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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IAVI

A Human Vaccine Project?

Emory Vaccine Center director Rafi Ahmed, is a co-author on a recent Science paper advocating a “Human Vaccines Project”. Wayne Koff, chief scientific officer of IAVI (International Aids Vaccine Initiative) is lead author and several other vaccine experts are co-authors.

The idea behind a “Human Vaccine Project” is to combine efforts at developing vaccines for major (but very different) diseases such as influenza, dengue, HIV, hepatitis C, tuberculosis and malaria, with the rationale that what scientists working on those diseases have in common is the Ray Ban outlet challenge of working with the human immune system.

Technology has advanced to the point where whole genome-type approaches can be brought to bear on vaccine problems. The authors cite work by Bali Pulendran’s laboratory on “systems vaccinology” and their analysis of the yellow fever vaccine as an example.

One major puzzle confronting vaccine designers is to coax the immune system into producing broadly neutralizing antibodies against a rapidly mutating virus, whether it is Gafas Ray Ban outlet influenza or HIV. Our own Cynthia Derdeyn has been analyzing this problem through painstaking work following how the immune system pursues a twisting and turning HIV.

An interesting related tidbit:

There are hints that the reverse engineering of vaccines has taken a leap forward in the case of RSV (respiratory syncytial virus): Scientists at Scripps Research Institute have designed vaccine components by computer and have used them to provoke neutralizing antibodies in monkeys.

Also check out Mike King’s feature in Emory Health on HIV vaccine research.

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment