Children who experience some type of adverse event following initial immunization have a low rate of recurrent reactions to subsequent vaccinations, reports a study in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, the official journal of The European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. "Most patients with a history of mild or moderate adverse events following immunization [AEFI] can be safely reimmunized," write Gaston De Serres, MD, of Laval University, Quebec, and colleagues. Although recurrent AEFIs can sometimes occur after repeat
Researchers with the U.S. Military HIV Research Program at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) report that an experimental heroin vaccine induced antibodies that prevented the drug from crossing the blood-brain barrier in mice and rats. The vaccine was co-developed at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, which funded the preclinical research. "By eliciting antibodies that bind with heroin in
Malaria*1 is one of three major infectious diseases*2 affecting approximately 300 million people every year, accounting for about 500,000 deaths, but effective vaccine development has not been successful. Among malaria parasites infecting humans, Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum)*3 causes especially severe disease. In addition, acquired immunity to malaria is inefficient, even after repeated exposures to P. falciparum, but the immune regulatory mechanisms used by P. falciparum remain largely unclear. Therefore, malaria
Michael Pulsipher, MD, of the Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, along with Michael Keller, MD from Children’s National Health System in Washington, DC, have been awarded $4.8 million by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to study the use of a new T-cell therapy to help fight active viral infections in children with severe immune deficiencies. In what will be the largest
Precision medicine clinical trial leads to approval of first treatment for Erdheim-Chester disease The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced that it has approved the drug vemurafenib for the treatment of patients with BRAF V600-mutant Erdheim-Chester disease (ECD). This is the first approval of a targeted therapy based on a basket study and the first-ever drug approved for ECD, a rare blood disorder. This landmark approval came as
Researchers at the University of Maryland and Duke University have designed a novel protein-sugar vaccine candidate that, in an animal model, stimulated an immune response against sugars that form a protective shield around HIV. The molecule could one day become part of a successful HIV vaccine. "An obstacle to creating an effective HIV vaccine is the difficulty of getting the immune system to generate antibodies against the sugar shield of
Rheumatoid Arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disease that mainly targets the synovial membrane, cartilage and bone. It affects about 1% of the global population and is associated with significant morbidity and increased mortality. Anti-TNF related therapies are the current standard treatment of patients with advanced RA, but over half of the RA patients do not respond to current anti-TNF drugs such as etanercept (Enbrel®) and infliximab (Remicade®). CEL-SCI Corporation has
Results from an early-stage clinical trial called APPROACH show that an investigational HIV vaccine regimen was well-tolerated and generated immune responses against HIV in healthy adults. The APPROACH findings, as well as results expected in late 2017 from another early-stage clinical trial called TRAVERSE, will form the basis of the decision whether to move forward with a larger trial in southern Africa to evaluate vaccine safety and efficacy among women
Scientists at the Cornell and Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research have developed a way to produce a protein antigen that may be useful as vaccine for schistosomiasis -- a parasitic disease that infects millions of people, mostly in tropical and subtropical climates according to new research in the journal Protein Expression and Purifaication, June 2017. If clinical trials succeed, the vaccine may lead to a substantial decrease in the global number
A novel vaccine therapy can generate immune responses in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCCa), according to researchers at the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The treatment specifically targets human papillomavirus (HPV), which is frequently associated with HNSCCa, to trigger the immune response. Researchers will present the results of their pilot study during the 2017 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in Chicago
An international team based at Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) and at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, has succeeded in defining a “signature” composed of a small number of inflammatory markers that can be monitored in order to understand how a promising anti-Ebola virus vaccine stimulates the immune system. The researchers inoculated 115 volunteers with either a high dose or a low dose of the rVSV-ZEBOV anti-Ebola vaccine, or with
A recently-published study shows how Indiana University scientists are speeding the path to new treatments for the Zika virus, an infectious disease linked to birth defects in infants in South and Central America and the United States. Cheng Kao, a professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, has mapped a key protein that causes the virus to reproduce and spread. "Mapping
Not all melanomas are created equal. While most melanomas appear on the skin as the result of sun exposure, a small subset of melanomas arise spontaneously from mucosal tissues. And while targeted treatments and immunotherapies have dramatically improved the prognosis for many patients with sun-associated melanomas, these treatments are ineffective in the mucosal form of the disease. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published today in the journal Melanoma
For most vaccines to work the body needs two cell types – B cells and T helper cells – to make antibodies. B cells are the antibody factories and the T helper cells refine the strength and accuracy of antibodies to home and attack their targets. A technique that identifies these helper immune cells could inform future vaccine design, especially for vulnerable populations. Flu vaccines work by priming the immune
Beginning in the mid-1980s, an epidemic of severe invasive infections caused by Streptococcus pyogenes (S. pyogenes), also known as group A streptococcus (GAS), occurred in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. The general public became much more aware of these serious and sometimes fatal infections, commonly known as the “flesh-eating disease.” Potent cytotoxins produced by this human pathogen contribute to the infection. A new study in The American Journal of
The Georgia State University Research Foundation has entered into a research collaboration agreement with GeoVax Labs, Inc., a Georgia-based biotechnology company developing human vaccines, to advance development of a therapeutic vaccine for treatment of chronic Hepatitis B infections. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates between 700,000 to 1.4 million people in the United States have chronic Hepatitis B virus infections, with an estimated 20,000 new infections every year.
Researchers find key genetic driver for rare type of triple-negative breast cancer New mouse model leads to surprising discovery that sheds light on metaplastic breast cancer For more than a decade, Celina Kleer, M.D., has been studying how a poorly understood protein called CCN6 affects breast cancer. To learn more about its role in breast cancer development, Kleer’s lab designed a special mouse model – which led to something unexpected.
Over the past few decades, many bacteria have become resistant to existing antibiotics, and few new drugs have emerged. A recent study from a U.K. commission on antimicrobial resistance estimated that by 2050, antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections will kill 10 million people per year, if no new drugs are developed. To help rebuild the arsenal against infectious diseases, many scientists are turning toward naturally occurring proteins known as antimicrobial peptides, which
A first-of-its-kind study of 900,000 hospital admissions from an integrated health system has yielded insights into shifts in the epidemiology of multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs) in the community. New research, funded by OpGen (NASDAQ: OPGN) and conducted by Intermountain Healthcare and Enterprise Analysis Corporation (EAC), found that Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) and ESBL harboring Gram-negative rods were the most common organisms treated by the Intermountain Healthcare
Researchers have been trying for decades to develop a vaccine against the globally endemic hepatitis C virus (HCV). Now scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered one reason why success has so far been elusive. Using a sophisticated array of techniques for mapping tiny molecular structures, the TSRI scientists analyzed a lab-made version of a key viral protein, which has been employed in some candidate HCV vaccines to induce
