In a stride towards combating influenza, scientists from the Tufts University School of Medicine, in collaboration with other scientific institutions, have introduced a promising compound, UH15-38, showing the potential to significantly relieve lung damage and inflammation caused by the flu virus. Influenza, a pervasive and often severe respiratory illness, can…

Researchers at the University of California (UC), Riverside have developed a novel vaccine that leverages existing immunity to the influenza virus to speed the development of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.  In the study, published this week in the Journal of Virology, they note that the same…

With COVID-19 on the scene, talk of other respiratory viruses has taken a backseat. But this doesn’t change the fact that they are as present as ever, lurking in the background. Influenza is one such virus, causing an estimated 1 billion cases globally every year—of these, upwards of 500,000 end…

If you think breathing in gene editing enzymes to treat infectious diseases, such as the flu or COVID-19, is a technology that is far-fetched or a long way off, think again. A team of investigators from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University has developed a CRISPR-based treatment to…

Researchers led by Salk Institute professor Susan Kaech, PhD, have discovered how memory T cells that are responsible for long-term immunity in the lungs can be reactivated more easily than previously thought. The team’s studies, published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, provide new insights into how lung immune cells respond…

A trial comparing the self-replicating mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, developed by U.S. biotech Arcturus Therapeutics in collaboration with CSL, with BioNTech/Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine shows it is able to elicit better immune responses 12 months after vaccination than the approved mRNA vaccine. The self-amplifying technology developed by Arcturus allows quick and long-lasting…

As a graduate student at the Weizmann Institute studying systems biology, Eran Eden frequently found himself with a peer, Kfir Oved, an MD-PhD candidate at the time, playing a “game” in the evenings in their grandmothers’ kitchens while eating blintzes, a classic of Eastern European cuisine. The “game” they played…

During the spring of 2020, when squabbles erupted in grocery stores over basic necessities like water, food, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper, it became apparent that the eventual release of billions of vaccines would be necessary to combat the domestic and international reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. As mRNA-based vaccines…

Researchers at the Radboudumc Amalia Children’s Hospital and UMC Utrecht Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital, in the Netherlands, report they have developed a saliva test to indicate the severity of recurrent respiratory infections in children that outperforms the standard blood test. Reporting in the European Respiratory Journal, the investigators noted that if…

By reanalyzing the AncestryDNA COVID-19 study, researchers have found that many genetic risk factors for COVID-19 and influenza do not overlap. The study found that risk factors for each of these respiratory illnesses do share a common feature—they are linked to cell surface proteins that may be required for viral…

Over the last thirty years, protein-based injections and DNA therapeutics accounted for the majority of newly introduced treatments. However, these medicines remain out of reach for many around the world due to high pricing, with some therapies ranging from thousands to several millions of dollars to purchase. [caption id=”attachment_147257″ align=”alignright”…

Experts have called for genomic surveillance to be mobilized to stave off worldwide threats to health from infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance. Genomic surveillance involves monitoring and studying genetic changes and variations in disease-causing organisms such as viruses and bacteria. In COVID-19, sequencing the entire genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 and…

German biotech CureVac has announced positive mid-Phase II data for its mRNA flu vaccine, which it is developing with big pharma GSK. While the results showed better reactivity against more severe, pandemic-associated influenza A strains than currently available vaccines, the vaccine candidate was not as effective as current vaccines against…

Patients with slow-growing chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) with no symptoms and a low risk for ever needing treatment who stopped specialist visits showed comparable three-year survival rates compared with those who continued to receive specialized follow up. The research from a team of Danish investigators, published today in Blood Advances,…

It is time to stop using terms such as “long COVID” an Australian research team says. Such phrases, they say, imply there is something unique about longer term symptoms associated with COVID. But long COVID, this team maintains, is just a typical post-viral syndrome, indistinguishable from what is seen with…