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BIO Chair Dr. Ted Love won a prestigious award for his commitment to sickle cell disease patients—here’s what he says about the future of treatments. Plus, September heat shattered records, by a record margin—but biotech offers solutions. (456 words, 2 minutes, 16 seconds) |
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BIO Chair Dr. Ted Love awarded for dedication to sickle cell disease |
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What’s SCD? A painful, sometimes fatal hereditary blood disease that makes blood cells curl into a sickle shape, causing health complications. It mostly affects people of African descent and historically has been ignored, receiving limited research funding.
You should know Dr. Love—founder of Global Blood Therapeutics (GBT), which developed Oxbryta, the first drug targeting the underlying cause of SCD. “Just seeing how the patients had very few options, and quite frankly how they were treated in the hospitals, I felt that it was an indignity, and I felt it was really a moral imperative for someone to try to do something about it”—and he did.
What’s next: GBT, acquired by Pfizer last year, has several new treatments in clinical trials, and a cure may not be far away.
What they’re saying: “My hope is that people no longer die from sickle cell disease. I think we really are on the brink,” said Dr. Love.
Read more and watch the full interview. |
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'A death sentence for people and ecosystems'
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Scientists expressed dismay yesterday after learning September temperatures shattered heat records, achieving the highest above-average temperature of any month recorded.
The heat is on: Temperatures were 0.93 Celsius (1.7F) above the 1991-2020 average for September, said the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Climate Change Service—the biggest deviation in 83 years of records and 1.75 Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Do the math: This exceeds the Paris Climate Agreement threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius—putting 2023 on track to be 1.4 degrees above pre-industrial times, just below the agreement’s threshold for failure.
“It’s a death sentence for people and ecosystems. It destroys assets, infrastructure, harvest,” Friederike Otto, Imperial College of London climate scientist, told the Associated Press.
Biotech can be part of the answer, with energy solutions, like sustainable aviation fuels, new technologies to produce affordable biodiesel, and biomanufacturing advances.
Agricultural biotech solutions include fruits and vegetables that remain fresh longer to reduce waste, cover crops that produce sustainable biofuels, and genetically modified trees and bacteria that remove carbon from the air.
But policy is needed, to support advances in biomanufacturing and agriculture, BIO and voters agree. Many potential advances are included in the 2023 Farm Bill, which awaits legislative action. |
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