Scientists from the Swiss antibody company Humabs BioMed SA have characterised the human immune response to infection from the Zika virus and shown for the first time that antibodies derived from infected patients may not only be useful for developing diagnostics and therapies, but also answer the question of why Zika infections can become more dangerous if a person is infected with Dengue fever later in life.
An international research consortium that is working on a promising antibody for the treatment of influenza has had its work published in the 14 July edition of the journal Cell. The research suggests that the antibody has the potential for treating influenza caused by numerous type A strains.
UK-based Storm Therapeutics Ltd, which is developing small molecules that target RNA-modifying enzymes in cancer, has raised £12 million in Series A equity financing. Two heavy-weight corporate venture capitalists participated in the financing, suggesting interest in the technology.
Researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, have discovered an antibody that can activate a protein called Bak and trigger cell death. In healthy cells Bak remains inert. But when a cell receives a signal to die, the protein mobilises to kill the malignant cell.
Researchers at KU Leuven in Belgium have discovered that the tumour protein 53 (TP53) knows exactly where to bind to a DNA sequence to prevent cancer. Once bound to this location, the protein can activate the right genes to repair damaged cells.
A group of 25 bioscience academics and genomic entrepreneurs have published a paper in Science, calling for support of a project to ‘write’ a synthetic human genome. This comes more than a decade after the Human Genome Project successfully sequenced, or ‘read,’ the three billion DNA base pairs that make up the human genome.
A Phase 1 study of 18 patients with severe osteoarthritis of the knee has shown that a single injection of stem cells derived from the patients’ own adipose tissue was safe and appeared to offer relief from pain.
Researchers at KU Leuven in Belgium have used cell cultures to show that a prospective antiretroviral medicine called LEDGIN has the potential to put HIV-1 into remission. The research will still need to be tested in mice before it can progress to humans.
A study published by investigators at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard University suggests that the blood-brain barrier in humans weakens with age and that the build-up of amyloid-beta plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease is a response to the threat of pathogens coming through the barrier.
The medaka fish, sometimes known as the Japanese rice fish, has a long history as a pet. In recent years it has also been a model organism for biological research – most recently in a study of the regeneration of damaged retinal cells.