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  • All animals begin life as a single cell from which arise the many different cell types, such as heart, lung, blood, etc., that are specific to that type of animal. However, once the process of cell differentiation has led to many different tissues, each organism has a new, opposite imperative – keeping new cells in each type of tissue the same as their brethren. Cancers arise in a tissue when a cell becomes different from its neighbors and thus represent a failure to maintain this critical uniformity. 

  • People living with HIV who naturally produce broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) that may help suppress the virus have different immunological profiles than people who do not, researchers report. While bNAbs cannot completely clear HIV infections in people who have already acquired the virus, many scientists believe a successful preventive HIV vaccine must induce bNAbs. The new findings indicate that bNAb production may be associated with specific variations in individual immune functions that may be triggered by unchecked HIV infection. Defining how to safely replicate these attributes in HIV-uninfected vaccine recipients may lead to better designed experimental vaccines to protect against HIV. The study was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. 

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  • If Dr. Kalipada Pahan's research pans out, the standard advice for failing students might one day be: Study harder and eat your cinnamon! 

    Pahan a researcher at Rush University and the Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Chicago, has found that cinnamon turns poor learners into good ones--among mice, that is. He hopes the same will hold true for people. 

  • Researchers discovered cure for influenza

    Scientists have identified three types of vaccine-induced antibodies that can neutralize diverse strains of influenza virus that infect humans. The discovery will help guide development of a universal influenza vaccine, according to investigators at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), both part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and collaborators who conducted the research. The findings appear in the July 21st online edition of Cell. 

  • For HIV-infected mothers whose immune system is in good health, taking a three-drug antiretroviral regimen during breastfeeding essentially eliminates HIV transmission by breast milk to their infants, according to results from a large clinical trial conducted in sub-Saharan Africa and India

  • Biologists and mathematicians from MIPT, Stony Brook University and other scientific research centres have taught a computer to predict the structure of protein complexes in a cell 10 times faster than before. The study has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

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  • A new type of HIV drug currently being tested works in an unusual way, scientists in the Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit, a collaboration between EMBL and Heidelberg University Hospital, have found. They also discovered that when the virus became resistant to early versions of these drugs, it did not do so by blocking or preventing their effects, but rather by circumventing them. The study, published online today in Science, presents the most detailed view yet of part of the immature form of HIV.

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  • In red the part that binds to the virus, in grey the “tail” of the antibody (named Fc) that binds the receptors of the antibodies present on the different types of cells, and in yellow the LALA mutation that blocks the binding of the antibody to such receptors.

    A team of researchers from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB, USI Università della Svizzera italiana) and the Swiss biotech company Humabs BioMed SA has identified novel therapeutic monoclonal antibody candidates isolated from Zika-infected patients and new strategies for Zika virus diagnostics. An article published today in the renowned scientific journal Science describes for the first time an in-depth analysis of the human antibody and T cell immune response to the Zika virus infection with important implications for differential diagnostics and for the development of vaccines and new treatments.

  • Bacteria are rapidly developing resistance mechanisms to combat even the most effective antibiotics. Each year in the United States over 23,000 people die as a result of bacterial infections that have no treatment options, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Infections with antibiotic-resistance bacteria are extremely difficult to treat, requiring costly or toxic medications that do not always work. Scientists are constantly working to understand the mechanisms bacteria use to outsmart antibiotics and develop resistance. These mechanisms include metallo-β-lactamases (MBLs), enzymes produced by bacteria that can bind to and inactivate antibiotics. Enzymes like MBLs are one way bacteria are defying all available tools and becoming antibiotic resistant.

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