November 2020

As most of pathogens, SARS-CoV-2 can be recognized by PRRs on innate. Normally, this recognition helps the innate immunity to eliminate the infection or to activate the adaptive immune responses, however, SARS-CoV-2 can use its proteins such as M, N, NSP1 and PLpro to interfere with these pathways.

In a recent Cell article, Kotliar et al., utilise RNA-sequencing and mass cytometry to immune profile 21 rhesus monkeys before or during lethal Ebola virus challenge in vivo. This study represents the first BSL-4 study to investigate pathogenic immunity using high dimensional single-cell technologies.

We highlight a recently published study by Thacker et al., 2020, which utilised the lung-on-a-chip to understand the role of surfactants during the early stages of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) growth. They showed that surfactants play an essential role in restricting bacterial group.

In their recent Frontiers in Immunology article, Yegorov et al., report that psoriasis patients have elevated levels of IL-1α, a cytokine central to the control of inflammation. In addition, the researchers found that psoriais is associated with alterations of the gut microbiome, which persisted over time.

Overall the vaccine was safe, with the most common systemic and local reactions pain at the injection site, hyperthermia, headache, asthenia, and muscle and joint pain. Immunogenicity results from the phase 1 study showed that a single dose of either rAd5-S and rAd26-S induced robust Ab and cellular immunity.

Interim analysis on 95 cases [90 (placebo group) and 5 (mRNA-1273 group)] of which 11 were severe cases all from the placebo group. Preliminary report of their Phase 1 Clinical trial demonstrated that vaccination with mRNA-1273 did not result in severe side-effects. Vaccination induced rapid seroconversion...

BNT162b1 is an mRNA based vaccine, co-developed by Pfizer and BioNTech was the first COVID-19 vaccine to release preliminary analysis that suggests >90% efficacy against COVID-19 infection in SARS-CoV-2-naïve adults. This vaccine induces a robust antibody and cellular immunity in both younger and elderly adults. As of 8th of November 38955 out of 43538 enrolled participants...

Review describes the underlying potential immunosuppressive effect of gal-3 through his modulation of lymphocytes and macrophages activity, specifically in the prostate and lung cancer. Depending on its location, extracellular or intracellular, gal-3 can show pro-or anti apoptotic effect on lymphocytes.

Researchers have modified the Sabin vaccine strain (nOPV2) making it less likely to regain virulence as the original Sabin strain. Genetic modification of nOPV2 did not affect the thermal stability, replication competency nor the immunogenicity profile the vaccine as compared to the origin Sabin vaccine strain.

Fitzpatrick et al., aimed to profile steady-state meningeal humoral immunity and investigated the induction of humoral in the meninges. In their study, they showed that meninges of “healthy, unchallenged” mice have detectable that IgA-secreting plasma cells.Thus, illustrating that the presence...