Ascletis Pharma Inc. presented subgroup data from a phase II trial showing its subcutaneous PD-L1 antibody envafolimab (ASC-22) was able to functionally cure chronic hepatitis B, according to hepatitis B surface antigen decline following 24-week treatment.
The emergence of new variants of concern (VOCs) of SARS-CoV-2 may limit the efficacy of monoclonal antibodies and vaccines currently used in the clinic.
Anthony Fauci has retired from his position as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and as chief medical advisor to the U.S. president. But Fauci, who has advised every president since Ronald Reagan, continues to share his encyclopedic knowledge with the HIV research community, as he has since the beginning of the HIV pandemic. Fauci co-founded the first National Conference on Human Retroviruses and related infections in 1993. At the Opening Session of the 30th edition of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), he highlighted the advances that have collectively extended the life expectancy of newly diagnosed patients by decades.
Centre Hospitalier Regional Universitaire de Lille, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, INSERM and Institut Pasteur de Lille have synthesized efflux pump inhibitors reported to be useful for the treatment of gram-negative bacterial infections.
Fifteen years ago, at the 2008 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), researchers announced that they had cured a patient – Timothy Ray Brown, initially known only as the Berlin Patient to preserve his privacy – of HIV through a hematopoietic stem cell transplant. Now, as researchers are gathered in Seattle for CROI 2023, reports of another cured patient were published Feb. 20, 2023, in Nature Medicine. Ten years after receiving a hematopoietic stem cell transplant, and 4 years after stopping antiretroviral treatment (ART), a 53-year-old patient may have been cured of HIV infection.
The A’s have it but the B’s don’t in Moderna Inc.’s pivotal phase III study of mRNA-1010, a seasonal flu vaccine for adults living in the southern hemisphere. Interim results showed the vaccine achieved superiority on seroconversion rates for influenzas A/H3N2 and A/H1N1, superiority on geometric mean titer ratios for influenza A/H3N2 and noninferiority on geometric mean titer ratios for influenza A/H1N1. However, noninferiority was not met for the endpoints against the influenza B/Victoria- and B/Yamagata-lineage strains.
Ascletis Pharma Inc. presented subgroup data from a phase II trial showing its subcutaneous PD-L1 antibody envafolimab (ASC-22) was able to functionally cure chronic hepatitis B, according to hepatitis B surface antigen decline following 24-week treatment.
Results published Feb. 17, 2023, in Immunity have given a wider view of what happens in the earliest stages of HIV infection. Treatments against HIV prevent the replication of the virus, but do not kill the reservoir of latently infected cells that starts to build almost immediately upon infection.