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Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Crowe receives 2020 “Golden Goose” Award for COVID-19 research

nathaa1 — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 16:36:15 +0000

Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Crowe receives 2020 “Golden Goose” Award for COVID-19 research nathaa1 Wed, 12/02/2020 - 10:36 RSS:

Bill Snyder

James Crowe Jr., MD, a physician-scientist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who has pioneered development of human monoclonal antibodies as potential treatments for viral diseases, has won a 2020 “Golden Goose” Award.

The ninth annual Golden Goose Award ceremony on Dec. 1 will recognize Crowe and two other federally funded research teams for their scientific responses to COVID-19. Led by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Golden Goose Award committee includes a bipartisan group of Congressional supporters and several science and higher education organizations.

In October the global biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced it was advancing into phase 3 clinical trials an investigational COVID-19 therapy consisting of two long-acting antibodies discovered in the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center (VVC), which Crowe directs, and optimized by AstraZeneca.

“We are incredibly proud of Dr. Crowe for receiving this recognition. It is especially meaningful that the Golden Goose Award was the idea of our own U.S. Representative, Jim Cooper, in response to criticisms around the use of federal funds for scientific research. Dr. Crowe’s contributions to the field of antibody therapy are advancing our understanding for how lethal viruses can be treated and will save countless lives,” said Jeff Balser, MD, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer for Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Last month Oology Bioservices Inc., a Florida-based biologics contract development and manufacturing organization, announced plans to develop, manufacture and license a “cocktail” of COVID-19 monoclonal antibodies isolated in the VVC. Other VVC-discovered COVID-19 antibodies are in development for research, diagnostic and clinical use by several other companies.

Click here to read more.

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Beyond Fauci: Meet the Science Superheroes Leading the U.S. COVID-19 Response

nathaa1 — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 18:03:02 +0000

Beyond Fauci: Meet the Science Superheroes Leading the U.S. COVID-19 Response nathaa1 Wed, 10/21/2020 - 13:03 RSS:

MEDIFIND

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a world-changing event, forcing all of us to spend a lot of time thinking about change. More than ever, we’re inquiring about how diseases evolve, how new treatments and procedures are developed and adopted, and how up-and-coming experts are bringing new ideas and new ways of thinking to the medical landscape. We know that 2020 has brought a lot of new changes and concepts to the forefront of life. Words like quarantine and social distancing are part of our everyday lexicon as we learn to live in the ‘new normal.’ And one of the most important lessons we have learned is that there are heroes among us. From teachers and nurses to delivery and retail workers, our citizens have stepped up to support the effort.

Given that it’s ID Week, we’d like to highlight and honor a few of these heroes that surprisingly few know about – the scientists who are leading the charge against COVID-19.

Read more here.

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Trump Administration Expands Collaboration with AstraZeneca to Develop and Manufacture an Investigational Monoclonal Antibody to Prevent COVID-19

nathaa1 — Sat, 10 Oct 2020 04:06:29 +0000

Trump Administration Expands Collaboration with AstraZeneca to Develop and Manufacture an Investigational Monoclonal Antibody to Prevent COVID-19 nathaa1 Fri, 10/09/2020 - 23:06 RSS:

To meet the Trump Administration's Operation Warp Speed goals, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Defense (DoD ) today announced an agreement with AstraZeneca for late-stage development and large-scale manufacturing of the company's COVID-19 investigational product AZD7442, a cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies, that may help treat or prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The goal of AstraZeneca's partnership with the U.S. Government is to develop a monoclonal antibody cocktail that can help prevent infection. An effective monoclonal antibody that can prevent COVID-19, particularly one that is long-lasting and delivered by intramuscular injection, may be of particular use in certain groups. This includes people who have compromised immune function, those who are over 80 years old, and people undergoing medical treatments that preclude them from receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. If the FDA authorizes use of AZD7442 for prevention of SARS-CoV-2, as outlined in agency guidance, the federal government will distribute the doses at no cost. As is customary with government-purchased medical products, healthcare professionals could charge for the cost of administering the product.

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, collaborated with the DoD Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense and Army Contracting Command, to provide approximately $486 million to AstraZeneca for two Phase 3 clinical trials and related development activities, including a large-scale manufacturing demonstration project and supply of AZD7442 doses in the United States.

One of the Phase 3 clinical trials of AZD7442 will evaluate safety and efficacy of the product to prevent infection for up to 12 months in approximately 5,000 volunteers. An additional Phase 3 clinical study will evaluate if AZD7442 can help prevent infection in people who have come in contact with someone with COVID-19 in a post-exposure prophylaxis setting. This second study will enroll approximately 1,100 volunteers. The company estimates 100,000 doses of AZD 7442 could be available from this project for the nation's high-risk population that may not benefit from a vaccine by December 2020.

"In addition to Operation Warp Speed's historic progress on vaccines, we are supporting promising monoclonal antibodies for prevention and treatment all the way through to supply, allowing faster distribution if trials are successful," said HHS Secretary Alex Azar. "More good news about COVID-19 treatments is constantly emerging, and President Trump's commitment to supporting lifesaving measures, like AstraZeneca's antibody candidate which may help deliver these products to our nation's most vulnerable populations."

Working in parallel across clinical development and manufacturing supply will accelerate the traditional product development timeline, should clinical trials prove successful and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorize use of the medicine.

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Discoveries in Action Podcast Episode 2 - Vaccines: Pandemics vs. Prosperity

nathaa1 — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 16:48:27 +0000

Discoveries in Action Podcast Episode 2 - Vaccines: Pandemics vs. Prosperity nathaa1 Fri, 09/04/2020 - 11:48 RSS:

How did the social good and necessity of vaccines get up for debate? Hear from vaccine experts on what they think lead to vaccine hesitancy, and then why it’s increasingly important to buoy people’s understanding of the science. In short, there are more pathogens lurking that could cause harm -- and they hopscotch around the world faster. But technology and research is in a sprint to stay ahead. Tune in to Vaccines: Pandemics vs. Prosperity.

Check out episode 2 of the podcast here!

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Non-neutralizing antibodies from a Marburg infection survivor show therapeutic potential

nathaa1 — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 16:51:30 +0000

Non-neutralizing antibodies from a Marburg infection survivor show therapeutic potential nathaa1 Fri, 08/28/2020 - 11:51 RSS:

Sohini Roy

https://medschool.vanderbilt.edu/basic-sciences/2020/08/28/non-neutralizing-antibodies-from-a-marburg-infection-survivor-show-therapeutic-potential/

Marburg viruses cause a hemorrhagic fever in humans, with a fatality rate of up to 90 percent. Currently, Marburg disease can neither be prevented by a vaccine nor therapeutically treated.

Understanding how the immune system of a MARV survivor reacts against the virus can yield clues to design a treatment. With this goal, the labs of James Crowe, professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University,and Alexander Bukreyev, professor of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, isolated a large panel of antibodies, Y-shaped proteins, from the blood of a MARV survivor. In a paper published in Cell Host and Microbe, they report the functional properties and therapeutic potential of two of these antibodies—MR228 and MR235.

Both MR228 and MR235 bind to a glycoprotein — a protein with attached carbohydrates — on the viral envelope, the outermost protective layer of the virus. Unlike neutralizing antibodies, which can directly bind to and kill a virus, MR228 and MR235 cannot independently neutralize the virus. However, these two “non-neutralizing antibodies” possess unique properties that, in conjunction with the body’s immune system, can thwart MARV infection.

MR228 provided complete protection (100 percent survival) in mice and partial protection (40 percent survival) in guinea pigs infected with a lethal dose of MARV virus. The researchers learned that when MR228 binds to MARV glycoprotein, its Fc region — the tail of the Y of the antibody — binds to cognate Fc receptors on neutrophils and monocytes, which induces them to “eat” and clear the virus. MR228 also activated natural killer cells.

In vitro, MR235 also exhibited Fc receptor-mediated effector functions and activation of NK cells. After binding, MR235 rearranges and opens to MARV glycoprotein. This conformational change allows easy access for other, neutralizing antibodies that developed in the host in response to the virus to directly bind and clear the virus more efficiently.

To date, neutralizing antibodies have mostly garnered attention of scientists in their search for effective vaccines or treatment for MARV infection. This study highlights the importance of non-neutralizing antibodies that likely play a protective role during MARV infection in humans. With this knowledge, scientists can broaden their scopes to design “antibody cocktail” vaccines made up of neutralizing and non-neutralizing antibodies to combat MARV infections, and possibly others, in the future.

This study was supported by grants from Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the National Institutes of Health.

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Phase 1 Clinical Trial Initiated for Monoclonal Antibody Combination for the Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19

nathaa1 — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 16:45:31 +0000

Phase 1 Clinical Trial Initiated for Monoclonal Antibody Combination for the Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 nathaa1 Tue, 08/25/2020 - 11:45 RSS:

Adrian Kemp

https://www.astrazeneca.com/content/astraz/media-centre/press-releases/2020/phase-1-clinical-trial-initiated-for-monoclonal-antibody-combination-for-the-prevention-and-treatment-of-covid-19.html

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How a secretive Pentagon agency seeded the ground for a rapid coronavirus cure

Visitor — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 02:22:00 +0000

How a secretive Pentagon agency seeded the ground for a rapid coronavirus cure Visitor Thu, 07/30/2020 - 21:22 RSS:

Paul Sonne

The scientists were working through the night over a weekend in February in their Vancouver offices, running a blood sample from an early American covid-19 survivor through a credit card-sized device made up of 200,000 tiny chambers, hoping to help save the world.

Their mission was part of a program under the Pentagon’s secretive technology research agency. The goal: to find a way to produce antibodies for any virus in the world within 60 days of collecting a blood sample from a survivor.

Established years before the current pandemic, the program was halfway done when the first case of the novel coronavirus arrived in the United States early this year. But everyone involved in the effort by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) knew their time had come ahead of schedule.

The four teams participating in the program abandoned their plans and began sprinting, separately, toward the development of an antibody for covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

“We have been thinking about and preparing for this for a long time, and it’s almost a bit surreal,” said Amy Jenkins, manager of DARPA’s antibody program, which is known as the Pandemic Prevention Platform, or P3. “We are very hopeful that we will at least be able to have an impact on this outbreak. We want to make a difference.”

In that program and others, DARPA has quietly been seeding the ground for the United States to produce a rapid cure for a pathogen like covid-19 for years.

The U.S. government’s response to the pandemic has been impugned as slow and haphazard, with flawed test kits, limited contact tracing, insufficient protective gear, late encouragement of masks and at times baffling messages from President Trump.

But DARPA’s story is a counterexample of U.S. government foresight, one that began more than a decade ago with the aim of finding super-fast ways to protect American troops if they were to confront a deadly new virus in the field.

If it weren’t for DARPA’s investments over the past decade and earlier, largely outside the glare of Washington’s partisan politics, the American race toward a vaccine and antibody therapy to stop the coronavirus most likely wouldn’t be moving as quickly as it is today.

“Being at DARPA at this time ... is exciting in some ways because we get to see the research work that was funded that was done ten to fifteen years ago now really starting to pay off,” acting director Peter Highnam said in a discussion with reporters on Thursday.

Click here to read more.

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Research team isolates antibodies that may prevent rare polio-like illness in children linked to a respiratory infection

nathaa1 — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 18:14:14 +0000

Research team isolates antibodies that may prevent rare polio-like illness in children linked to a respiratory infection nathaa1 Fri, 07/03/2020 - 13:14 RSS:

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have isolated human monoclonal antibodies that potentially can prevent a rare but devastating polio-like illness in children linked to a respiratory viral infection.

The illness, called acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), causes sudden weakness in the arms and legs following a fever or respiratory illness. More than 600 cases have been identified since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began tracking the disease in 2014.

There is no specific treatment for AFM, which tends to strike in the late summer or early fall and which has been associated with some deaths. However, the disease has recently been linked to a group of respiratory viruses called enterovirus D68 (EV-D68).

Researchers at the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center isolated antibody-producing blood cells from the blood of children who had previously been infected by EV-D68. By fusing the blood cells to fast-growing myeloma cells, the researchers were able to generate a panel of monoclonal antibodies that potently neutralized the virus in laboratory studies.

Colleagues at Purdue determined the structure of the antibodies, which shed light on how they specifically recognize and bind to EV-D68. One of the antibodies protected mice from respiratory and neurologic disease when given either before or after infection by the enterovirus.

The findings, published July 3 in the journal Science Immunology, suggest that these antibodies potentially could prevent EV-D68 infection and AFM in humans.

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Dr. Ivelin Georgiev Selected as a 2020 Chancellor Faculty Fellow

nathaa1 — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 15:30:00 +0000

Dr. Ivelin Georgiev Selected as a 2020 Chancellor Faculty Fellow nathaa1 Fri, 06/19/2020 - 10:30 RSS:

https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2020/06/19/10-faculty-members-named-as-2020-chancellor-faculty-fellows/

Ten outstanding faculty members from across the university have been selected for the 2020 cohort of Chancellor Faculty Fellows. This group is composed of highly accomplished, recently tenured faculty from a wide variety of disciplines and areas of expertise.

“Investing in this remarkable group of faculty demonstrates our long-term commitment as a university to their advancement, leadership and pursuit of discovery,” said Interim Chancellor and Provost Susan R. Wente. “I offer my congratulations to the 2020 cohort and know that their research and scholarship will play an integral role in solving some of the most pressing issues that we face today and in the future, both locally and globally.”

The selected faculty members will meet as a group during the course of their fellowships to exchange ideas on teaching and research, building a broader intellectual community that advances trans-institutional scholarship.

The newly named 2020 Chancellor Faculty Fellows are:

Erin Barton, associate professor of special education
Jennifer Below, associate professor of medicine
Ivelin Georgiev, associate professor of pathology, microbiology and immunology
Kelly Goldsmith, associate professor of marketing
Carrie Jones, associate professor of pharmacology
Ken Lau, associate professor of cell and developmental biology
Morgan Ricks, professor of law
Lisa Thompson, associate professor of black homiletics and liturgics
Ben Tran, associate professor of Asian studies and English
Jennifer Trueblood, associate professor of psychology

Click here to read more.

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Antibodies eye Pacific Island “fever”

nathaa1 — Thu, 14 May 2020 18:50:58 +0000

Antibodies eye Pacific Island “fever” nathaa1 Thu, 05/14/2020 - 13:50 RSS:

Bill Snyder

Ross River fever is a mosquito-transmitted disease endemic to Australia and surrounding Pacific Islands. There is no specific treatment or vaccine for Ross River virus (RRV) infection, which causes rash, fever and debilitating muscle and joint pain lasting three to six months.

James Crowe Jr., MD, and colleagues isolated a panel of human monoclonal antibodies from the blood of two RRV disease survivors. The monoclonal antibodies potently neutralized RRV infectivity in cell culture and blocked infection through multiple mechanisms. In an immunocompromised mouse model, they significantly reduced viral burden, clinical disease and death.

The findings, reported May 4 in PLOS Pathogens, suggest that therapeutic administration of monoclonal antibodies in early RRV disease may be beneficial in reducing viral load and disease severity.

Antibody treatment also might decrease the likelihood of human-mosquito-human transmission, the researchers added. There is evidence that mosquitoes can pick up the virus after biting infected people, and then transmit it to the next person they bite.

Read more here.

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Antibody finding raises hopes for Marburg, COVID-19 treatments

nathaa1 — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 18:52:02 +0000

Antibody finding raises hopes for Marburg, COVID-19 treatments nathaa1 Thu, 04/30/2020 - 13:52 RSS:

Bill Snyder

Marburg is a distant, more lethal cousin of the RNA virus that causes COVID-19. An outbreak of Marburg hemorrhagic fever in Angola in 2004-2005 killed 90% of the approximately 250 people it infected.

Now researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and Vanderbilt University Medical Center led by Alexander Bukreyev, PhD, and James Crowe, MD, have isolated non-neutralizing monoclonal antibodies from a Marburg survivor that protect animals from being killed by the virus.

The antibodies bound to the outer envelope protein of the Marburg virus. And while they didn’t kill the virus directly, they recruited other immune cells and antibodies that rapidly cleared the infection.

These findings, reported last week in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, suggest that the unique biological properties of these antibodies make them attractive candidates for therapeutic, monoclonal antibody “cocktails” against Marburg infection, the researchers concluded.

Read more here.

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Vanderbilt’s Dr. James Crowe on Developing Covid-19 Antibody Therapy and Dolly Parton’s $1 Million Donation: ‘I Felt Encouraged’

nathaa1 — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 18:52:49 +0000

Vanderbilt’s Dr. James Crowe on Developing Covid-19 Antibody Therapy and Dolly Parton’s $1 Million Donation: ‘I Felt Encouraged’ nathaa1 Fri, 04/10/2020 - 13:52 RSS:

Cillea Houghton

As doctors and nurses around the world work tirelessly to care for those affected by COVID-19, there are many other healthcare professionals actively searching for a cure – some of whom are in Nashville’s own backyard at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Director of Vanderbilt Vaccine Center Dr. James Crowe and his team are currently working on an antibody therapy that would help stop the spread of coronavirus until a vaccine is ready for public use. According to John Hopkins’ University’s Center For Systems Science and Engineering, there are 1.5 million cases of coronavirus worldwide, causing nearly 95,000 deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that the U.S. has more than 427,000 cases with nearly 15,000 deaths. A common misconception when the outbreak occurred is that it’s similar to the common flu. However, Crowe points out there are crucial differences. “One of the things that might be different about the coronavirus and flu is that it appears people are quite infectious in days before they have symptoms, and that’s less true about flu usually,” he tells Sounds Like Nashville over the phone. “When you’re not showing symptoms, you’re not particularly infectious with flu, and when you start having sneezing or coughing, by then you’re infectious.”

Read more here.

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Analysis of a Therapeutic Antibody Cocktail Reveals Determinants for Cooperative and Broad Ebolavirus Neutralization

thorntm — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 19:53:57 +0000

Analysis of a Therapeutic Antibody Cocktail Reveals Determinants for Cooperative and Broad Ebolavirus Neutralization thorntm Thu, 04/02/2020 - 14:53 RSS:

Sarah Glass

https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(20)30028-5

Structural principles underlying the composition of protective antiviral monoclonal antibody (mAb) cocktails are poorly defined. Here, we exploited antibody cooperativity to develop a therapeutic mAb cocktail against Ebola virus. We systematically analyzed the antibody repertoire in human survivors and identified a pair of potently neutralizing mAbs that cooperatively bound to the ebolavirus glycoprotein (GP). High-resolution structures revealed that in a two-antibody cocktail, molecular mimicry was a major feature of mAb-GP interactions. Broadly neutralizing mAb rEBOV-520 targeted a conserved epitope on the GP base region. mAb rEBOV-548 bound to a glycan cap epitope, possessed neutralizing and Fc-mediated effector function activities, and potentiated neutralization by rEBOV-520. Remodeling of the glycan cap structures by the cocktail enabled enhanced GP binding and virus neutralization. The cocktail demonstrated resistance to virus escape and protected non-human primates (NHPs) against Ebola virus disease. These data illuminate structural principles of antibody cooperativity with implications for development of antiviral immunotherapeutics.

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Two is Better Than One: Combatting the Ebola Virus

nathaa1 — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 18:48:45 +0000

Two is Better Than One: Combatting the Ebola Virus nathaa1 Thu, 03/26/2020 - 13:48 RSS:

Sarah Glass

Many people associate Ebola with the previous viral epidemic of the last decade, but, especially in light of the current global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, few are aware that there is currently an active outbreak occurring in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This deadly virus continues to wreak havoc in Africa, where containment of the virus fluctuates as new cases are reported. Researchers from the lab of James Crowe (Pediatrics) are hoping to change the narrative, reporting in Immunity that they have developed a new therapeutic cocktail against multiple strains of the Ebola virus that not only protects but also limits virus mutation so that it cannot spread to others.

By using a panel of antibodies from Ebola survivors, first author Pavlo Gilchuk and colleagues identified two antibodies that bind to different portions of the virus, allowing for a high rate of recognition and neutralization of the virus within an infected individual. The team discovered that one antibody enhanced the binding of the other, creating cooperativity within the cocktail, and demonstrated that the combination could recognize all three of the Ebola virus strains that have resulted in outbreaks.

Read more here.

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Researchers developing potential coronavirus antibody therapies

nathaa1 — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 17:05:47 +0000

Researchers developing potential coronavirus antibody therapies nathaa1 Mon, 03/23/2020 - 12:05 RSS:

Bill Snyder

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is teaming up with academic, governmental and corporate partners in an unprecedented, fast-tracked global effort to develop antibody-based treatments to protect people exposed to the 2019 novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19.

Researchers from the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center (VVC) have rapidly responded to this outbreak by building a comprehensive “toolkit” to identify and analyze antibodies isolated from the blood of survivors for their ability to neutralize SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Thousands of antibodies that already have been identified by the VVC are now being analyzed for their ability to inhibit the virus and, more importantly, to prevent it from causing illness. The goal is to develop and manufacture the most promising lead antibodies in preparation for initiating clinical trials to test their efficacy in humans.

“Our goal is to prepare antibodies for human clinical trials by this summer,” said James Crowe, MD, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center.

Read more here.

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Antibody mixture may help block Ebola virus infection

nathaa1 — Thu, 06 Feb 2020 19:33:51 +0000

Antibody mixture may help block Ebola virus infection nathaa1 Thu, 02/06/2020 - 13:33 RSS:

Bill Snyder

A research team led by scientists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has developed an antibody mixture that in animals is highly effective in blocking infection by the Ebola virus.

Reporting in the journal Immunity, these findings “could aid in the design of therapeutic cocktails against other viral targets,” the researchers concluded.

Ebola is a severe and often fatal hemorrhagic fever affecting humans that can be caused by four known Ebola viruses.

Previous attempts to develop combinations or mixtures of antibodies that are broadly cross-reactive to the predominant strains of Ebola have been constrained by limited understanding about how the antibodies “cooperate” in neutralizing the virus and by the cost and difficulty of the research.

Now James Crowe Jr., MD, and colleagues in the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center have identified a combination of two new antibodies that neutralize strains of the virus responsible for most of the recent, large-scale and highly fatal Ebola outbreaks in the Congo and West Africa.

As a first step, antibody-producing white blood cells were isolated from survivor blood samples and then fused to fast-growing myeloma (cancer) cells to produce large quantities of “monoclonal” antibodies targeting specific viral strains.

Read more here.

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Carnahan named associate director of Vaccine Center

nathaa1 — Thu, 06 Feb 2020 18:25:40 +0000

Carnahan named associate director of Vaccine Center nathaa1 Thu, 02/06/2020 - 12:25 RSS:

Bill Snyder

Robert Carnahan, PhD, associate professor of Pediatrics and Radiology and Radiological Sciences, has been appointed associate director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center.

“We are thrilled that Dr. Carnahan, who is an accomplished antibody scientist, has taken over this important leadership position in our rapidly expanding research center,” said center director James Crowe Jr., MD.

“He already has an exceptional track record in creative deployment of strategic organization principles that should enable our team to go the next level of performance,” said Crowe, who is the Ann Scott Carell Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology.

Carnahan earned his PhD in Cell Biology at Vanderbilt in 2003 and joined the faculty in 2007.

As director of the Vanderbilt Antibody and Protein Resource, he guided a technology expansion that enabled a wide array of molecular approaches including antibody and recombinant protein engineering, diagnostic and assay development and biologics cell line development.

Read more here.

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Academic medicine on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak

Visitor — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 18:22:00 +0000

Academic medicine on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak Visitor Thu, 01/30/2020 - 12:22 RSS:

Stacy Weiner

As a novel and dangerous coronavirus continues to sicken thousands in China and a few dozen others in countries around the world, including the United States, U.S. academic researchers and government experts are working around the clock to understand, treat, and help prevent further spread of this emerging viral threat.

“We are already functioning as if there is a worldwide pandemic,” says James Crowe, Jr., MD, an immunologist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center.

Although in “24/7 scramble mode,” Crowe recently took time to update AAMCNews on what’s happening behind the scenes in a well-developed nationwide system created to handle such potential disasters. Below are key insights that he shared.

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Antibody isolated at VUMC found to halt dengue virus

Visitor — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 18:20:32 +0000

Antibody isolated at VUMC found to halt dengue virus Visitor Thu, 01/23/2020 - 12:20 RSS:

Bill Snyder

Using part of an antibody isolated at Vanderbilt University Medical Center that “broadly neutralizes” the human dengue virus, biologists at the University of California San Diego and colleagues have disarmed the mosquito that transmits the disabling and potentially deadly tropical infection.

Reporting in PLOS Pathogens, published by the Public Library of Science, the researchers describe the first genetically engineered approach targeting all four serotypes or strains of the dengue virus, a crucial step for stopping the spread of the disease.

The findings suggest that similar genetic strategies could be developed to control other mosquito-borne arboviruses, including Zika and chikungunya, against which neutralizing antibodies also have been developed, the researchers concluded.

Click here to read more.

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Targeting NA to protect against lethal avian flu infection

Visitor — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 18:36:37 +0000

Targeting NA to protect against lethal avian flu infection Visitor Wed, 01/22/2020 - 12:36 RSS:

Sohini Roy

Asian lineage avian influenza virus (H7N9) is a subtype of influenza virus that can infect humans following exposure to live, infected poultry. There have been several outbreaks since the first reported case in China in 2013, and the mortality rate is as high as 39 percent. Although person-to-person transmission of the virus is unlikely, influenza viruses are constantly evolving into new strains. Therefore, there is a constant threat of emergence of more pathogenic and resistant viruses with the ability to trigger a worldwide pandemic outbreak.

Click here to read more.

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