Category: Immune System / Vaccines

Bioniche Life Sciences Inc. (TSX: BNC), a research-based, technology-driven Canadian biopharmaceutical company, announced that it has received a letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regarding field use data submitted in support of licensure of the Company’s proprietary E. coli O157:H7 cattle vaccine.

Although plants lack humans’ T cells and other immune-function cells to signal and fight infection, scientists have known for more than 100 years that plants still somehow signal that they have been attacked in order to trigger a plantwide resistance.

The chemical process known as acetylation plays a central role in cytokine receptor signal transduction — a fundamental biochemical cascade inside cells that controls the activity of antiviral and tumor-suppressing genes.A team of cell biologists led by Eugene Chin, M.D., a research professor at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a staff researcher at Rhode Island Hospital, reports its findings in the journal Cell. Their results are surprising.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health has awarded the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine a $1.18 million grant to develop rabies virus vaccines. This award is the continuation of a previous four-year $837,000 grant issued by NIAID in 2002 to initiate the study.

The immune response generated in rats by the new agent protects against lethal toxin exposure after only one injection, and is faster and stronger than any currently available vaccine.The new study, led by Scripps Research scientists Anette Schneemann and Marianne Manchester, and Salk Institute Professor John A.T. Young, is published in the October 5 issue of the journal PLoS Pathogens (Volume 3, Issue 10).

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, a division of Wyeth (NYSE: WYE), comments on studies to be presented this week at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) concerning PREVNAR(R) (Pneumococcal 7-valent Conjugate Vaccine [Diphtheria CRM197 Protein]), a vaccine which helps to protect against the seven pneumococcal serotypes causing the majority of disease worldwide.

Malaria drug and vaccine research is booming. According to a report launched in the UK by Australian researchers at The George Institute for International Health, 16 new malaria vaccine candidates are now in clinical trials; six new malaria drugs are about to reach the market; and by 2011 we will have up to 12 new anti-malarial drug product registered.However, this unprecedented level of malaria R&D activity is not necessarily all good news.

A University of Rochester study brings relief to new parents who, while navigating a jam-packed childhood vaccine schedule, can expect to soothe their newborn through as many as 15 “pokes” by his or her six-month checkup.

The First Lady of the Dominican Republic, Dr. Margarita Cedeño de Fernandez, urged the countries of the Americas to redouble their efforts to eliminate rubella and congenital rubella syndrome as well as all other vaccine-preventable diseases.

An Indian team of researchers led by Seyed E. Hasnain of the Institute of Life Sciences (ILS), University of Hyderabad, India has found that a seemingly unknown mycobacterial organism Mycobacterium indicus pranii (MIP) could be the earliest ancestor of the ‘generalist’ branch of mycobacterial pathogens. The ‘generalist’ bacteria infect anything from cockroaches to human and are capable of surviving in soil and water as against human adapted ’specialists’ such as tubercle and leprosy bacilli.