Adenovirus associated virus (AAV) vectors are being increasingly used for gene therapy because they are not pathogenic in humans and persist for long periods in certain cell types. Currently 120 gene delivery clinical trials with these vectors are in progress, and two have been approved: Luxturna to treat a rare form of blindness, and another …
An ancestral vector improves on this year€™s model Read More »
by Gertrud U. Rey Australian koalas are currently being invaded by koala retrovirus A (KoRV-A), a virus that causes an AIDS-like immunodeficiency and makes infected koalas more susceptible to cancers and opportunistic infections such as chlamydia.
Viruses that infect eukaryotic cells typically bind to a plasma membrane receptor to initiate the reproduction cycle. Attachment of bacteriophages to bacterial cells is more diverse. Some attach to bacterial outer membrane proteins, while others attach to appendages such as pili or flagella. How viruses move from the flagella to the bacterial cell surface is …
with Amy Rosenfeld Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) was first isolated from children with respiratory disease in 1962. No outbreaks of infection were detected until the late summer and early fall of 2014, and then in 2016 and 2018. During these epidemics of respiratory disease, some children developed polio-like paralysis. We have recently published a paper showing …
Neurotropism of enterovirus D68 is not a recently acquired property Read More »
Today, on World Polio Day, wild poliovirus type 3 has been declared eradicated by a commission of the World Health Organization. The last case of type 3 poliomyelitis was recorded in 2012 in Nigeria. Because wild poliovirus type 2 was declared eradicated in 2015, now only wild poliovirus type 1 continues to circulate, causing paralysis …
Viruses and bacteria are both present at mucosal surfaces and it is not surprising that they interact in many ways. Sometimes members of the gut microbiome help viruses to infect cells, exemplified by poliovirus, reovirus, and mouse mammary tumor virus. The opposite also happens: segmented filamentous bacteria can prevent and cure rotavirus infection.
