Recent News

Researchers are inching closer toward the development of a treatment and cure for dengue fever, which affects an estimated 400 million people each year. Caused by a mosquito-borne virus, dengue fever causes severe, flu-like symptoms, and in particularly bad cases that are caused by repeated infection, the disease can be fatal. In a study published in the journal Science, researchers in the U.S. and Singapore describe the discovery of a potent human antibody that neutralizes dengue type 2, an aggressive version of the virus.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and The Scripps Research Institute for the first time have shown how human antibodies can neutralize the Marburg virus, a close cousin to Ebola. Their findings, published this week in two papers in the journal Cell, should speed development of the first effective treatment and vaccine against these often lethal viruses, said James Crowe Jr., M.D., whose team at Vanderbilt isolated and characterized the antibodies.