LONDON – The largest study of its kind to date has identified new biomarkers of inflammation that are both indicators of severe COVID-19 infection and distinguish it from severe influenza.
Curing HIV remains a dream for now, but it is clearly not a pipe dream. One of the challenges for developing a vaccine is that there is no natural immune response to model such a vaccine on. Over time, an untreated HIV infection will almost certainly kill its host. However, there is a group of elite controllers – people who, although they cannot eliminate the virus, manage to keep it in check.
In 2020, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) was the first medical conference to go virtual, with two days advance warning, when news of infections resulting from a Biogen Inc. conference with about 150 attendees made it abundantly clear that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating, well, probably everywhere.
DUBLIN – A novel real-world study methodology that marries digital technology with a citizen science or do-it-yourself approach to “drug” procurement, formulation and administration has found – yet again – that the placebo remains one of the great wonders of the medical world.
A team led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has developed bispecific antibodies that were able to target tumors driven by mutations in the tumor suppressor TP53 and the oncogene RAS, as well as subsets of T cells in T-cell malignancies.