Biomedicine & Disease
Ellume: 91%+ accurate at-home COVID test given first emergency authorization in the US
The Food and Drug Administration on [December 15] issued an emergency authorization for the country’s first coronavirus test that can run from ...
Podcast: How do COVID vaccines work? CRISPR kills cancer; Danish study debunks mask mandates?
The leading COVID-19 vaccines are RNA-based immunizations and the first of their kind. How do they work, and are they ...
COVID vaccine made from GMO tobacco? It’s now in human trials
While large pharmaceutical companies are already producing vaccines, [the company British American Tobacco] believes its own can be produced in ...
Plants poised to become a critical source to make vaccines for dengue and other diseases
Dengue is a pathogenic mosquito-borne virus belonging to the Flaviviridae family that causes 390 million infections per year. A safe, ...
COVID could come back with a vengeance in mutated forms, jumping back and forth between animals and humans
Coronavirus could potentially leap to other animals, such as rats, mice, ferrets and voles, as well as mink, an expert ...
Pfizer vaccine data offer hope for a return to normalcy
[A]dvisors to the US Food and Drug Administration voted in favor of emergency authorization for Pfizer’s covid-19 shot, and the data in ...
School children will not get a COVID vaccine in time for the next school year, experts believe
Children’s immune responses are different from that of adults, so there is a consensus that pediatric [COVID vaccine] trials are ...
37%-to-60% of Americans say they are not sure they will get a vaccine. If that resistance holds, we won’t reach ‘herd immunity’ and COVID will not go away
The World Health Organization estimates that 65 to 70 percent of a given population must be vaccinated to halt the spread of ...
Vaccine diplomacy: China poised to introduce first COVID shots to Latin America, increasing its regional influence
China is actively making “deals to try to get the vaccine deployed and employed” around the globe to stop the ...
How might mass COVID vaccinations work? Louisiana sets up drive-through flu vaccine effort as a test
Getting all those shots into arms will be a monumental task. Shreveport, Louisiana, is getting ready now. The city recently ...
Podcast: Trans women in female-only sports; Men and women need distinct brain tumor therapies; Illegal GMOs in Peru
Should trans women be allowed to compete in female-only sports? It's a polarizing question with no easy answer in a ...
Infographic: What are mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and how do they work?
As of 1 December 2020, thirteen vaccines have reached the final stage of testing: where they are being given to ...
60% of Americans now say they will get a vaccine. Who are they?
Overall, 60% of Americans say they would definitely or probably get a vaccine for the coronavirus, if one were available ...
We are on the cusp of an on-the-spot COVID test
In an Australian first, [University of Technology Sydney] scientists have used novel optical technology to design a highly sensitive saliva ...
Genetically-engineered vaccine shows promise in elusive quest to control herpes
A genetically edited form of a herpes simplex virus (HSV) has outperformed a leading vaccine candidate in a new preclinical ...
WHO launches daunting task of tracing COVID’s global path
The search will start in Wuhan — the Chinese city where the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was first identified — and ...
Men and women require distinct brain tumor therapies, underscoring hard-wired differences in the brain
[Glioblastomas] are the most aggressive tumors of the brain and occur at 60% higher rates in males, whether human or ...
‘Exceptionally potent yet easily scalable’: Synthetic biology-based COVID vaccine could pull ahead of current frontrunners
Years ago, researchers learned that, when made with biotechnology, some viral proteins could spontaneously assemble themselves into “virus-like particles,” or ...
How evolution could thwart the new COVID vaccines and what we can do to prevent that
The first drug against HIV brought dying patients back from the brink. But as excited doctors raced to get the ...
Have you gotten a measles-mumps-rubella vaccine? If so, your chances of getting severe COVID are significantly reduced
The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine has been theorized to provide protection against COVID-19. In a new study published in mBio, an ...
Podcast: Lockdown skeptics are COVID ‘deniers’? Plant burgers don’t cause ‘man boobs.’ GMOs and terrorism
If you oppose lockdowns to stop the spread of COVID, are you a science denier, a covidiot? Potentially dangerous genetically ...
How to assess the real safety risks of getting a COVID vaccine shot
It seems like we might have a vaccine on the way and some of this madness will stop. But, like everything ...
How should we prioritize a COVID vaccine for communities that have been hit hardest?
Frontline health workers, elderly people, and those with chronic conditions that make them especially vulnerable to Covid-19 are likely to ...
When it comes to COVID, nurture trumps nature – so far
In the early weeks of the pandemic, as patients overwhelmed New York City hospitals, the clinical characteristics of the most ...
200 million people contract malaria each year. A genetically engineered vaccine might soon be coming
Malaria’s catastrophic toll has inspired many attempts to create a viable vaccine, but the genetic complexity of the malaria parasite ...
Women and HIV: 6 shots a year shown to be more effective than daily pill
Women have had only one approved option for pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a course of drugs taken to prevent contracting ...
Which countries are most and least open to embracing a safe and effective COVID vaccine?
[A] study, which polled the opinions of over 13,000 people from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas and was published [October 20] ...
Politics spoiling Americans’ trust in COVID-19 vaccines
[H]ow can politicians convince large swathes of the American public to take a vaccine once it becomes available? The answer ...
