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Infectious Disease: COVID-19
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Total 35 results found since Jan 2013.
News at a glance: A win for obesity drugs, NIH unionization roadblocks, and Mexican fireflies under threat
CONSERVATION
Researchers raise alarm over threat to Mexican fireflies
Scientists from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) last week delivered a letter to the Mexican government requesting it regulate tourism centered on the threatened firefly species
Photinus palaciosi
. Endemic to Mexico’s Tlaxcala forests,
P. palaciosi
is one of the few species that glow in synchrony, offering an annual spectacle that attracts thousands of visitors during summer mating season. The letter describes how littering, artificial light, and noise interfere with the insects’ courtship and eg...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 10, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
HIV researcher will head NIH ’s infectious disease institute
The infectious disease institute at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) will soon have its first new chief in nearly 4 decades. Jeanne Marrazzo, an expert on sexually transmitted infections, will become director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the fall. She will succeed Anthony Fauci, who
stepped down
in December 2022 after 38 years at NIAID’s helm.
Marrazzo, 61, currently directs the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). A physician and epidemiologist, she has expertise in HIV prevention, vaginal infections, horm...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 2, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
University of Alabama HIV researcher will head NIH ’s infectious disease institute
The infectious disease institute at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) will soon have its first new chief in nearly 4 decades. Jeanne Marrazzo, an expert on sexually transmitted infections, will become director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the fall. She will succeed Anthony Fauci, who
stepped down
in December 2022 after 38 years at NIAID’s helm.
Marrazzo, 61, currently directs the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). A physician and epidemiologist, she has expertise in HIV prevention, vaginal infections, horm...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 2, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Explainer: Why the U.S. has banned funding for Chinese lab at center of pandemic origin dispute
In a move that has more symbolic than practical impact, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has imposed new sanctions on a Chinese lab at the center of the debate about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A nine-page
HHS memo
made public by a House subcommittee that
’s investigating the pandemic
’s origin suspends and proposes debarment of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)
“from participating in United States Federal Government procurement and nonprocurement programs.” In effect, this bars WIV from receiving U.S. government funding now and possibly ever. The ...
Source: ScienceNOW - July 20, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Companies won ’t share COVID-19 shots, stalling future vaccine research
The U.S. government has tens of millions of unused doses of messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines, regularly trashing shots as they pass their expiration dates. It’s a dismal reflection on recent vaccine uptake, but it’s also a serious roadblock for scientists testing and developing vaccines that could protect against future variants of SARS-CoV-2—and the next pandemic. Developers need existing vaccines as a benchmark to compare with new candidates. But government contracts with the vaccinemakers, and the companies’ own policies, prohibit the use of the vaccines for research purposes.
“At this stage of the ...
Source: ScienceNOW - May 30, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
The COVID-19 virus mutated to outsmart key antibody treatments. Better ones are coming
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged and other effective drugs were elusive, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) emerged as a lifesaving treatment. But now, 3 years later, all the approvals for COVID-19–fighting antibodies have been rescinded in the United States, as mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have left the drugs—which target parts of the original virus—ineffective.
Researchers around the globe are now trying to revive antibody treatments by redesigning them to take aim at targets that are less prone to mutation. “There are new approaches that present a much more challenging task for the virus to evade,” ...
Source: ScienceNOW - May 24, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
NIH restarts bat virus grant suspended 3 years ago by Trump
Three years after then-President Donald Trump pressured the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to suspend a research grant to a U.S. group studying bat coronaviruses with partners in China, the agency has restarted the award.
The new 4-year grant is a stripped-down version of the original grant to the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research organization in New York City, providing $576,000 per year. That 2014 award included funding for controversial experiments that mixed parts of different bat viruses related to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the coronavirus that sparked a global outbreak in 2002–04, a...
Source: ScienceNOW - May 8, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Eleven science stories likely to make big news in 2023
As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its fourth year as a global health emergency, researchers will continue pushing to help make the disease manageable and ordinary. They will track hundreds of subvariants of Omicron, the highly transmissible but seemingly less lethal strain of SARSCoV-2 that dominated in 2022. Virologists will watch the virus’ evolution this year to see whether it has finally slowed or a more dangerous variant pops up, evading much of the immunity that humanity has built up to previous ones. Vaccine researchers hope to develop new shots that provide broad protection against a variety of coronaviruses. Ano...
Source: ScienceNOW - January 4, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Science ’s 2022 Breakthrough of the Year: A telescope’s golden eye sees the universe anew
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Source: ScienceNOW - December 15, 2022 Category: Science Source Type: news
A New Lab-Made COVID-19 Virus Puts Gain-of-Function Research Under the Microscope
On October 14, a team of scientists at Boston University released a pre-print study reporting that they had created a version of SARS-CoV-2 combining two features of different, existing strains that boosted its virulence and transmissibility. Scientists and the public raised questions about the work, which refocused attention on such experiments, and prompted the U.S. government to investigate whether the research followed protocols for these kinds of studies.
The concerns surround what is known as gain-of-function studies, in which viruses, bacteria, or other pathogens are created in the lab—either intentionally or ...
Source: TIME: Science - October 27, 2022 Category: Science Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news
U.S. weighs crackdown on experiments that could make viruses more dangerous
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Source: ScienceNOW - October 19, 2022 Category: Science Source Type: news
US Agency to Look into Project on Modified Coronavirus
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was not aware that the work involved a chimeric strain of SARS-CoV-2, STAT reports.
Source: The Scientist - October 19, 2022 Category: Science Tags: News & Opinion Source Type: news
Scientists race to test vaccines for Uganda ’s Ebola outbreak
A multipronged international effort has begun to pull out all the stops to launch trials of experimental Ebola vaccines in Uganda, which declared an outbreak of the deadly disease on 20 September. According to the most recent World Health Organization (WHO) update, Uganda has had 18 confirmed and 18 suspected cases of Ebola, including 23 deaths—an unusually high case fatality rate of 64%. A trial of a vaccine candidate that’s farthest along in development could launch before the end of next month.
Proven vaccines exist for Zaire ebolavirus, which has led to a dozen outbreaks in the neighboring Democratic Republic ...
Source: ScienceNOW - September 29, 2022 Category: Science Source Type: news
Anthony Fauci, loved and hated, plots his next move: ‘I'm not going to sit in my house’
In 1984, when Anthony Fauci took over as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), his wife gave him a plant for the new office. Both the palm and the 81-year-old physician are still there, the giant plant now crowding the office of one of the most celebrated—and polarizing—scientific figures in U.S. history. But not for much longer. Fauci announced on 22 August that he would step down at the end of the year from both NIAID and his post as the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
“What am I going to do with this plant? It’s a monster. I can’t fit it in any other plac...
Source: ScienceNOW - September 1, 2022 Category: Science Source Type: news
Anthony Fauci, loved and hated, plots his next move: ‘I’m not going to sit in my house’
In 1984, when Anthony Fauci took over as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), his wife gave him a plant for the new office. Both the palm and the 81-year-old physician are still there, the giant plant now crowding the office of one of the most celebrated—and polarizing—scientific figures in U.S. history. But not for much longer. Fauci announced on 22 August that he would step down at the end of the year from both NIAID and his post as the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
“What am I going to do with this plant? It’s a monster. I can’t fit it in any other plac...
Source: ScienceNOW - September 1, 2022 Category: Science Source Type: news
