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Biogen
Biogen Inc. is an American multinational biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, specializing in the discovery, development, and delivery of therapies for the treatment of neurological diseases to patients worldwide. History Biogen was founded in 1978 in Geneva as ''Biotechnology Geneva'' by several prominent biologists, including Kenneth Murray from the University of Edinburgh, Phillip Allen Sharp from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Walter Gilbert from Harvard University (Gilbert served as CEO during the start-up phase of Biogen), Heinz Schaller from the University of Heidelberg, and Charles Weissmann from the University of Zurich (Weissmann contributed the first product interferon alpha).Werner Grundlehner''Zürcher Antikörper gegen Alzheimer hat Milliardenpotenzial – und Gegenwind.''Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 8, 2021. Retrieved June 8, 2021. Gilbert and Sharp were subsequently honored with Nobel Prizes: Gilbert was recognized in 1980 wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nusinersen
Nusinersen, marketed as Spinraza, is a medication used in treating spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a rare neuromuscular disorder. In December 2016, it became the first approved drug used in treating this disorder. Since the condition it treats is so rare, Nusinersen has so-called "orphan drug" designation in the United States and the European Union. Medical uses The drug is used to treat spinal muscular atrophy associated with a mutation in the '' SMN1'' gene. It is administered directly to the central nervous system (CNS) using intrathecal injection. In clinical trials, the drug halted the disease progression. In around 60% of infants affected by type 1 spinal muscular atrophy, it improves motor function. Side effects People treated with nusinersen had an increased risk of upper and lower respiratory infections and congestion, ear infections, constipation, pulmonary aspiration, teething, and scoliosis. There is a risk that growth of infants and children might be stunted. In o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dimethyl Fumarate
Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) is the methyl ester of fumaric acid and is named after the earth smoke plant ('' Fumaria officinalis''). Dimethyl fumarate combined with three other fumaric acid esters (FAEs) is solely licensed in Germany as an oral therapy for psoriasis (trade name Fumaderm). Since 2013, it has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a treatment option for adults with relapsing multiple sclerosis (brand name Tecfidera). In 2017, a new oral formulation of dimethyl fumarate (trade name Skilarence) was approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for use in the European Union as a treatment for moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. Dimethyl fumarate is thought to have immunomodulatory properties without causing significant immunosuppression. Dimethyl fumarate has also been applied as a biocide in furniture or shoes to prevent growths of mold during storage or transport in humid climates. However, due to cases of allergic reactions after skin cont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interferon Beta-1a
Interferon beta-1a (also interferon beta 1-alpha) is a cytokine in the interferon family used to treat multiple sclerosis (MS). It is produced by mammalian cells, while interferon beta-1b is produced in modified '' E. coli''. Some research indicates that interferon injections may result in an 18–38% reduction in the rate of MS relapses. Interferon beta has not been shown to slow the advance of disability. Interferons are not a cure for MS (there is no known cure); the claim is that interferons may slow the progress of the disease if started early and continued for the duration of the disease. Medical uses Clinically isolated syndrome The earliest clinical presentation of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis is the clinically isolated syndrome (CIS), that is, a single attack of a single symptom. During a CIS, there is a subacute attack suggestive of demyelination which should be included in the spectrum of MS phenotypes. Treatment with interferons after an initial att ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, Massachusetts, Boston, Worcester, Massachusetts, Worcester, and Springfield, Massachusetts, Springfield. It is one of two de jure county seats of Middlesex County, although the county's executive government was abolished in 1997. Situated directly north of Boston, across the Charles River, it was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, once also an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Lesley University, and Hult International Business School are in Cambridge, as was Radcliffe College before it merged with Harvard. Kendall Square in Cambridge has been called "the most innovati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natalizumab
Natalizumab, sold under the brand name Tysabri among others, is a medication used to treat multiple sclerosis and Crohn's disease. It is a humanized monoclonal antibody against the cell adhesion molecule α4-integrin. It is given by intravenous infusion every 28 days. The drug is believed to work by reducing the ability of inflammatory immune cells to attach to and pass through the cell layers lining the intestines and blood–brain barrier. Natalizumab has proven effective in treating the symptoms of both diseases, preventing relapse, vision loss, cognitive decline and significantly improving quality of life in people with multiple sclerosis, as well as increasing rates of remission and preventing relapse in multiple sclerosis. Natalizumab, is a monoclonal antibody which targets a protein called α4β1 integrin on white blood cells involved in inflammation. By attaching to integrin, natalizumab is thought to stop white blood cells from entering the brain and spinal cord ti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenneth Murray (biologist)
Sir Kenneth "Ken" Murray FRS FRSE FRCPath (30 December 1930 – 7 April 2013) was a British molecular biologist and the Biogen Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Edinburgh. An important early figure in genetic engineering, Murray cofounded Biogen. There, he and his team developed one of the first vaccines against hepatitis B. Along with his wife, biologist Lady Noreen (née Parker), Murray also founded the Darwin Trust of Edinburgh, a charity supporting young biologists in their doctoral studies. The Telegraph, 14 April 2013 Education and career Murray achieved a 1st class honours degree in chemistry followed by PhD from the |
Phillip Allen Sharp
Phillip Allen Sharp (born June 6, 1944) is an American geneticist and molecular biologist who co-discovered RNA splicing. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Richard J. Roberts for "the discovery that genes in eukaryotes are not contiguous strings but contain introns, and that the splicing of messenger RNA to delete those introns can occur in different ways, yielding different proteins from the same DNA sequence". He has been selected to receive the 2015 Othmer Gold Medal. Research Sharp's current research focuses on small RNAs and other types of non-coding RNAs. His laboratory works to identify the target mRNAs of microRNAs (miRNAs), and has discovered a class of miRNAs that are produced from sequences adjacent to transcription start sites. His laboratory also studies how miRNA gene regulation functions in angiogenesis and cellular stress. Biography Sharp was born in Falmouth, Kentucky, the son of Kathrin (Colvin) and Joseph Walter Sharp. He mar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Gilbert
Walter Gilbert (born March 21, 1932) is an American biochemist, physicist, molecular biology pioneer, and Nobel laureate. Education and early life Walter Gilbert was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 21, 1932, the son of Emma (Cohen), a child psychologist, and Richard V. Gilbert, an economist. When Gilbert was seven years old, the family moved to the Washington D.C. area so his father could work under Harry Hopkins on the New Deal brain trust. While living in Washington the family became friends with the family of I.F. Stone and Wally met Stone's oldest daughter, Celia, when they were both 8. They later married at age 21. He was educated at the Sidwell Friends School, and attended Harvard University for undergraduate and graduate studies, earning a baccalaureate in chemistry and physics in 1953 and a master's degree in physics in 1954. He studied for his doctorate at the University of Cambridge, where he earned a PhD in physics supervised by the Nobel laureate Abdus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Weissmann
Charles Weissmann (born 14 October 1931) is a Hungarian-Swiss molecular biologist. Weissmann is particularly known for the first cloning and expression of interferon and his contributions to the unraveling of the molecular genetics of neurogenerative prion diseases such as scrapie, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and "mad cow disease". Weissmann went to University of Zurich and obtained his MD in 1956 and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 1961. In 1978, Weissmann co-founded the biotech company Biogen in Geneva. Biogen is considered one of the pioneers of the biotechnology industries. Weissmann was director of the Institute for Molecular Biology in Zurich, President of the Roche Research Foundation and co-founder and Member of the Scientific Council of Biogen. He was Chairman of the Department of Infectology, Scripps Florida until 2011. Weissmann won several awards, including the Otto Warburg Medal (1980) and the Scheele Award (1982). A member of the American Society of Biological Che ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NASDAQ-100
The Nasdaq-100 (^NDX) is a stock market index made up of 101 equity securities issued by 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. It is a modified capitalization-weighted index. The stocks' weights in the index are based on their market capitalizations, with certain rules capping the influence of the largest components. It is limited to companies from a single exchange, and it does not have any financial companies. The financial companies are in a separate index, the NASDAQ Financial-100. History The NASDAQ-100 was launched on January 31, 1985 by the Nasdaq. It created two indices: the NASDAQ-100, which consists of Industrial, Technology, Retail, Telecommunication, Biotechnology, Health Care, Transportation, Media and Service companies, and the NASDAQ Financial-100, which consists of banking companies, insurance firms, brokerage firms, and Mortgage loan companies. The base price of the index was initially set at 250, but when it close ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Company
A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange ( listed company), which facilitates the trade of shares, or not ( unlisted public company). In some jurisdictions, public companies over a certain size must be listed on an exchange. In most cases, public companies are ''private'' enterprises in the ''private'' sector, and "public" emphasizes their reporting and trading on the public markets. Public companies are formed within the legal systems of particular states, and therefore have associations and formal designations which are distinct and separate in the polity in which they reside. In the United States, for example, a public company is usually a type of corporation (though a corporation need not be a public company), in the United Kingdom it is usually a public limited company (plc), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interferon Alpha
The type-I interferons (IFN) are cytokines which play essential roles in inflammation, immunoregulation, tumor cells recognition, and T-cell responses. In the human genome, a cluster of thirteen functional IFN genes is located at the 9p21.3 cytoband over approximately 400 kb including coding genes for IFNα (''IFNA1, IFNA2, IFNA4, IFNA5, IFNA6, IFNA7, IFNA8, IFNA10, IFNA13, IFNA14, IFNA16, IFNA17'' and ''IFNA21''), IFNω (''IFNW1''), IFNɛ (''IFNE''), IFNк (''IFNK'') and IFNβ (''IFNB1''), plus 11 IFN pseudogenes. Interferons bind to interferon receptors. All type I IFNs bind to a specific cell surface receptor complex known as the IFN-α receptor (IFNAR) that consists of IFNAR1 and IFNAR2 chains. Type I IFNs are found in all mammals, and homologous (similar) molecules have been found in birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish species. Sources and functions IFN-α and IFN-β are secreted by many cell types including lymphocytes (NK cells, B-cells and T-cells), macrophages, fibr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
