News by Subject Biology

Specific immune danger signals are highly efficient in triggering immune responses in infants and newborns, whose immune systems function very differently to those of adults. The scientists believe their discovery could reduce both the age at which vaccines can be first administered, and the need for multiple booster shots.

New research shows how two biological control agents have been effective in reducing the numbers of feral rabbits in Australia. Using data from the largest wild rabbit study in the world, scientists have examined the long-term interaction of myxoma and rabbit haemorrhagic disease viruses.

Researchers have shown that higher levels of Plasmodium falciparum antibodies are protective against severe malaria in children living in Papua New Guinea. Children who have higher levels of antibodies to a specific short amino acid sequence in the malaria parasite, P. falciparum, have much lower rates of clinical and severe malaria. This amino acid sequence, an antigen, is similar among P. falciparum strains elsewhere in the world, suggesting that this antigen would make a good target for a malaria vaccine.

A team of researchers led by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's Dan H. Barouch, M.D., Ph.D., in collaboration with Janssen Vaccines & Prevention and others, evaluated a series of preventative HIV vaccine regimens in uninfected human volunteers. In a similarly designed study, Barouch and colleagues tested the same vaccine for its ability to protect rhesus monkeys challenged with an HIV-like virus from infection. The findings showed the vaccines induced robust and comparable immune responses in humans and monkeys and protected monkeys against infection.

The innate NK-cell response requires a rather carefully choreographed interaction of three cell types.

Professor of Biological Science Hengli Tang and his postdoctoral researcher Jianshe Lang take a deep dive into the differences between Zika and the dengue virus. Tang and Lang found Zika has a unique ability to ferry the virus throughout the body when most viruses would be stopped.