The Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) has announced that the first COVID-19 patient has received treatment using a novel immune therapy that was developed by New Jersey-based Celularity Inc. as part of a national clinical trial. The first patient has been administered CYNK-001, Celularity’s investigational placentaderived immunotherapy containing Natural Killer (NK) cells. Participating sites include Hackensack University Medical Center and…
While there is no cure for blindness and macular degeneration, scientists have accelerated the process to find a cure by visualizing the inner workings of the eye and its diseases at the cellular level. In an effort led by UW Medicine, researchers successfully modified the standard process of optical coherence tomography (OCT) to detect minute changes in response to light…
A team including researchers from Seattle’s Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason has identified a new pathway for protecting cells from deadly viruses — including the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 as well as the Ebola virus. The technique, described in this week’s issue of the journal Science, takes advantage of a screening technique for seeking out new genes that can prevent…
In the cell biology research world, there’s been a recent explosion of newer, faster, better resolution microscopes. But with these technological advances comes a logistics problem for the microscopes’ users: the image files themselves, or more specifically, the file formats. Nearly every microscope brand generates a different kind of image file format, and that can make it difficult for computational…
For nearly 15 years, Hongkui Zeng, Ph.D., has been working to decipher the different types of cells that make up the brain. Now, a major hurdle in this race is in sight. Researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a division of the Allen Institute which is newly helmed by Zeng as Executive Vice President and Director, together with other…
Dr. Deborah Fuller, professor of microbiology at the University of Washington, has worked on a vaccine to combat the coronavirus since January. Fuller and her team at UW Medicine have created an RNA vaccine that has the potential to be more effective and cost efficient — requiring minimal refrigeration and fewer doses. By working with HDT Bio Corp., Fuller hopes to…
Precision immunotherapies that aim the power of the body’s soldier cells at cancer have revolutionized the care of certain types of leukemia. But not all types — yet. New research by a team from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is helping to build momentum toward targeted new immunotherapies in acute myeloid leukemia, or AML. This aggressive cancer of white blood…
With the annual flu season about to start, it’s still unclear exactly how influenza virus will interact with the coronavirus if a person has both viruses. Doctors around the world have seen some patients who tested positive for both influenza virus and the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. At least a couple of dozen cases have been reported — although that’s not a lot,…
The link between influenza and serious heart conditions just grew stronger. A CDC study looking at more than 80,000 adult patients hospitalized with flu over eight seasons found that sudden, serious heart complications were common, occurring in 12% of patients, or 1 in 8. “Previous to our study, there had been suggestions between the link, but our study shows just how common…
The DNA of all organisms, be it bacteria or humans, is constantly bombarded with damage either by environmental mutagens such as the exposure to UV light or because of erroneous replication. The survival of the organisms depends on efficient repair of damaged or broken DNA. Homologous recombination is a mechanism of DNA repair of broken DNA via interaction with an…