The military’s new USAMRIID lab at Ft. Detrick is a level-4 lab – capable of conducting safe research on dangerous pathogens such as the ebola virus.
Thwarting the World’s Most Dangerous Pathogens: Biodefense Remains a National Priority
Hidden Prions a Public Health Threat Say Experts
You may want to put down that fork – brain-damaging prions could be lurking in your dinner. By showing that spleen tissue is up to sevenfold more receptive to foreign prions than that of the brain, Vincent Béringue PhD, and colleagues at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) in Jouy-en-Josas, France, recently challenged the […]
Public Concern Prompts Pause in Bird Flu Research
UPDATED February 3, 2012. On January 20, 2012, 39 principal investigators (PIs) from influenza research laboratories around the world declared a 60-day voluntary moratorium on experiments involving mammalian-transmissible viruses with the hemagglutinin (HA) genes of highly dangerous avian H5N1 viruses. They will, however, continue to investigate the currently non-transmissible “bird flu” viruses reconfiguring in nature […]
Nitric Oxide – A Newly Discovered Potential Target for Biofilm Control
Like most humans, bacteria prefer urban environments: cooperation makes earning a living easier, and life in the company of friendly others is generally safer than going it alone. Biofilms, where cells from the same or different species crowd together embedded in a protective glue-like substance called an “extracellular polysaccharide matrix (EPS),” are the bacterial cities […]
NSABB Asks Influenza Researchers to Withhold Technical Information
Updated: December 27, 2011. This past September, researchers from the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands announced to colleagues at the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza (ESWI) conference in Malta that they had reconfigured a deadly bird influenza virus into a version which could easily pass from one mammal to another. By genetically manipulating H5N1, […]
MIT Researchers Target Cancer’s Most Deadly Phase
If malignant cells could be kept from wandering about the body and colonizing new sites, the number of cancer deaths would be cut by about 90%. However, it’s become apparent in recent years that metastasis isn’t a simple, random process; it’s a well-orchestrated sequence of events most of which are largely unknown. In fact, “ […]
“Bird Flu” Virus Experiment Sparks Controversy and a Biosecurity Review (Updated December 26, 2011)
H5N1 (influenza A) is one of the most dangerous viruses around; fortunately it has a great deal of trouble infecting people. Thus, news of scientists configuring an H5N1 that can attach to respiratory tract cells, and then encouraging it to mutate into a form that spreads directly from mammal to mammal – in this case, […]
The World’s First Malaria Vaccine Moves Closer to Deployment
The first round of results from a large-scale phase 3 clinical trial show that RTS,S/AS01, a vaccine targeted against Plasmodium falciparum, cut the overall incidence of malaria by half in 6,000 closely monitored toddlers. This finding confirms the efficacy of RTS,S/AS01 seen in earlier, smaller trials — not near the 90% of most viral and […]
Parasite Gene Makes Caterpillars Do its Bidding
The first solid genetic proof of an extended phenotype, a concept postulated by Richard Dawkins in 1982, has just been reported by Kelli Hoover and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University (PSU) in University Park, as well as from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service in Delaware, Ohio. These researchers have identified a viral gene that induces […]