This isn’t the first Ebola outbreak the world has seen. First identified in 1976, Ebola has emerged sporadically over the last few decades, most often occurring in remote villages in Africa. But the current outbreak, the largest on record, begs the…
Shutting Down Energy to Brain Cancer
A multicenter team of researchers has identified an enzyme key to the survival and spread of glioblastoma cancer cells that is not present in healthy brain cells, making the enzyme therapy a promising target. “With this enzyme, we may have found…
Increased Dosing of Malaria Drug in Children May Lower Infection Risk
Piperaquine is a long-acting malaria drug that kills residual parasites and decreases the risk of reinfection. A study led by Uppsala University researcher Martin Bergstrand shows that increasing the dose used in children could potentially decrease the yearly incidence of malaria…
World-First Embryonic Stem Cell Trial for the Heart
The long-awaited trial comes after much preclinical cell work on more than 350 rats, 50 immunodeficient mice and 32 non-human primates. “After 20 years in the stem cell area and a daily practice of cardiac surgery, I am very cautiously optimistic,”…
Drug Combination Shows Promise As Powerful Breast Cancer Treatment
The uncontrolled growth of cancer cells arises from their ability to hijack the cell’s normal growth program and checkpoints. Usually, after therapy, a second cancer-signaling pathway will open after the primary one shuts down — creating an ingenious escape route for…
Five More Ebola Vaccines To Be Tested in March
The World Health Organization says millions of doses of two experimental Ebola vaccines, part of the ongoing WHO Ebola update, could be ready for use in 2015. Still, the agency warned it’s not clear whether any of these will work against…
NIH Begins Early Human Clinical Trial of New Ebola Vaccine
Human testing of a second investigational Ebola vaccine candidate is under way at the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) are conducting the early phase trial to…
Ebola airport checks expand; nurses get training
The federal government is closing a gap in Ebola screening at airports while states from New York to Texas to California work to get hospitals and nurses ready in case another patient turns up somewhere in the U.S. with the deadly…
Why Ebola Kills Some People, Others Survive
People who shared an apartment with the country’s first Ebola patient are emerging from quarantine healthy. And while Thomas Eric Duncan died and two U.S. nurses were infected caring for him, there are successes, too: A nurse infected in Spain has…
Chimerix Gets FDA OK to Test Drug for Ebola
A North Carolina drugmaker plans to test its experimental antiviral drug in patients who have Ebola, after getting authorization from regulators at the Food and Drug Administration. Chimerix Inc. said that it has received FDA clearance to proceed with a trial…