politics
Crickets from the FDA on MDMA research misconduct
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
Remember early last month, when the FDA announced it was investigating allegations of data suppression and misconduct in clinical trials of MDMA-assisted therapy by Lykos? (If not, catch up with the inside scoop on just how things went awry.) Well, more than a month later, multiple people who raised concerns about the research said they haven't heard from the FDA, which is supposed to decide by August 11 whether MDMA can be used to treat PTSD.
"Given some of the things we commented on, I wondered whether they might want additional information," David Rind of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review said about the agency. "I'm a little surprised they haven't checked." Maybe they will — the FDA can always delay making a decision until its investigations are complete, even if it means missing the August deadline. But two former Lykos employees also said they haven't heard anything. Read more from STAT's Olivia Goldhill on where things stand.
research
New study shows how diversity can help researchers understand the genome
Two decades after the completion of the Human Genome Project, scientists still don't fully understand how genetic variation shapes our risk of disease. But a new study published in the journal Science shows how increasing diversity in genomic research could change that. Researchers analyzed data from nearly 636,000 U.S. veterans to look for associations between genetic variants and more than 2,000 traits, such as blood sugar levels or whether a participant had prostate cancer.
The research team found that while most variant-trait associations were detectable across populations, there were some associations that were only visible when they included participants with non-European ancestry — a group long underrepresented in genomic studies. Scientists also found that increased study diversity helped them better understand which variants actually cause someone to have increased risk for a trait. Read more from me, Jonathan Wosen (who also wrote this item — surprise!) about the findings and their implications.
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