This year has seen a record number of dengue cases in the U.S. and it might not be a fluke, as climate change expands the areas where the mosquito that transmits the tropical disease can thrive. New measures for treatment and protection are necessary, but there’s something peculiar about the way dengue infects the body that has stumped scientists for decades.That is, until now.
Dr. Leah Katzelnick, Dr. Camila Odio, and Dr. Stephen Whitehead from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) are digging into dengue and coming up with ways to defy it.
The annual flu vaccine is the best way to prevent yourself and others from getting sick. But sometimes the antigens the vaccine trains your body to fight are not similar enough to the strains of influenza circulating that year. This mismatch allows viruses to fly under the radar and spread undetected. It's a problem scientists hope to solve with a universal flu vaccine. Dr. Matthew Memoli is an influenza expert at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). He is preparing to test a new vaccine candidate that could offer broader protection from more flu strains and for more people.
The success of mRNA vaccines against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has brought RNA biology into the limelight. Now, with the world's attention, what's next for this biomedical rising star? NIH scientists, Dr. Richard Maraia and Dr. Natasha Caplen, have long recognized the potential of RNA in improving human health. In this episode, they discuss the prospects of RNA biology and how their work could inform the future of RNA as an innovative class of medicine.
Perhaps now more than ever, it is undeniable how integral vaccines have become to public health. Vaccines protect us from a whole host of infectious diseases, including chickenpox, measles and the seasonal flu. With a new threat at hand, scientists at the NIH swiftly developed a vaccine candidate against the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The pre-clinical effort was driven in part by Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, a viral immunologist and research fellow in the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
