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Xinyuan Chen, an assistant professor of biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences, joined URI's College of Pharmacy after seven years at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, bringing with him a $1.08 million career development grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse and a $432,000 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
"My laboratory at URI is developing a laser-based delivery system for a powdered vaccine to improve nicotine vaccine effectiveness," Chen said. "There is no vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for smoking."
Nicotine vaccines have been studied by other researchers, but none are in use yet.
Typical vaccines fight diseases, but Chen's vaccine and delivery system fight addictive behavior by blocking nicotine's entry into the brain.
"This will induce nicotine antibodies in the body," Chen said.
Described as "a laser-based epidermal (skin) powder delivery" system for improved nicotine vaccination, the laser treatment generates micro-channel arrays, or micro-pores in the skin...


Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have new weapons in the fight against HIV.
Their new study, published November 17, 2015 as the cover article of the journal Immunity, describes four prototype antibodies that target a specific weak spot on the virus. Guided by these antibodies, the researchers then mimicked the molecular structure of a protein on HIV when designing their own potential HIV vaccine candidate.
"This study is an example of how we can learn from natural infection and translate that information into vaccine development," said TSRI Research Associate Raiees Andrabi. "This is an important advance in the field of antibody-based HIV vaccine development."
Andrabi served as first author of the study, working in the lab of senior author TSRI Professor Dennis R. Burton, who is also scientific director of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) Neutralizing Antibody Center and of the National Institutes of Health's Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology and Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID) at TSRI.
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Abcam acquires AxioMx to access new growth
opportunities and extend antibody leadership
- AxioMx provides a unique, cost-effective, and proprietary platform to produce recombinant monoclonal antibodies complementing Abcam's existing innovative production capabilities
- This in vitro technology will enable Abcam to offer new tools to existing and new customers working in technically challenging areas such as infectious disease, toxins, nucleotides, and membrane bound proteins
- AxioMx is already providing life science researchers, diagnostic companies, and drug discovery teams an efficient alternative to limitations they face...


For years doctors have been advising patients with lupus not to get pregnant. It was assumed that the likelihood of pregnancy complications was too high in this population. However, ongoing work by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) is helping identify those lupus patients who are - and aren't - at increased risk of problem pregnancies.
The research, being led by Jane E. Salmon, MD, Director of the Lupus and APS Center of Excellence at HSS, is part of the PROMISSE Study, or "Predicators of pRegnacy Outcome: BioMarkers in antiphospholipid antibody Syndrome and System lupus Erythematosus."
The goal of PROMISSE is identify factors that help predict the likelihood of a successful or unsuccessful pregnancy in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and/or antiphospholipid antibodies (APL) syndrome. The study has identified multiple clinical and biologic markers that correlate with adverse pregnancies, including, most recently, the activation of complement, a series of proteins that protect us from invading microbes.
At this year's American...


Vaccine is cheaper and appears to be more effective than alternative treatments
A new cholesterol-lowering vaccine leads to reductions in 'bad' LDL cholesterol in mice and macaques, according to research published in Vaccine. The authors of the study, from the University of New Mexico and the National Institutes of health in the United States, say the vaccine has the potential to be a more powerful treatment than statins alone.
The body produces cholesterol to make vitamin D, some hormones and some of the molecules that help us digest food. Cholesterol is also found in foods. LDL cholesterol is a fat-like substance that circulates in the blood; if there is too much cholesterol, the arteries can become blocked, leading to heart disease and stroke.
According to the CDC, 73.5 million adults in the United States have high LDL cholesterol. Diet and exercise are key to keeping cholesterol down, but millions of people worldwide take statins to lower their cholesterol. Statins have some potentially serious side effects, such as muscle pain, an increased risk of...


By introducing a particular strain of bacteria into the digestive tracts of mice with melanoma, researchers at the University of Chicago were able to boost the ability of the animal's immune systems to attack tumor cells. The gains were comparable to treatment with anti-cancer drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors, such as anti-PD-L1 antibodies.
The combination of oral doses of the bacteria and injections with anti-PD-L1 antibody nearly abolished tumor outgrowth, the researchers report online Thursday in the journal Science.
"Our results clearly demonstrate a significant, although unexpected, role for specific gut bacteria in enhancing the immune system's response to melanoma and possibly many other tumor types," said study director Thomas Gajewski, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and pathology at the University of Chicago.
"The field has recently recognized close connections between the gut microbiome and the immune system," he said. "This finding provides a novel way to exploit that connection, to improve immunotherapy by selectively modulating intestinal...


Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers say a new candidate vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) made with a weakened version of the virus shows great promise at fighting the disease, the leading cause of hospitalization for children under the age of one in the U.S.
There is currently no vaccine against RSV, which causes an estimated 66,000 to 199,000 deaths worldwide each year, and annual wintertime epidemics of respiratory illness in U.S. children.
Creating a vaccine with a live weakened virus - similar to what is used to prevent measles, mumps and rubella - requires a delicate balance: The virus must be weak enough so as not to make anyone sick and strong enough to induce a response from the body's immune system.
The researchers, who conducted a clinical trial that is reported in the Nov. 4 Science Translational Medicine, say they have used the virus' own machinery to create a vaccine that may protect young children from RSV disease. The vaccine, called MEDI ΔM2-2, is made from a genetically engineered version of the virus...


Today the U.S. Food and Drug Administration expanded the approved use of Yervoy (ipilimumab) to include a new use as adjuvant therapy for patients with stage III melanoma, to lower the risk that the melanoma will return following surgery.
Melanoma, the most aggressive type of skin cancer, is the leading cause of death from skin cancer. Melanoma is more likely to spread to other parts of the body than other forms of skin cancer and has been on the rise over the past several decades, according to the National Cancer Institute, with an estimated 73,870 new cases and 9,940 deaths from the disease this year. In stage III melanoma, the cancer has reached one or more lymph nodes. Patients with stage III melanoma are generally treated by surgery to remove the melanoma skin lesions and the nearby lymph nodes.
"Today's approval of Yervoy extends its use to patients who are at high risk of developing recurrence of melanoma after surgery," said Richard Pazdur, M.D., director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products in FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "...


Australian researchers have found a way to boost the effectiveness and cross-protective capabilities of an influenza A vaccine by adding a simple component. Published this week in mBio, an online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, the research in mice could lead to better seasonal flu vaccines for humans, and also vaccines that could provide community protection in the early stages of an outbreak of a novel flu virus strain.
"Influenza infections cause 250,000-500,000 deaths every year. Our best protection comes from the seasonal flu vaccine, which induces antibodies that neutralize the virus," notes Brendon Chua, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne. However, each year the seasonal flu vaccine is developed based on a prediction of the handful strains that are likely to be circulating the globe.
"The holy grail would be to develop a vaccine that cross-protects against different strains, which would be beneficial for the whole community, even if the prediction of circulating strains is wrong", says Chua. Such cross-protection...


Time, money, and tens of thousands of animals could be saved if researchers replace animal-derived antibodies with modern technologies, according to a review by the PETA International Science Consortium Ltd. published today in Biotechnology Advances, a peer-reviewed journal covering developments and trends in biotechnology principles and applications. The Science Consortium's review addresses a desire shared by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the scientific community, and the general public to improve the reproducibility of biomedical research.
The PETA Science Consortium paper describes two types of affinity reagents, recombinant antibodies and aptamers, which are non-animal technologies with numerous scientific advantages over animal-derived antibodies and which have the potential to improve the overall quality of research. Recombinant antibodies and aptamers can be used in the same applications as antibodies produced in animals, including in basic research, regulatory testing, and clinical applications such as diagnosis of disease and treatment of illnesses....
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