Taconic Insights

Takeda Pharmaceuticals has joined forces with Marvel Custom Solutions to develop a graphic novel in which the super heroes have Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, and other characters care for family members or patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). As part of a Takeda program called IBD Unmasked, the graphic novel was developed in partnership with Marvel. They consulted with an IBD advisory panel consisting of patients...

Part III: Best Practices for Study Design This is the third of a three-part recap of Navigating the Challenges of Studying the Microbiome in Mouse Models: Design, Execution and Utility, a sponsored workshop at the 2017 Translational Microbiome Conference. Part I: Participants and Presentations Part II: Microbiome Workshop Topics Part III: Best Practices for Study Design In this Insight, we will summarize the main findings of workshop...

More than 5.5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's disease (AD), the sixth leading cause of death among adults in the US. Aggressive research funding and improved animal models of Alzheimer's disease are urgent priorities. Increasing Alzheimer's Research Funding On July 19, 2017, the House Appropriations Committee approved an additional $400 million for Alzheimer's disease research in the fiscal year 2018 budget. $400 million was also approved...

Part II: Microbiome Workshop Topics This is the second of a three-part recap of Navigating the Challenges of Studying the Microbiome in Mouse Models: Design, Execution and Utility, a sponsored workshop at the 2017 Translational Microbiome Conference. Part I: Participants and Presentations Part II: Microbiome Workshop Topics Part III: Best Practices for Study Design In this Insight, we recap workshop topics and discussions relating to the use...

No single Parkinson's Disease (PD) model fully reproduces the complexity of the disease in humans. Developing an assortment of PD models has been essential for furthering our understanding of, and the development of potential treatments for, the disease. Adding to the arsenal of PD rodent models, in conjunction with The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) for Parkinson's Research, a mouse model carrying targeted replacement human LRRK2 G2019S...

Part I: Participants and Presentations This is the first of a three-part recap of Navigating the Challenges of Studying the Microbiome in Mouse Models: Design, Execution and Utility, a sponsored workshop at the 2017 Translational Microbiome Conference. Part I: Participants and Presentations Part II: Microbiome Workshop Topics Part III: Best Practices for Study Design Participating Scientists The microbiome workshop was led by Alexander Maue, PhD, director of...

The metabolism of pharmacological compounds by our inhabitant microbes can have a significant effect on drug efficacy. While the best-known example may be the inactivation of the drug digoxin by gut flora1, Klatt et al. recently demonstrated that an imbalance in the healthy vaginal microbiome impacts the efficacy of a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) drug2. Efficacy of Tenofovir Gel Affected by Vaginal Microbiome Composition Tenofovir is a...

The fight against malaria is hampered by the lack of good animal models. The most dangerous malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, has a complex life cycle involving two hosts: mosquitoes and humans. In humans, the parasite has both a liver stage and a red blood cell stage. Because of its host species specificity, P. falciparum has been challenging to model in vivo, particularly during the liver stage. Humanized...

On July 13, 2017, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine published a paper titled, Vaccine Mediated Protection Against Zika Virus Induced Congenital Disease in the journal CELL1. In their study pregnant C57BL/6 mice vaccinated using an mRNA vaccine against the prM-E subunit of the virus and a live attenuated ZIKV-NS1_LAV were challenged with a pathogenic heterologous African ZIKV strain. The mice given a placebo developed high...

Connections between behavioral phenotypes and the microbiome continue to emerge from fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) studies at McMaster University. Can Behavioral Phenotypes Be Transferred? Researchers at McMaster University first demonstrated the transfer of behavioral traits between mice via the gut microbiome by fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) in 2011. The authors exploited the observation that two strains of mice, inbred BALB/c and outbred NIH Swiss mice with differing...