Danielle Gerhard, PhD | Mar 22, 2024 | 10+ min read
With the help of directed evolution, scientists inch closer to developing viral vectors that can cross the human blood-brain barrier to deliver gene therapy.
Early reports that Omicron causes less-severe disease than Delta seem to be borne out, but it’s not yet clear to what extent that’s due to the variant itself versus the populations it’s infecting.
Clinical trials that target human endogenous retroviruses to treat multiple sclerosis, ALS, and other ailments are underway, but many questions remain about how these sequences may disrupt our biology.
'BODY-COUNT BUDGETING'? Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) is concerned that diseases that cost taxpayers the most money may not be getting a proportionate amount of NIH funds. For the third year in a row, the National Institutes of Health came under fire this month for slighting some diseases and favoring more politically correct ills when it parcels out its research-funding billions. "What this whole thing boils down to," NIH director Harold Varmus recently told a special Institute of Medicine (I
'CLEAR AWARENESS': Keith Clark says epidemiologists have recongized the importance of geography in studying infectious diseases. Adventurers of the 18th and 19th centuries in search of gold and new trade routes were not the only ones to value a good map: Early epidemiologists inspected the lay of the land in attempts to discern the causes and spread of diseases. But as unexplored frontiers slowly disappeared, geography came to be taken for granted. In fact, the number of classic epidemiology p