack the really hard diseases, like
cancer and heart disease. But a funny thing happened when they began to look closely at this vast storehouse of genetic information. Geneticists Andrew Fire and Craig Melo galvanized the field by discovering a key mechanism that had been completely overlooked—the cellular process of RNA interference. (They shared a Nobel Prize in 2006 for the work.)
Finding evidence of extraterrestrial life couldn't have come as a bigger shock. Geneticists had taken for granted that the
machinery of cells involved genes directing the production of proteins, and proteins doing the work of the cell. Here was a
process that didn't involve proteins at all. Instead, tens of thousands of hitherto mysterious regions of the human genome—
part of the so-called junk DNA—directed the production of specific molecules called microRNAs (consisting of bits of RNA, a well-known component of cells). These microRNAs then oversaw a whole new process, called RNA interference (RNAi), that served to modulate the expression of DNA.
The good news was that RNAi could open up a whole new approach to biomedical therapy (more on that later). But RNAi also made
it clear that the fundamental unit of heredity and genetic function is not the gene but the position of each individual DNA letter.
To make it all harder to fathom, each bit of DNA is susceptible to mutation and variation among individuals. Of the 3 billion
DNA bases in the human genome, geneticists identified about one tenth of one percent (millions) that differ from one person
to another. Variations in these particular letters—called "snips," or SNPs, for single nucleotide polymorphisms—have replaced genes as the unit of heredity.
Many scientists responded to this devastating realization by going into a funk. "It will be difficult, if not impossible, to
find the genes involved [in common diseases] or develop useful and reliable predictive tests for them," Dr. Neil Holtzman,
director of genetics and public policy at Johns Hopkins University, said in 2001.
Fortunately, another visionary scientist, Kari Stefansson of Iceland, was already blazing a trail out of this thicket. If the genome was far more complex than scientists had thought, they would need to test for many more variables, and to do that they would need more test subjects. To find the cause of diseases would now require the participation of very large groups of genetically related people.
Like Hood and Venter, Stefansson was originally motivated by frustration with the pace of research. In the United States,
where most of the disease-gene-discovery projects were being conducted, most people cannot trace their ancestors back more
than a few generations, and the largest families consist of a few hundred living subjects at most. Subject panels of this
size failed to provide sufficient data to identify the genetic bases for complicated and variable common diseases. Stefansson
decided to solve this problem by taking aim at the largest well-documented extended family that he knew—his own.
Nearly all the 300,000 citizens of Iceland can trace their ancestors back, through detailed, public genealogical records, to the Vikings who settled this desolate European island more than 1,000 years ago. Stefansson gave up his faculty position at Harvard Medical School to return to Iceland, where he founded the company deCODE Genetics in 1996. He persuaded the Icelandic government to provide deCODE with exclusive access to the health records of its citizens in return for bringing investment capital and high-tech jobs to the capital, Reykjavik. So far, more than 100,000 Icelandic volunteers have donated their DNA to deCODE.
Stefansson's project was roundly criticized by international bioethicists and other geneticists for violating the privacy of
Icelanders (even though 90 percent of the population approved). Nevertheless, he persevered, placing "the genealogy of the
entire nation on a computer database," together with the health and DNA records of still-living individuals. The power of
large numbers was soon apparent. In a study of obesity, he directed his software to look for SNPs associated with subsets of the population who were either extremely overweight or very thin. Within just a few hours, it began finding evidence that
variations among particular DNA letters indeed played a causative role, confirming SNPs as the new unit of inheritance.
As of September, deCODE has made progress in identifying SNPs that may play a role in 28 common diseases, including glaucoma,
schizophrenia, diabetes, heart disease, prostate cancer, hypertension and stroke. In some cases, such as glaucoma and
prostate cancer, deCODE's findings could lead to diagnostic tests for identifying people at risk of developing the disease.
In other instances, such as schizophrenia, links to particular proteins have led to insight about the cause of the disease,
which could lead to therapies. Buoyed by Stefansson's success, other geneticists were eager to perform large-scale family studies, yet few had similar access to ancient genealogical records. But serendipity would deliver an epiphany: it's possible to study the entire human population as a single extended family, provided scientists collect enormous amounts of data. Eric Lander, an MIT professor and the intellectual leader of the U.S. government effort to sequence the first human genome, realized scaling up would require a new approach. In 2004, Lander persuaded MIT and Harvard to combine their enormous resources toward the creation of the Broad Institute. Backed by $200 million from billionaire philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, the institute is driving the development of ever more advanced genetic technologies. One technology, based on computer-chip fabrication, can identify
DNA base letters present at 500,000 SNPs in the genomes of 40,000 or more people. Think of this as a spreadsheet with 500,000 columns (each representing a specific SNP) and 40,000 rows (one for each person). To hunt for a genetic basis for, say, bipolar disease, the computer searches rows of people who have the disorder, checking column by column for an unusually high frequency of particular letters in comparison with people without the disease. As it turns out, a collaboration of American and German researchers has done this work—and found that variations of DNA letters in 20 different positions are influential in bipolar disease.
Incredibly, most disease-causing variants are the most common ones present in the human population: the strongest-acting one,
for instance, exists in 80 percent of people without bipolar disease and 85 percent of people with the disease. The
implication is that these variants are beneficial in some way, and cause problems only when their number exceeds a threshold.
To make sense of this complexity, scientists would like ultimately to build a vast international database that contains the complete sequence of DNA bases in the genomes of hundreds of millions of people. Ideally, such a database would be available for analysis by all biomedical researchers and would provide the foundation for understanding the genetic components of all human traits. That sounds like a lot of data—think of a spreadsheet with 3 billion columns and 100 million rows—but computing power is getting cheaper by the year. Within a decade, the cost of obtaining a sequence of all 3 billion DNA letters in an individual's genome will drop from $2 million now to $1,000. It will be a routine part of a person's health record, enabling physicians to prescribe genome-specific preventions and treatments.
The discovery of RNAi, meanwhile, suggests a completely new personalized form of disease therapy. Whereas drugs act on
proteins, RNAi therapy would act on the expression of DNA itself, potentially preventing or reversing diseases such as
Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and others. Old-school pharmaceutical firms have
taken notice. The largest ones are betting heavily on the gene-targeted RNAi therapeutic approach to fill product pipelines,
as the discovery of traditional chemical drugs becomes more elusive. Novartis and Roche have both signed nonexclusive
licensing deals with the biotech firm Alnylam (founded by Phillip Sharp) for new therapeutic techniques that are valued at up to $700 million and $1 billion respectively; Merck paid $1.1 billion to buy another biotech company outright, solely to
obtain its contested portfolio of RNAi intellectual property, and the London-based drug firm AstraZeneca has a $405 million
licensing deal with Alnylam's competitor Silence Therapeutics.
The explosion of genetic discoveries shows no sign of letting up any time soon. New diseases are being added to the list
every month, and biologists are rapidly parlaying gene- and SNP-disease links into a deeper understanding of how proteins and
other molecules can misbehave to cause different medical problems in different people. And other scientists are working to advance the biology revolution (accompanying interviews). As a result of their efforts, many children born this year could
very well be alive and healthy at the dawn of the next century, when they may look back in awe at the annus mirabilis of biomedical genetics in 2007.
The Year of Miracles Part 1
Accounts never, Scientists forever:
High Flying Hopes: Will 2007 be the breakthrough year in genetics?
By Lee Silver
Newsweek International
Oct. 15, 2007 issue - The year 1905 was an annus mirabilis, or miracle year—a rare historical moment in which key flashes of insight suddenly made the field of physics take off in new directions. That was the year Albert Einstein presented four
papers that turned the conventional wisdom about how the universe works, from the infinitesimal realm of atoms to the vast reaches of the cosmos, upside down. During the next several decades, Einstein and a handful of other brilliant physicists went on to shape the 20th century and lay the foundation for all its technological accomplishments.
A century later, the year 2007 is shaping up to be another annus mirabilis. This time biology is the field in transition, and the ideas being shattered are old notions of genes and inheritance.
Ever since 1900, when Gregor Mendel's work on peas and inheritance was rediscovered, scientists have regarded the "gene" as the fundamental unit of heredity (just as the atom was regarded as the bedrock of pre-Einsteinian physics). Crick and Watson's discovery of the DNA double helix as the carrier of hereditary information did little to disturb the status quo. In recent months, however, a perfect storm of new technology and research has blown apart 20th-century dogma. The notion of the Mendelian gene as a unit of heredity, scientists now realize, is a fiction.
What's taking its place? Many scientists now believe that heredity is the result of an incredibly complex interplay among the basic components of the genome, scattered among many different genes and even the vast stretches of "junk DNA" once thought to serve no purpose. Biology has been building up to this insight for years, but some big puzzle pieces have now fallen into place. Once scientists abandoned their preconceived notions of genes and looked instead at individual DNA "letters" in the genome —the four bases A, C, T and G—they immediately began to see cause-and-effect connections to myriad diseases and human traits.
The result of this seemingly modest conceptual breakthrough has been a torrent of new discoveries. In five months, from April
through August, geneticists at the Harvard/MIT Broad Institute, founded by Eric Lander; at deCODE Genetics in Iceland,
founded by Kari Stefansson, and several other institutions have published papers suggesting that the key to a deeper
understanding of the human genome may finally be in hand. These scientists have identified specific alterations in the
sequence of DNA that play causative roles in a broad range of common diseases, including type 1 and type 2 diabetes;
schizophrenia; bipolar disorder; glaucoma; inflammatory bowel disease; rheumatoid arthritis; hypertension; restless legs
syndrome; susceptibility to gallstone formation; lupus; multiple sclerosis; coronary heart disease; colorectal, prostate and breast cancer, and the pace at which HIV infection causes full-blown AIDS. Unlike so many previous "disease gene"
discoveries, these findings are being replicated and validated. "The race to discover disease-linked genes reaches fever pitch," declared the leading British science journal, Nature. Its American counterparts at Science chimed in: "After years of chasing false leads, gene hunters feel that they have finally cornered their prey. They are experiencing a rush this spring as they find, time after time, that a new strategy is enabling them to identify genetic variations that likely lie behind common diseases." That the world's top two scientific journals still use the old language of "genes" to describe these discoveries shows how new the new thinking really is.
These findings are just a prelude to what's shaping up as a true conceptual and technological revolution. Just as physics
shocked the world in the 20th century, it is now clear that the life sciences will shake up the world in the 21st. In a
handful of years, your doctor may be able to run a computer analysis of your personal genome to get a detailed profile of
your health prospects. This goes well beyond merely making predictions. A new technology called RNA interference may also
allow doctors to control how your DNA is "expressed," helping you circumvent potential health risks. Many common diseases
that have preyed on humans for eons—devastating neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer and heart
disease—could be eradicated. If this sounds outrageously optimistic, so did the promise of eliminating smallpox and polio to previous generations.
Why is all this happening now? What has changed between this year and last? To answer these questions, we need to trace the
story of how mainstream biomedical scientists tried to link the cause of diseases to single genes and, despite early success,
hit a brick wall. Meanwhile, a handful of renegade scientists, pursuing their own pet projects, happened to develop exactly
the intellectual tools needed to break through that wall. These biologists are now the leaders of the new revolution in
biomedical science.
The seeds of our new understanding were first sown in the 1960s, when molecular biologists figured out how genetic
information is organized, regulated and reproduced inside single-cell bacteria. In bacteria, a gene is a discrete segment of DNA that contains the "code" that tells the cell how to make a particular type of protein. Bacterial genes are arranged along a single DNA molecule, one after the other, with only tiny gaps in between. Since all organisms have DNA and work by
essentially the same biochemistry, scientists assumed that a human genome would look like a larger version of a bacterium's.
Clues that something was amiss came quickly with the development of DNA-sequencing methods in the 1970s. The first surprising result was that genes accounted for only 2 percent of the human genome—the rest of the DNA didn't seem to have any purpose at all. Biologists Phillip Sharp and Richard Roberts made things worse with a discovery that won them a Nobel Prize in 1993. If the gene were the basic unit of heredity, the DNA required to make any particular protein should be contained in its corresponding gene. But Sharp and Roberts found that DNA that codes for individual proteins is often split and scattered
throughout the genome.
One small step forward ... I may need to buy some of this stuff someday. But you sold out and are still hanging around?
Promising Genetic Therapy Uses RNA Interference
Science Daily — Researchers from MIT, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and other institutions have demonstrated the safety of a promising type of genetic therapy that could lead to treatments for a wide range of diseases such as cancer.
The work, which will be published in the Sept. 27 issue of Nature, describes a new approach to conducting the therapy. A paper in Nature last year reported that another commonly used approach caused fatalities in mice.
The research focuses on RNA interference, or RNAi, a key part of the body's genetic machinery. RNAi works by using short strands of RNA to block the expression of specific genes.
"RNAi has huge potential as a therapeutic agent," said Daniel Anderson, a research associate at MIT's Center for Cancer Research and one of the authors of the new paper.
However, a paper published in Nature last year by a different team showed that large doses of one type of RNA used for RNAi, short hairpin RNA, disrupted another key RNA pathway, the microRNA pathway, and caused the mice in the study to die. That result worried some RNAi researchers, said Anderson.
"That first paper demonstrated that short hairpin RNA could lead to mouse fatality," he said. "Researchers were concerned that a second type of RNA, small interfering RNA (siRNA), would induce the same toxicity."
In the current study, the researchers demonstrated that siRNA did not have the same toxic effects as large doses of shRNA because it does not interfere with the microRNA pathway. Further, they achieved 80 percent silencing of target genes in mice and hamster liver cells.
"Using chemically synthesized siRNA, you can deliver sufficient siRNA to achieve therapeutically valuable gene silencing, without interfering with the cell's endogenous microRNA," said David Bumcrot, a director of research at Alnylam (an MIT startup) and one of the authors of the paper.
The research team used a new RNA delivery system developed at MIT, the details of which will be published in another upcoming paper, to perform the RNA interference.
In many RNAi studies, including the one that the MIT/Alnylam team was following up on, researchers use retroviruses to deliver genes that code for short hairpin RNA, which is a precursor to siRNA. Once the gene is incorporated into the cell's DNA, short hairpin RNA is synthesized and transported from the cell nucleus to the cytoplasm for further processing.
The earlier study showed that large amounts of short hairpin RNA blocked the cell's ability to export microRNA, which uses the same export pathway. Without normally functioning microRNA, the mice died. Low doses of short hairpin RNA were not toxic, but the dosage is difficult to control because once the shRNA gene is incorporated into the DNA of the host cells, it is expressed for long periods of time, said Bumcrot.
In the current MIT/Alnylam study, siRNA was delivered directly to the cell cytoplasm, so it did not compete with the export of microRNA.
"We wanted to demonstrate that if you go downstream of that (export) step in the pathway, you don't get interference with the microRNA pathway," said Bumcrot. "With synthetic siRNAs, we deliver a defined dose and we know how long the effect lasts. If toxicity issues arise, dosing can be stopped at any time. It's much easier to control and, therefore, safer."
Other MIT authors on the paper are Institute Professor Robert Langer and Michael Goldberg, a graduate student in chemistry. Researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology are also authors on the paper.
The work at MIT was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
IMO the 8K is interesting reading however it seems to me much of what transpired is now irrelevant. The following excerpt from the 8K is what will in the long term sustain the company:
CytoGenix, Inc. is a Houston-based biopharmaceutical company that develops and markets innovative products and services based on its proprietary ssDNA expression technology. The company has developed a breakthrough synthetic process for large-scale production of high purity DNA at a fraction of the cost of traditional fermentation methods. CytoGenix currently has one issued US patent and 47 international or US pending patent applications claiming methods and materials in connection with this platform technology (emphasis added).
New data which may advance the science and potentially assist companies like cygx:
http://www.jcvi.org/press/news/news_2007_09_03.php
ROCKVILLE, MD—September 3, 2007—ROCKVILLE, MD—September 3, 2007—Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), along with collaborators at The Hospital for Sick Children (Sick Kids) in Toronto and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), have published a genome sequence of an individual, J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., that covers both of his chromosome pairs (or diploid genome), one set being inherited from each of his parents.
Two other versions of the human genome currently exist—one published in 2001 by Dr. Venter and colleagues at Celera Genomics, and another at the same time by a consortium of government and foundation-funded researchers. These genomes were not of any single individual, but rather were a mosaic of DNA sequences from various donors. In the case of Celera it was a consensus assembly from five individuals, while the publicly-funded version was based on patching together sequences from over 100 anonymous human sources. Both versions greatly underestimated human genetic diversity.