Researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have shown that optimal control of tuberculosis (TB) infection necessitated immune regulation as well as immune activation – and that PD-1 checkpoint blockers exacerbated TB infections in macaque monkeys by disrupting the balance between the two.
LONDON – A new national consortium of virologists has been set up to systematically assess how mutations in SARS-CoV-2 affect key outcomes such as effectiveness of vaccines and therapies, transmissibility of the virus and the severity of COVID-19 infections. Now is the critical time to do this, as the level of both natural and vaccine-conferred immunity that might drive natural selection is increasing, said Wendy Barclay, head of the department of infectious disease at Imperial College London, who is leading the G2P-UK (Genotype to Phenotype-UK) project.
Alzheimer’s disease can be divided into multiple subtypes based on gene expression patterns, investigators at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine reported in the Jan. 6, 2021, issue of Science Advances. The work, corresponding author Bin Zhang told BioWorld, is “the first major finding of subtypes in Alzheimer’s disease.”
Using an adenine base editor, researchers at the U.S. NIH, Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Harvard University have succeeded in treating the premature aging syndrome Hutchinson-Guilford progeria syndrome (progeria) in mice, extending the animals’ lifespan and preventing much of the vascular damage that is typically the cause of death in children with progeria.
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