FLICKR, NIAIDAs a Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outbreak continues in South Korea, researchers continue to investigate the coronavirus’s transmission and pathogenesis. Even now, said Peter Embarek of the World Health Organization, “we’re still a little bit in the dark.”
While health officials are tracing contacts on the ground, scientists are working to develop better animal models of MERS in the lab. A key question is why “people get sick with this virus” when infected mice and monkeys don’t fall as ill, as the University of Iowa’s Stanley Perlman told The Scientist.
WIKIMEDIA, NIHResearchers are deploying a variety of strategies in an effort to manufacture broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV, which could help inform vaccine design. In three independent papers published in Cell and Science this week (June 17 and 18), researchers report on their progress toward the production of such antibodies using two different tactics.
“Both of these approaches have crossed a threshold in the laboratory . . . to provide enough scientific rationale for human testing,” said John Mascola of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped fund the work.
PUBLIC HEALTH ENGLAND; MILES CARROLL, MICHAEL ELMORE (WITH PERMISSION FROM NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP)Two teams published in Nature and Cell this week (June 17 and 18) their independent genomic analyses of Ebola virus samples collected from patients sickened in the ongoing outbreak in West Africa. Both groups found that the virus has changed only slightly since being introduced to humans in 2013.
