by Johns Hopkins University Transmission electron micrograph of a SARS-CoV-2 particle (left) alongside a model of the virus (right). Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have shown that mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 are effective even if a person does not experience post-shot symptoms or had a prior COVID-19 infection. Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National...
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us have heard more about vaccines in the last year than we previously had in our lifetimes. You might be reading about efficacy, herd immunity, and vaccine safety, which are all great things to understand. But it’s important to start at the beginning. Vaccines prevent illness and disease from germs...
by Georgetown University Medical Center A colorized scanning electron micrograph of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Credit: NIAID Even as vaccines are becoming more readily available in the U.S., protecting against the asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread of the virus (SARS-CoV-2) that causes COVID-19 is key to ending the pandemic, say two Georgetown infectious disease experts. In their Perspective,...
by Columbia University Irving Medical Center Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain A new study of the U.K. and South Africa variants of SARS-CoV-2 predicts that current vaccines and certain monoclonal antibodies may be less effective at neutralizing these variants and that the new variants raise the specter that reinfections could be more likely. The study was published...
BY VICTOR TANGERMANN According to several UK experts, there’s a chance that vaccines currently being administered in the country won’t provide sufficient immunity against new strains of the coronavirus emerging in both the UK and South Africa, Reuters reports. The scientists are most concerned about several mutations in the spike protein, the part of the virus that...
by John Hewitt , Medical Xpress Credit: Wikipedia Individuals with different genetic variants in their immune system components often have very different immune responses to Sars-CoV-2. They also will have different responses to vaccines. By the same token, newly emerged variants in Sars-Cov-2 can elicit different immune responses in identical immune systems. In the larger...
MICHIGAN MEDICINE – UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN The light at the end of the pandemic tunnel is getting brighter. This week, the first health care workers will receive the first doses of an FDA-approved coronavirus vaccine. Soon, so will other front-line workers in health care and beyond, and residents of long-term care facilities. The availability of...
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY Vaccines have curtailed the spread of several infectious diseases, such as smallpox, polio and measles. However, vaccines against some diseases, including HIV-1, influenza and malaria, don’t work very well, and one reason could be the timing of antigen and adjuvant presentation to the immune system. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Sciencedeveloped an...
By Filippa Lentzos, Guy Reeves, September 18, 2020 A worker conducts testing during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Liberia. Once a COVID-19 vaccine is approved for public use, officials around the world will face the monumental challenge of vaccinating billions of people, a logistical operation rife with thorny ethical questions. What if instead of orchestrating complicated and resource-intensive campaigns...
By Sally Robertson, B.Sc.Sep 16 2020 Researchers in the United States have described the effectiveness of a candidate monoclonal antibody currently being evaluated in a Phase 1 trial as a therapy for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and its causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The drug, called CPI-006, targets an immune signaling molecule...
