Date: October 9, 2012 By:
“An international research consortium plans to begin testing four new HIV vaccines in 2014 in a province of South Africa where the infection rate is among the highest in the world.
The unusual effort to test several vaccines nearly simultaneously reflects the difficulty of finding a way to prevent HIV infection, says Bruce Walker, a Harvard Medical School professor and one of the founding scientists of a new research center opening this month in Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal province, where the tests will occur.”
Researchers at the Ragon Institute have developed a novel immunization strategy that shows promise for protecting against both group 1 and group 2 influenza A viruses. The strategy, detailed in their recent study, relies on eliciting a single amino acid change in antibodies to generate broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs).
Their findings, to be published in Cell next month, reveal how the virus manipulates immune system processes to avoid destruction by natural killer (NK) cells, a type of white blood cell that is crucial for fighting viral infections.
The lab of the Ragon Institute faculty member Hernandez Moura Silva, PhD, recently published a review in Science Immunology regarding resident tissue macrophages (RTMs), shedding light on their multifaceted roles in organ health.