A couple who created the first approved gene therapy for blindness awarded $3m (£2.2m) Breakthrough Prize for Life Sciences.
Molecular biologist Jean Bennett & ophthalmologist Albert Maguire share the prize with physician Katherine High.
🧪👁️
www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
One of the most successful applications of gene therapy.
Looks like birria
To the surprise of absolutely nobody... rejected.
well, I will have to prepare a new proposal for next year.
The results for the KAKENHI Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research going to be announced on Friday.
Wrote a nice proposal this year and even got help to make it in proper Japanese, but I think it is going to be rejected... and this time I will not have the excuse of the language 😔
Visiting the festival of newly produced Japanese rice wine in Oyama, Yamanashi. Best time I have had in years
New therapeutic for Duchenne muscular dystrophy to be included in the Japanese drug price lice (source in Japanese)
www.mixonline.jp/tabid55.html...
It may be just that tail vein is easier in rats than mice.
新年がウマくいくように
洗濯バサミで作った馬🐎
The institute is not so big on seasonal decorations, but I managed to squeeze some paper snowflakes of the viruses we use in the lab.
#VirusSnowflakes
A gene therapy co-developed by UCLA's Donald Kohn has restored immune function in 59 children born without the ability to make immune cells, a disease that typically gives them only a few short years of life. With the therapy, they qre now living normal lives. 🧪
Looks even better at night.
One nice tree at the entrance of the hospital was damaged so it had to be cut down, but on the bright side now it is easier to see the Tokyo Tower from my favorite bench.
Homemade sugar skulls to celebrate the day of the dead Mexican style.
A little late this year, but I managed to get the yearly calaveras for the lab. 💀
Looking forward to two days of interesting presentations on the Tokyo University 3rd UTOPIA symposium about vaccine development. Not really my field now that I work on gene therapy but as a virologist can't stop feeling nostalgic.
pub.confit.atlas.jp/en/event/uto...
Grant petition finished and submitted, with a lot of help around the lab to make it as good as possible but still a long shot.
Last week to write this year proposal for the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research of the Japanese government.
Not even close to finish but at least the proposal has improved very importantly over the last couple of weeks.
I have no idea how likely it is that it will be granted but doing my best!
This is how I stopped struggling with how to write the kanji in the correct stroke order
Summer festival dancing
Nice afternoon at the local summer festival 🪭☀️
Explosion on Saitama University lab during experiments, fortunately it seems victims had only minor injuries.
I can already see the e-mails that will come from the safety management office of my university...
May work bringing back Japanese researchers from overseas labs, but foreigners likely have better options in other countries.
This month Netflix made available the series "99.9 criminal lawyer" and this series of instructional videos is what I keep thinking about every time Katagiri Jin is on the screen.
If we trust genetic engineering to save a child from leukemia, why reject it when it could save a child from blindness, malnutrition, or death?
We cure cancer with genetic engineering but ban it on the farm.
Celebrating one but demonizing the other fuels disinformation that costs lives.
1/
Ticks are spreading globally and bringing familiar conditions such as Lyme disease with them, as well as totally new ones. Now research is revealing how to prevent and treat the diseases they carry.
A blueprint for the batmobile.
Your genome is not a blueprint. A thread about misleading metaphors in science communication. 🧬🧪 1/n
I should not have seen this video at work, can't stop laughing.
50 days for the annual meeting of the Japan Society of Gene and Cell Therapy! still swamped on things to do but looking forward to it.
square.umin.ac.jp/jsgct2025/en...
⚠️ Discovery of a new mode of viral transmission:
Deltaviruses spread through a viral Trojan Horse !
These viral satellites that do not encode their own glycoproteins, are in fact physically encapsulated within their helper virus particles!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A thread 1/14
According to this
wikiwiki.jp/livejupiter/...
its a play of words between
解説の掛布 (Kaisetsu no kakefu) "a commentary by Kakefu" (a famous baseball player)
and
風説の流布 (fuusetsu no rofu) "spreading false rumours"
Usually to point out some insensitive bait-and-switch thing being published.