Curated News: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

• share
• favorite_border

Diane Griffin, MD, PhD, a pioneering infectious-disease virologist, scientific leader, and Johns Hopkins professor, died Monday. She was 84.

• share
• favorite_border

University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers find advanced AI could lead to easier, faster and more efficient hospital quality reporting.

• share
• favorite_border

The question isn’t if, but when, the next pandemic will hit. Research and observation have identified strong potential for the next pandemic-causing virus to come from one or more of five different virus families.

• share
• favorite_border

In a study of 12 participants, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have demonstrated that a cocktail of three broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAb) successfully suppressed virus in people living with HIV. A subset of participants also demonstrated long-term control of the virus months after antibody levels declined to low or undetectable.

• share
• favorite_border

The annual influenza vaccination provides updated protection against the virus but could be improved as there is large variability in its efficacy.

• share
• favorite_border

A two-year study found that spikes of post-vaccination SARS-CoV-2 viral infections (commonly known as COVID-19 breakthrough cases) remain common, yet hospitalization rates have dramatically dropped following the first wave of the virus’ omicron subvariant.

• share
• favorite_border

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists found that immune cells present in individuals long before influenza infection predict whether the illness is symptomatic.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified a novel parameter of T cells that could help oncologists anticipate which patients would be most likely to develop immunotherapy toxicity. The findings, published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, could lead to improved treatments for a variety of cancers.

• share
• favorite_border

The bacterium commonly referred to as C. diff is sometimes called “C-difficult” because it is so hard to treat, said Mohamed Seleem, director of the Center for One Health Research. Seleem and Nectagen Inc. have received a nearly $275,000 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to study whether synthetic proteins developed by Nectagen can reduce the toxicity of the digestive bacteria.

• share
• favorite_border

A metabolic by-product that is more prevalent during fasting may supercharge immune cells as they fight infection and disease, reports an early stage study by Van Andel Institute scientists and collaborators.

• share
• favorite_border

While the incidence of influenza-associated neuropsychiatric events in children in the United States is unknown, the controversy over the use of a common antiviral medication typically administered to treat flu in children has sparked concern among parents and medical professionals alike. The dilemma about whether the treatment causes neuropsychiatric events or if the infection itself is the culprit, led a group of pediatric researchers at Monroe Carell Jr.

• share
• favorite_border

ASBMB publishes a statement expressing concerns for NIH budget cuts outlined by a House Labor HHS funding bill that could lead to lost jobs and halted research progress

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have long used community advisory boards to engage communities and provide feedback on studies, but this model has limitations. Now, Wistar Institute researchers are sharing how a more inclusive model for community engagement can lead to deeper insights and greater community participation in HIV research.

• share
• favorite_border

An estimated 1,200 Americans, on average, are diagnosed with Lyme disease each day. Some of those patients continue to experience negative effects, even after treatment. Lyme disease researcher Brandon Jutras, associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and affiliated faculty of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute, recently received a $2.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have taken an important step forward in predicting who will develop Type 1 diabetes months before symptoms appear.

• share
• favorite_border

A laboratory at the Hackensack Meridian Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) has been issued a major grant to repurpose drugs to combat non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM), an emerging family of germs naturally found in soil and water and which can be deadly to those with compromised immune systems and pre-existing lung diseases.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have engineered stable, universal MHC-I molecules that can be produced rapidly at scale, allowing researchers not only to develop vaccines and immunotherapies more quickly but also to identify molecules that can work broadly across the population. The findings were published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology show that T cells can recognize several different viral targets, called "antigens," shared between most coronaviruses, including common cold coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2. They also looked more in-depth at what fragments of these antigens, called “epitopes,” are recognized and how conserved they are across different coronaviruses.