Feature Channels: Vaccines

• share
• favorite_border

Conventional vaccines indiscriminately destroy bacteria and other disease-causing agents. The approach works, but there is growing concern that it creates opportunity other pathogens to harm the body – similar to antibiotic resistance resulting in new and more potent pathogens. A new, protein-based pneumococcal vaccine takes a different approach. It allows pneumonia-causing bacteria to colonize in the body and – like a nightclub bouncer – swings into action only if the bacteria becomes harmful.

• share
• favorite_border

It's thought that antibiotic resistance is associated with a fitness cost, meaning that bacteria that develop antibiotic resistance must sacrifice something in order to do so. Because of this, proper use of antibiotics should result in susceptible strains eventually replacing resistant ones.

• share
• favorite_border

Recently, University of Missouri researchers proposed that open communication about the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) could improve public trust that vaccines are safe, thereby increasing vaccine acceptance. Findings from the study suggest that data and stories may not increase the public’s acceptance of vaccines.

• share
• favorite_border

Vaccines are usually medicine’s best defense against the world’s deadliest microbes. However, HIV is so mutable that it has so far effectively evaded both the human immune system and scientists’ attempts to make an effective vaccine to protect against it. Now, researchers have figured out how to make a much-improved research tool that they hope will open the door to new and better HIV vaccine designs.

• share
• favorite_border

“It’s the diarrhea that can kill you,” noted professor emeritus David Francis, an expert on colibacillosis, an intestinal disease that affects newborn and weanling pigs. The toxin-producing E. Coli bacterium that causes the swine disease is similar to the organism responsible for traveler’s diarrhea in humans. Francis will speak at the 24th International Veterinary Conference in Dublin, Ireland, June 7-10.

• share
• favorite_border

Each year, influenza causes between 250,000 and half a million deaths around the world. Now a new study has shown that immunizing mothers against flu can decrease by 70 percent the risk of their infants getting flu during the first four months after birth. This is the largest study so far to show that maternal vaccination against flu is feasible and effective in resource-poor environments.

• share
• favorite_border

An early-stage clinical trial at Roswell Park will assess whether the SurVaxM cancer vaccine is a safe and effective treatment option for patients with multiple myeloma, in combination with lenalidomide

• share
• favorite_border

Countries that implement government-mandated vaccinations for chickenpox see a sharp drop in the number of Google searches for the common childhood disease afterward, demonstrating that immunization significantly reduces seasonal outbreaks.

• share
• favorite_border

Spring snowpack, relied on by ski resorts and water managers throughout the Western United States, may be more vulnerable to a warming climate in coming decades, according to a new University of Utah study.

• share
• favorite_border

Known as a definitive source for health care providers, "The Vaccine Handbook" is now available as an app.

• share
• favorite_border

A relatively unknown molecule that functions like the engine of the cell and regulates metabolism could be the key to boosting an individual’s immunity to the flu – and potentially other viruses.

• share
• favorite_border

Yearly flu shots are strongly recommended for adults with certain chronic illnesses, but patients of racial/ethnic minority groups are less likely to receive them. Perceived discrimination may be a contributing factor, but can't completely explain the racial/ethnic disparity, reports a study in the June issue of Medical Care. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

• share
• favorite_border

Chris Destache, Pharm.D., earned a National Institutes for Health grant last year to look into using HIV drug nanoparticles fabricated with a FDA-approved biocompatible polymer and how those drug-ladened nanoparticles can be used to help prevent HIV.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences received a $2.1 million U01 grant from the NIH to begin work on a phase 1 clinical trial to test a hookworm vaccine in an endemic area of Brazil.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of researchers led by University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka describes a novel strategy to predict the antigenic evolution of circulating influenza viruses and give science the ability to more precisely anticipate seasonal flu strains. It would foster a closer match for the so-called “vaccine viruses” used to create the world’s vaccine supply.

• share
• favorite_border

A project by UT Southwestern Medical Center students is being recognized at a White House ceremony today for their outstanding commitment to increasing hepatitis awareness as part of the annual National Hepatitis Testing Day observance.

• share
• favorite_border

click to view today's top stories

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from UAB, Emory and Microsoft demonstrate that HIV has evolved to be pre-adapted to the immune response, worsening clinical outcomes in newly infected patients.

• share
• favorite_border

click to view today's top stories

• share
• favorite_border

click to see today's top stories

• share
• favorite_border

click to see today's top stories

• share
• favorite_border

click to see today's top stories

• share
• favorite_border

Betty Chen, a third-year student at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, wanted to know what made Missouri's HPV vaccine rates so low compared with other U.S. states. She was recently awarded the 2016 Alpha Omega Alpha Carolyn L. Kuckein Student Research Fellowship.

• share
• favorite_border

Immunotherapy advances apply to animal health

• share
• favorite_border

A study found that 97 percent of confirmed flu cases among babies 6 months and younger occurred in those whose moms were not vaccinated while they were pregnant.

• share
• favorite_border

LA JOLLA, CA—Follicular helper T cells (Tfh cells), a rare type of T cells, are indispensible for the maturation of antibody-producing B cells. They promote the proliferation of B cells that produce highly selective antibodies against invading pathogens while weeding out those that generate potentially harmful ones. In their latest study, researchers at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology identified a key signal that drives the commitment of immature Tfh cells into fully functional Tfh cells and thus driving the step-by-step process that results in a precisely tailored and effective immune response.

• share
• favorite_border

Program's first clinical trial will study whether giving the vaccine to mothers in the last part of pregnancy may keep the newborn safe from the RSV during the most vulnerable first several months.

• share
• favorite_border

The findings, published in the journal Vaccine, suggest administering vaccinations in the morning, rather than the afternoon, could induce greater, and thus more protective, antibody responses.

• share
• favorite_border

Vaccines and therapeutics developed using mice sometimes don’t work as expected in humans. New research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis points to the near-sterile surroundings of laboratory mice as a key reason. When the researchers infected laboratory mice with the mouse equivalent of microbes that cause common infections in humans, the infections changed the animals’ immune systems so they were more similar to adult humans’.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) have developed one of the first mouse models for the study of Zika virus. The model will allow researchers to better understand how the virus causes disease and aid in the development of antiviral compounds and vaccines.

• share
• favorite_border

With the re-emergence of measles, mumps, diphtheria, and other vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs), many healthcare providers are encountering these diseases—and their potentially serious and even fatal outcomes—for the first time. A special article in Anesthesia & Analgesia presents a review and update for hospital-based providers who may encounter VPDs—particularly the operating room and intensive care unit.

• share
• favorite_border

New research in monkeys exposed to SIV, the animal equivalent of HIV, reveals what happens in the very earliest stages of infection, before virus is even detectable in the blood, which is a critical but difficult period to study in humans. The findings, published online today in the journal Cell, have important implications for vaccine development and other strategies to prevent infection.

• share
• favorite_border

HIV vaccine candidate has shown to generate more than 80% protection in groups of twelve female monkeys against high dose, repeated AIDS virus exposures during part of a preclinical study.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of California, San Diego, J. Craig Venter Institute, La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology and The Scripps Research Institute have teamed up to create the “Mesa Consortium,” a new scientific hub for the Human Vaccines Project. Under a collaborative agreement, the Mesa Consortium and the Human Vaccine Project aim to transform current understanding of the human immune system and expedite development of vaccines and biologics to prevent and treat many global diseases.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and collaborating institutions have described the first-ever immature or “teenage” antibody found in a powerful class of immune molecules effective against HIV.

• share
• favorite_border

A combined vaccine therapy including live Salmonella is a safe and effective way to prevent diabetes in mice and may point to future human therapies, a new study finds. The results will be on Sunday, April 3, at ENDO 2016, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Boston.

• share
• favorite_border

Now, new research from The Wistar Institute has demonstrated how a novel vaccine strategy that boosts the immune system by rapidly producing antibodies against CHIKV, combined with a traditional DNA-based vaccine approach, can provide both short term and long term protection against the virus. Study results are published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of Georgia and Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi, announced today the development of a vaccine that protects against multiple strains of both seasonal and pandemic H1N1 influenza in mouse models. They published their findings in the Journal of Virology.

• share
• favorite_border

A University of California, Irvine scientific team led by infectious diseases researchers Philip Felgner and Aaron Esser-Kahn has received $8 million from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency to help develop a new vaccine for Q fever.

• share
• favorite_border

Some people infected with HIV naturally produce antibodies that effectively neutralize many strains of the rapidly mutating virus, and scientists are working to develop a vaccine capable of inducing such “broadly neutralizing” antibodies that can prevent HIV infection.

• share
• favorite_border

In a small clinical trial led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, researchers say that a promising single-dose dengue vaccine, developed by scientists at the National Institutes of Health, was 100 percent effective in preventing human volunteers from contacting the virus, the most prevalent mosquito-borne virus in the world.

• share
• favorite_border

Conflicting expectations between parents and medical providers about who is responsible for scheduling follow-up appointments is resulting in a failure of young girls completing the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccination series, according to a new study led by Boston Medical Center researchers.

• share
• favorite_border

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have revealed new details about how a promising class of anti-influenza drugs blocks the virus from replicating.

• share
• favorite_border

In a search for new antiviral drugs, University of Utah scientists found that a common heart failure medicine, spironolactone, has an unexpected ability to block Epstein Barr virus (EBV), a herpesvirus that causes mononucleosis. The drug blocks a key step in viral infection common to all herpesviruses, revealing that it could be developed into a new class of drug to treat herpesvirus infections including herpes, shingles, and mono. The research was published in PNAS.

• share
• favorite_border

Julie Gerberding, M.D., MPH, executive vice president of Strategic Communications, Global Public Policy and Population Health at Merck & Co. and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will give the keynote address at a scientific conference hosted by the Global Health Initiative at Henry Ford Health System and Haiti’s Ministry of Health. Dr. Gerberding will discuss best practices for building partnerships for vaccines in Haiti, in which the country and health care system have yet to recover from the devastating earthquake in 2010.

• share
• favorite_border

New report from the S.J. Quinney College of Law focuses on remedies to help protect migrant women from domestic violence and sexual assault. The research is part of a broader initiative at the law school focused on drawing attention to empowering people through human rights education.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered that HIV infection of human immune cells triggers a massive increase in methylation, a chemical modification, to both human and viral RNA, aiding replication of the virus. The study, published February 22, 2016 in Nature Microbiology, identifies a new mechanism for controlling HIV replication and its interaction with the host immune system.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered that HIV infection of human immune cells triggers a massive increase in methylation, a chemical modification, to both human and viral RNA, aiding replication of the virus. The study, published February 22, 2016 in Nature Microbiology, identifies a new mechanism for controlling HIV replication and its interaction with the host immune system.

• share
• favorite_border

Parents who do not get their children flu shots rate flu vaccine less favorably than other childhood vaccines, a national poll finds.

• share
• favorite_border

A research team that included scientists from The Scripps Research Institute has identified a new group of powerful antibodies to fight Ebola virus. The antibodies could guide the development of a vaccine or therapeutic against Ebola.