Cloak partly lifted on tiny Chlamydia
The Boston Public Health Commission released 1999 statistics showing 2 percent of the city’s 15- to 19-year-olds have chlamydia. Boston’s minority girls were reported to have infection rates of almost...
View ArticleA potential new anthrax therapy
A vaccine to protect humans against anthrax already exists, but since infection is rare, a widespread vaccination program is not practical. To be effective against anthrax, antibiotics must be given...
View ArticleA strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body
A Harvard Medical School research team has developed a strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body. So far they have tried the treatment in rats. Normally, rats die within hours after being...
View ArticleAnthrax toxin receptor discovered
The first point of contact between anthrax toxin that invades the body and the cells that the toxin will eventually destroy is a protein, known as a “docking” protein or receptor. This docking protein...
View ArticleNovel anthrax treatments explored
R. John Collier, Presley Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School, has been working on anthrax toxin for 15 years. He started his research because he found the...
View ArticleBacterial construct makes for elegant vaccine
Investigators from Harvard Medical School and London’s Hammersmith Hospital have found a way to use the bacterium Listeria along with Escherichia coli to fight disease instead of causing it. In the...
View ArticleFood pathogen vector shows promise against cancer
For the past four decades, researchers have poked and prodded Escherichia coli and Listeria monocytogenes – the basic science trade names of sometimes deadly bugs – to discover how they interact with...
View ArticleNew ways found to fight anthrax
John Collier, Presley Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School, began tinkering with anthrax molecules in 1989. He looked into a powerful electron microscope and, for...
View ArticleDual action anthrax vaccine more effective than current vaccine in early tests
A new vaccine prods the immune system to attack both the anthrax bacterium ( Bacillus anthracis ) and the toxins it makes. This dual action represents an improvement over the currently available...
View ArticleFindings recommend herpes vaccine for human trials
Research published in the January 2005 Journal of Virology compared three different experimental vaccines for herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2), which causes most cases of genital herpes. Lead author...
View ArticleCritical step traced in anthrax infection
An anthrax bacterium secretes three nontoxic proteins that assemble into a toxic complex on the surface of the host cell to set off a chain of events leading to cell toxicity and death. Protective...
View ArticleLearning how the SARS virus spikes its quarry
Structural images that show how the SARS virus’s spike protein grasps its receptor may help scientists learn new details about how the virus infects cells and could also help in identifying potential...
View ArticleBrain injury reversed in animal model of AIDS
Depending on the circumstances, missing N-acetylaspartate (NAA) in the brain may indicate Alzheimer’s disease, ischemic stroke, a brain tumor, or traumatic injury. And, as doctors soon learned with the...
View ArticleSublethal force: New antibiotic aims to tame bacterial toxins
Using an innovative screening approach, researchers in the lab of John Mekalanos have identified an entirely new class of antibiotics active against the cholera bacterium. While traditional antibiotics...
View ArticleRNAi solution knocks down herpes infection
Ever since RNA interference hit the scene a few years ago as a way to selectively turn off gene expression, researchers have been investigating whether these small but powerful bits of RNA can be used...
View ArticleDiscovery could aid fight against cystic fibrosis infection
Harvard Medical School researchers have discovered one way that a hardy disease-causing bacteria could be surviving in the lungs of chronically infected cystic fibrosis patients. “This work is...
View ArticleScientists discover how ocean bacterium turns carbon into fuel
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. We hear this mantra time and again. When it comes to carbon—the “Most Wanted” element in terms of climate change—nature has got reuse and recycle covered. However, it’s up to us...
View ArticleCloak partly lifted on tiny Chlamydia
The Boston Public Health Commission released 1999 statistics showing 2 percent of the city’s 15- to 19-year-olds have chlamydia. Boston’s minority girls were reported to have infection rates of almost...
View ArticleA potential new anthrax therapy
A vaccine to protect humans against anthrax already exists, but since infection is rare, a widespread vaccination program is not practical. To be effective against anthrax, antibiotics must be given...
View ArticleA strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body
A Harvard Medical School research team has developed a strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body. So far they have tried the treatment in rats. Normally, rats die within hours after being...
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