Posts Tagged ‘virus’
Ebola sneaks past immune system
One of the world’s deadliest viruses uses sophisticated masking techniques to evade immunizations, according to Emory University. The university directly across the road from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention said in a study
Efforts to develop a vaccine against Ebola virus have met with limited success, and it is likely that the virus employs complex immune evasion mechanisms that present unique challenges for vaccine design. Understanding these evasion mechanisms is a critical first step in developing an effective vaccine.
Gopi Mohan, a graduate student at Emory University is first author of the paper. Richard Compans, professor of microbiology and immunology, led the research along with assistant professor Chinglai Yang.
In Viral Times, a New Flu weakens the bodies of loved ones enough to let them contract HIVE-5, the latest immune deficiency virus. Ebola is far more lethal, but it uses vectors of bats and pigs to travel to its hosts. HIVE-5, and the resulting AIDS Ultra, is transmitted by touch. It’s up to Dayton Winstead and Angie Consoli to discover how the most deadly virus survives and thrives, in order to stop its spread.
Israeli pharma promises immunity boost drug
Cancers are caused by viruses. (So many diseases start with a virus.) A new drug might be able to treat people who already have a cancer, by employing the body’s natural immunity T-cells to attack cancer cells. No mention in this link about availability of the drug, but since it’s developed outside the US, approval can be much swifter. You’d still need traditional chemo/surgery for advanced cancers. But this is a novel way to get a pharma solution to ally with natural immunity. If you can afford the booster shots.
This is the kind of medicine that the PharmAlliance wants to create in Viral Times. There is the US government in the way of approving that drug, in my future of 2021. But for now, here’s the early report on ImMucin.
A traditional vaccine helps the body’s immune system fend off foreign invaders such as bacteria or viruses, and is administered to people who have not yet had the ailment. Therapeutic vaccines, like the one Vaxil has developed, are given to sick people, and work more like a drug.
Vaxil’s lead product, ImMucin, activates the immune system by “training” T-cells –– the immune cells that protect the body by searching out and destroying cells that display a specific molecule (or marker) called MUC1. MUC1 is typically found only on cancer cells and not on healthy cells. The T-cells don’t attack any cells without MUC1, meaning there are no side effects unlike traditional cancer treatments. More than 90% of different cancers have MUC1 on their cells, which indicates the potential for this vaccine.
ImMucin is foreseen as a long-term strategy — a shot every few months, with no side effects — to stop the cancer from reoccurring after initial treatments, by ensuring that the patient’s own immune system keeps it under control.
A drug can kill viruses, in 10 years
26, and with 4 MIT degrees
Todd Rider, a scientist at defense-funded Lincoln Laboratories, has moved on from detecting viruses to destroying them. It will be 10 years, by some estimates, before a human version is ready to sell. But a viral pandemic might accelerate that process. Right now he’s testing it on mice. From BusinessWeek:
He describes in the recent journal article a new drug, still under development, which he has successfully used to destroy 15 viral strains, including dengue fever, a stomach virus, and a polio virus. To create it, Rider combined two proteins commonly found in the human body. One binds to viral double-stranded ribonucleic acid, a type of molecule found in all viruses. The other induces apoptosis, which is essentially programmed cell suicide. The drug acts like a homing missile that seeks out and kills cells infected by a virus. It appears to have few negative consequences and works against all diseases, even as they mutate. “Most viruses kill the host cells anyway. They are like aliens in a movie,” says Rider.
Viral Times 