A rhesus macaque study argues that CD8+ T cells contribute to immunity against COVID-19, while simultaneously suggesting that antiviral antibodies alone, if at a high enough titer, can protect against...
The recent failure of IFNβ in WHO’s master protocol trial for COVID-19 notwithstanding, there are plenty of reasons to suspect that interferons should be effective treatments for the infection. An analysis...
Several recent publications highlighting host factors that modulate ACE2 expression point to possible new targets for COVID-19 therapies. ACE2 and TMPRSS2 are the most common host targets of...
After a drug repositioning screen flagged Verge’s ALS target PIKFYVE as an Achilles heel for COVID-19, the neurodegeneration-focused biotech jumped into infectious disease by tapping the growing ecosystem of partners with industrialized SARS-CoV-2 assays. That...
Full-length spike protein may make a better DNA vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 than smaller spike peptides, including the popular receptor binding domain, according to a Science paper published Thursday. Led by Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical...
A team from Harvard and the Broad Institute uncovered a link between intestinal bacteria and a pair of neurological diseases associated with pathological DNA repeats, strengthening the connection between the gut microbiome and neurological diseases....
Reports that most if not all COVID-19 survivors have antiviral antibodies are beginning to set benchmarks for immunity, but understanding how much protection different levels and types of antibodies provide will be critical for determining...
The research focuses of new centers replacing the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology highlight how the fields have evolved since its founding in 1991. Like their predecessor, the Gladstone Institute of Virology and the...
A SARS-CoV-2 spike mutation linked to locally dominant strains could become the basis for allosteric COVID-19 countermeasure development. A Los Alamos National Laboratory team has identified a SARS-CoV-2 spike mutation linked to locally dominant strains...
While the abstracts for this year’s virtual AACR meeting won’t be available until Monday -- and most data won’t be presented until June -- key session titles, combined with an analysis of recent trends in...
A UT Austin and NIH Vaccine Research Center team has uncovered the structure of the COVID-19 spike protein, which mediates viral entry into cells via membrane fusion. The findings, published in a Science paper Wednesday,...
For acute myelogenous leukemia patients, 2017 marked the end of a more than 40 year drought in which chemotherapy was the only treatment option. In the last three years, eight new AML therapies have come...
Rising serial entrepreneur Akiko Iwasaki aims to bring antitumor immunity to the brain by opening the brain’s lymphatics, a recently discovered system of vessels just starting to find translational uses. In 2015, a Nature paper...
With its next-gen oncolytic virus, Astellas is reinforcing the promise of improved efficacy for versions that make cytokines stimulating T cells as well as innate immune cells. After more than two decades in development with...
A new study from TIL pioneer Steve Rosenberg adds to the momentum of personalized T cell therapies by suggesting blood can be as good a source of neoantigen-specific TCRs as tumor tissue. The results, which...
