Lifeboat Foundation

The article titled “Evaluation of OVX836: A Promising Universal Influenza Vaccine Candidate” published in The Lancet presents a comprehensive assessment of OVX836, a novel influenza vaccine candidate targeting the nucleoprotein of influenza A virus. Authored by a team of researchers led by IL-R at CEVAC Clinical Unit and Laboratory, the study aims to investigate the safety, immunogenicity, and potential efficacy of OVX836 at different doses, shedding light on its potential as a universal influenza vaccine.

Influenza remains a significant global health concern, with seasonal epidemics and occasional pandemics causing substantial morbidity and mortality. Current influenza vaccines primarily focus on the viral surface protein hemagglutinin, but their efficacy is limited by antigenic variation and the emergence of new strains. Current vaccines are developed for the season based on what strains were prominent in the last season. Additionally, vaccine efficacies can vary from season to season. OVX836 takes a different approach by targeting the highly conserved nucleoprotein, which plays a crucial role in the influenza virus life cycle.

OVX836 elicited a robust immune response, characterized by significant increases in nucleoprotein-specific CD4 and CD8 T-cell responses, as well as the production of anti-nucleoprotein IgG antibodies. The magnitude of these immune responses displayed a dose-dependent relationship, with higher doses of OVX836 leading to stronger immune reactions. Of particular interest was the induction of a CD8 T-cell response, a rare achievement for influenza vaccines and a crucial component of comprehensive immune protection.

Inhibiting a protein on the surface of immune cells could offer new strategies for treating severe asthma, Cleveland Clinic researchers found.

Researchers discovered a new way a protein called MCEMP1 contributes to severe inflammation in the airway and lungs. The discovery, published in Nature Communications, provides critical information for developing therapeutic interventions to treat long-term lung conditions, including asthma, on a biological level.

The study was conducted in a lab led by Jae Jung, PhD, chair of the Cancer Biology Department, director of the Infection Biology program, and director of the Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak Global Center for Pathogen & Human Health Research.

I’m excited to share my new opinion article for Newsweek. It advocates for transforming America from a military-industrial complex into a science-industrial complex! Give it a read!

America spends 45 percent of its discretionary federal spending on defense and wars, while around us, the world burns in ways that have nothing to do with fighting or the military. Global warming has escalated into an enormous crisis. A fifth of everyone we know will die from heart disease. And an opioid crisis is reducing the average lifespans of Americans for the first time in decades. There’s plenty of tragedy, fear, and hardship all around us, but it has nothing to do with the need to make more bombs. It does, however, have to do with science.

It seems obvious America should do something different than spend so much of its tax dollars on defense. We should consider halving that money, and directing it to science, transforming America from a military-industrial complex into a science-industrial complex. Despite science and technological progress being broadly responsible for raising the standard of living around the world over the last 50 years, America spends only 3 percent of its GDP ($205 billion) on science and medical research across the federal government. Notably, this is dramatically less than the $877 billion the U.S. will spend on defense this year.

Continue reading “Could We Transform America Into a Science-Industrial Complex?” »

A new study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has examined how T cells of the immune system are affected by weightlessness. The results, which are published in the journal Science Advances, could explain why astronauts’ T cells become less active and less effective at fighting infection.

The next steps in the exploration of space are human missions to the moon and to Mars. Space is an extremely hostile environment that poses threats to human health. One such threat is changes to the immune system that occur in astronauts while in space and that persist after their return to Earth. This immune deficiency can leave them more vulnerable to infection and lead to the reactivation of latent viruses in the body.

“If astronauts are to be able to undergo safe space missions, we need to understand how their immune systems are affected and try to find ways to counter harmful changes to it,” says study leader Lisa Westerberg, principal researcher at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, Karolinska Institutet. “We’ve now been able to investigate what happens to T cells, which are a key component of the immune system, when exposed to weightless conditions.”

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Many users who want more from their smartphones are glad to use a plethora of advanced features, mainly for health and entertainment. Turns out that these features create a security risk when making or receiving calls.

Researchers from Texas A&M University and four other institutions created malware called EarSpy, which uses machine learning algorithms to filter caller information from ear speaker vibration data recorded by an Android smartphone’s own motion sensors, without overcoming any safeguards or needing user permissions.

Bacteria most commonly associated with acne may not be all bad for skin health.

Waterborne illness is one of the leading causes of infectious disease outbreaks in refugee and internally displaced persons (IDP) settlements, but a team led by York University has developed a new technique to keep drinking water safe using machine learning, and it could be a game changer. The research is published in the journal PLOS Water.

As drinking water is not piped into homes in most settlements, residents instead collect it from public tap stands using storage containers.

“When water is stored in a container in a dwelling it is at high risk of being exposed to contaminants, so it’s imperative there is enough free residual chlorine to kill any pathogens,” says Lassonde School of Engineering Ph.D. student Michael De Santi, who is part of York’s Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, and who led the research.

The real cost of a preventive health scan goes well beyond the price tag.

For prospective parents who are carriers of many inherited diseases, using in vitro fertilization along with genetic testing would significantly lower health care expenditures, according to researchers at Stanford Medicine.

Preimplantation genetic diagnostic testing during IVF, or PGD-IVF, is being used to screen for single-gene defect conditions such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease and Tay-Sachs disease, along with nearly 400 others.

Continue reading “Screening during IVF for inherited diseases greatly reduces costs of care” »