Epigenetic mechanisms influence processes from stem cell differentiation to cancer, and researchers are keen to understand how these events differ at the genomic scale—the so-called epigenome.

AstraZeneca’s biologics arm, MedImmune, is joining forces with two cancer organisations in a bid to advance the research of immunotherapy in cancer.

Cancer immunotherapy research has once again topped the R&D charts as one of the hottest fields in biotech. And now MedImmune, the biologics arm of AstraZeneca ($AZN), has teamed up with some prestigious research teams to come up with some revved up combo therapies using a few of their most promising antibodies.

In a proof-of-principle study, the team evaluated the performance of their mRNA-seq protocol, called Smart-Seq, and used it to study single circulating tumor cells from melanoma.

Some junk is worth keeping. Non-coding, or junk, mouse DNA contains vast amounts of information vital to gene function—and those regulatory functions take up much more space on the genome than the all-important coding segments.

Treatment in animal subjects stopped the effects of Huntington’s and produced long-term improvement.

Few diseases have strong enough genetic components to make sequencing a solid way to assess individual risk.

In rare case, her immune system was spurred to eliminate tumors even in distant sites, researchers say.