Response after One Dose of a Monovalent Influenza A (H1N1) 2009 Vaccine — Preliminary Report

From Abstract:

Background A novel influenza A (H1N1) 2009 virus is responsible for the first influenza pandemic in 41 years. A safe and effective vaccine is urgently needed. A randomized, observer-blind, parallel-group trial evaluating two doses of an inactivated, split-virus 2009 H1N1 vaccine in healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 64 years is ongoing at a single site in Australia.

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Results By day 21 after vaccination, antibody titers of 1:40 or more were observed in 116 of 120 subjects (96.7%) who received the 15-µg dose and in 112 of 120 subjects (93.3%) who received the 30-µg dose. No deaths, serious adverse events, or adverse events of special interest were reported. Local discomfort (e.g., injection-site tenderness or pain) was reported by 46.3% of subjects, and systemic symptoms (e.g., headache) by 45.0% of subjects. Nearly all events were mild to moderate in intensity.

Conclusions A single 15-µg dose of 2009 H1N1 vaccine was immunogenic in adults, with mild-to-moderate vaccine-associated reactions.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The discovery of immune system particles that attack the AIDS virus may finally open a way to make a vaccine that could protect people against the deadly and incurable infection, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

They used new technology to troll through the blood of 1,800 people infected with the AIDS virus and identified two immune system compounds called antibodies that could neutralize the virus.

And they found a new part of the virus that the antibodies attack, offering a new way to design a vaccine, they reported in the journal Science.

»www.reuters.com/article/scienceN···enceNews

It is the first gene clue to the condition in 16 years and has prompted scientists to rethink their theories on how the disease develops.

The genes were pinpointed in a study of 16,000 DNA samples and are known to be implicated in inflammation and cholesterol breakdown.

It is hoped the Nature Genetics study will open the way for new treatments.

»news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8237686.stm

Scientists have been trying to get an accurate estimate of the mutation rate for over 70 years.

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However, next generation sequencing technology has enabled the scientists to produce a far more direct and reliable estimate.

Flu pandemic alert raised to phase 6
11 June 2009 -- On the basis of available evidence and expert assessments of the evidence, the scientific criteria for an influenza pandemic have been met. The Director-General of WHO has therefore decided to raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 5 to phase 6.

LONDON (Reuters) - Researchers said on Sunday they had found a safer way to transform ordinary skin cells into powerful stem cells in a move that could eventually remove the need to use human embryos.

It is the first time that scientists have turned skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells -- which look and act like embryonic stem cells -- without having to use viruses in the process.

The new method also allows for genes that are inserted to trigger cell reprogramming to be removed afterwards.

»www.reuters.com/article/scienceN···20090301

DNA is known as the code of life—and justly so. It contains the assembly information for organisms ranging from bacteria to blue whales.

"Obesity can be "caught" as easily as a common cold from other people's coughs, sneezes and dirty hands, scientists said Monday.

The condition has been linked to a highly-infectious virus which causes sniffles and sore throats....the virus, known as AD-36, infects the lungs then whisks around the body, forcing fat cells to multiply and also causing sore throats."

»www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,482788,00.html

On first read, I was leary of the original article, however doing a google search seems to bring a few pages of similar. This particular one appears to have further links on the exact study.

»www.pbrc.edu/news/Featured_Stori···asp?id=9

A privately financed team of scientists and engineers is nearing completion of a special-purpose supercomputer intended to offer more than a thousandfold increase in performance for complex molecular simulations.

The machine, named Anton, in homage to Anton van Leeuwenhoek, a pioneer in microbiology, is a bold gamble to jump ahead of the most powerful general-purpose supercomputers by as much as a half decade.

It could be used to investigate problems of great scientific interest, like the folding of protein molecules, and in the design of drugs based on the simulated biological activity of different molecules.

NY Times article (Vijay Pande quoted in last two paragraphs)

An injection of stem cells has been used to cure mice with a normally fatal nervous system condition.

The therapy which helped repair faulty nerve wiring raises hopes of treatments for children with rare and deadly nervous leukodystrophy disorders.

A UK expert said human treatments were still some way off - but potentially the technique could be used to treat conditions such as multiple sclerosis.

»news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7435137.stm

Peter Kasson has been working hard on a new approach to improve the Windows SMP core stability.

»folding.typepad.com/news/2008/03···cli.html

At first glance, it bears an uncanny resemblance to a piece of modern art. A grid of red, yellow, and green spots glows against a glassy black backdrop in an abstract composition no larger than a microscope slide.

There comes a time in many a cell's life when it feels the need to reproduce. But before it can split into two, it must fashion a second set of genetic instructions to pass on to the new cell.

When Berkeley professor of biochemistry and molecular biology Mike Botchan first began studying chromosome copying, basic questions about the process remained unknown. He wanted to understand how and where DNA replication began. Over the past three decades, Botchan has been instrumental in piecing together the story of what he calls "the elaborate dance of replication."

»sciencematters.berkeley.edu/arch···ory3.php

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have identified small pieces of ribonucleic acid (RNA) that suppress the spread of breast cancer to the lungs and bone. The new research shows that the most invasive and aggressive human breast cancer tumors are missing three critical microRNA molecules. When the researchers put those molecules back into human breast cancer tumors in mice, the tumors lost their ability to spread.

"The tiny RNAs prevent the spread of cancer by interfering with the expression of genes that give cancer cells the ability to proliferate and migrate," said senior author Joan Massagué, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

»www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/93593.php

It is a whole new science with important implications for the treatment of disease - most notably cancer.

Epigenetics is the study of molecular modifications which sit on top of the DNA in our cells, in effect switching our genes on and off; telling our cells how they should behave.

Scientists are now realising that if those epigenetic markings are disrupted, causing a gene to become incorrectly active or silent, a healthy cell could become diseased.

»news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7155854.stm

Another mention in The Economist of "Folding@home, run by Vijay Pande and his team at Stanford University" in this article ---> »www.economist.com/printedition/d···0202635

UNTIL recently there were only two ways to speed up a volunteer-computing project: persuade more people to take part, or wait for users to upgrade their PCs to faster models. But in October 2006 the creators of Folding@home, a popular volunteer-computing project run by Stanford University that analyses protein folding, gave its users another option

»www.economist.com/printedition/d···0202613

Mario R. Capecchi's earliest memories are of his mother being arrested by the Nazis.

Enzymes are a picky lot. Of the many thousands of molecules drifting through their environment, most enzymes will react with only one-its preferred substrate, or target.

BOSTON - Two genetic mutations raise the risk of rheumatoid arthritis, one by as much as 87 percent, researchers reported on Wednesday in a discovery that sheds more light on a complex and baffling disease.

They said their findings also show a link between rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases caused when the immune system mistakenly attack healthy tissue, such as lupus.

People who had two copies of one gene, found in a region known as STAT4, had a 60 percent higher risk of rheumatoid arthritis, the international team of researchers reported in New England Journal of Medicine.

»www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20611541