Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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Sendai virus

HIV vaccine insight via Rwanda

RwandaRollins

From left: RSPH dean Jim Curran, First Lady Jeannette Kagame, HIV/AIDS researcher Susan Allen, Vice Provost Philip Wainwright

Most of the discussion, when Rwanda’s First Lady Jeannette Kagame recently visited Emory, was not about HIV vaccines, and rightly so. It was about how far Rwanda has come as a country since the 1994 genocide [videos of author Philip Gourevitch discussing Rwanda].

Still, while introducing the First Lady and thanking her for her support of HIV/AIDS research in Rwanda, Susan Allen mentioned a clinical trial for a HIV vaccine that began last year in Rwanda, Kenya and the United Kingdom and is now wrapping up the vaccination phase. Her colleague in Kigali, Etienne Karita, is one of the principal investigators.

The vaccine uses replicating Sendai virus, which causes respiratory tract illness in rodents but not in humans, as a vector to deliver the HIV gag gene. The trial combines this vaccine, administered intranasally, in various configurations with an adenovirus-based vaccine. This is the first time that Sendai virus is being used in a HIV vaccine.

As IAVI Report’s Regina McEnery explains, researchers hope the Sendai vector might recruit targeted immune responses to mucosal tissues and provide an edge to the immune system when it is subsequently challenged by HIV.

In a future post, we plan to provide an additional update on HIV vaccine research, focusing on GeoVax and (separate, for comparison) a planned large-scale followup to the landmark RV144 Thai trial.

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology 1 Comment