Toward Transparency and Trust: Assessing and Addressing Key Ethical Concerns in Normothermic Regional Perfusion.

Normothermic Regional Perfusion, or NRP, is a method of donated organ reperfusion using cardiopulmonary bypass or a modified extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) circuit after circulatory death while leaving organs in the dead donor's corpse. Despite its potential, several key ethical issues remain unaddressed by this technology.

Small RNA Changes in Plasma Have Potential for Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease before Symptom Onset.

Alzheimer's disease (AD), due to its multifactorial nature and complex etiology, poses challenges for research, diagnosis, and treatment, and impacts millions worldwide. To address the need for minimally invasive, repeatable measures that aid in AD diagnosis and progression monitoring, studies leveraging RNAs associated with extracellular vesicles (EVs) in human biofluids have revealed AD-associated changes. However, the validation of AD biomarkers has suffered from the collection of samples from differing points in the disease time course or a lack of confirmed AD diagnoses.

The Foundational Data Initiative for Parkinson Disease: Enabling efficient translation from genetic maps to mechanism.

The Foundational Data Initiative for Parkinson Disease (FOUNDIN-PD) is an international collaboration producing fundamental resources for Parkinson disease (PD). FOUNDIN-PD generated a multi-layered molecular dataset in a cohort of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines differentiated to dopaminergic (DA) neurons, a major affected cell type in PD. The lines were derived from the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative study, which included participants with PD carrying monogenic PD variants, variants with intermediate effects, and variants identified by genome-wide association studies and unaffected individuals.

"CRISPR for Disabilities: How to Self-Regulate" or Something?

The development of the CRISPR gene editing technique has been hyped as a technique that could fundamentally change scientific research and its clinical application. Unrecognized is the fact that it joins other technologies that have tried and failed under the same discourse of scientific hype. These technologies, like gene therapy and stem cell research, have moved quickly passed basic research into clinical application with dire consequences.

A Novel Tissue Atlas and Online Tool for the Interrogation of Small RNA Expression in Human Tissues and Biofluids.

One promising goal for utilizing the molecular information circulating in biofluids is the discovery of clinically useful biomarkers. Extracellular RNAs (exRNAs) are one of the most diverse classes of molecular cargo, easily assayed by sequencing and with expressions that rapidly change in response to subject status. Despite diverse exRNA cargo, most evaluations from biofluids have focused on small RNA sequencing and analysis, specifically on microRNAs (miRNAs).

Summarizing performance for genome scale measurement of miRNA: reference samples and metrics.

Background: The potential utility of microRNA as biomarkers for early detection of cancer and other diseases is being investigated with genome-scale profiling of differentially expressed microRNA. Processes for measurement assurance are critical components of genome-scale measurements. Here, we evaluated the utility of a set of total RNA samples, designed with between-sample differences in the relative abundance of miRNAs, as process controls.

Small RNA-seq during acute maximal exercise reveal RNAs involved in vascular inflammation and cardiometabolic health: brief report.

Exercise improves cardiometabolic and vascular function, although the mechanisms remain unclear. Our objective was to demonstrate the diversity of circulating extracellular RNA (ex-RNA) release during acute exercise in humans and its relevance to exercise-mediated benefits on vascular inflammation. We performed plasma small RNA sequencing in 26 individuals undergoing symptom-limited maximal treadmill exercise, with replication of our top candidate miRNA in a separate cohort of 59 individuals undergoing bicycle ergometry.

Serum MicroRNAs Reflect Injury Severity in a Large Animal Model of Thoracic Spinal Cord Injury.

Therapeutic development for spinal cord injury is hindered by the difficulty in conducting clinical trials, which to date have relied solely on functional outcome measures for patient enrollment, stratification, and evaluation. Biological biomarkers that accurately classify injury severity and predict neurologic outcome would represent a paradigm shift in the way spinal cord injury clinical trials could be conducted. MicroRNAs have emerged as attractive biomarker candidates due to their stability in biological fluids, their phylogenetic similarities, and their tissue specificity.