Type B Orcas Using Ice To Exfoliate!

Church of Whale Fall

WIRED

There’s New Hope for an HIV Vaccine

A trial vaccine has succeeded in generating low levels of antibodies needed to target HIV. It’s a first but much-needed step toward preventi

"Since it was first identified in 1983, HIV has infected more than 85 million people and caused some 40 million deaths worldwide.

While medication known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, can significantly reduce the risk of getting HIV, it has to be taken every day to be effective. A vaccine to provide lasting protection has eluded researchers for decades. Now, there may finally be a viable strategy for making one.

An experimental vaccine developed at Duke University triggered an elusive type of broadly neutralizing antibody in a small group of people enrolled in a 2019 clinical trial. The findings were published today [May 17, 2024] in the scientific journal Cell.

“This is one of the most pivotal studies in the HIV vaccine field to date,” says Glenda Gray, an HIV expert and the president and CEO of the South African Medical Research Council, who was not involved in the study.

A few years ago, a team from Scripps Research and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) showed that it was possible to stimulate the precursor cells needed to make these rare antibodies in people. The Duke study goes a step further to generate these antibodies, albeit at low levels.

“This is a scientific feat and gives the field great hope that one can construct an HIV vaccine regimen that directs the immune response along a path that is required for protection,” Gray says.

-via WIRED, May 17, 2024. Article continues below.

Vaccines work by training the immune system to recognize a virus or other pathogen. They introduce something that looks like the virus—a piece of it, for example, or a weakened version of it—and by doing so, spur the body’s B cells into producing protective antibodies against it. Those antibodies stick around so that when a person later encounters the real virus, the immune system remembers and is poised to attack.

While researchers were able to produce Covid-19 vaccines in a matter of months, creating a vaccine against HIV has proven much more challenging. The problem is the unique nature of the virus. HIV mutates rapidly, meaning it can quickly outmaneuver immune defenses. It also integrates into the human genome within a few days of exposure, hiding out from the immune system.

“Parts of the virus look like our own cells, and we don’t like to make antibodies against our own selves,” says Barton Haynes, director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and one of the authors on the paper.

The particular antibodies that researchers are interested in are known as broadly neutralizing antibodies, which can recognize and block different versions of the virus. Because of HIV’s shape-shifting nature, there are two main types of HIV and each has several strains. An effective vaccine will need to target many of them.

Some HIV-infected individuals generate broadly neutralizing antibodies, although it often takes years of living with HIV to do so, Haynes says. Even then, people don’t make enough of them to fight off the virus. These special antibodies are made by unusual B cells that are loaded with mutations they’ve acquired over time in reaction to the virus changing inside the body. “These are weird antibodies,” Haynes says. “The body doesn’t make them easily.”

Haynes and his colleagues aimed to speed up that process in healthy, HIV-negative people. Their vaccine uses synthetic molecules that mimic a part of HIV’s outer coat, or envelope, called the membrane proximal external region. This area remains stable even as the virus mutates. Antibodies against this region can block many circulating strains of HIV.

The trial enrolled 20 healthy participants who were HIV-negative. Of those, 15 people received two of four planned doses of the investigational vaccine, and five received three doses. The trial was halted when one participant experienced an allergic reaction that was not life-threatening. The team found that the reaction was likely due to an additive in the vaccine, which they plan to remove in future testing.

Still, they found that two doses of the vaccine were enough to induce low levels of broadly neutralizing antibodies within a few weeks. Notably, B cells seemed to remain in a state of development to allow them to continue acquiring mutations, so they could evolve along with the virus. Researchers tested the antibodies on HIV samples in the lab and found that they were able to neutralize between 15 and 35 percent of them.

Jeffrey Laurence, a scientific consultant at the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, says the findings represent a step forward, but that challenges remain. “It outlines a path for vaccine development, but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done,” he says.

For one, he says, a vaccine would need to generate antibody levels that are significantly higher and able to neutralize with greater efficacy. He also says a one-dose vaccine would be ideal. “If you’re ever going to have a vaccine that’s helpful to the world, you’re going to need one dose,” he says.

Targeting more regions of the virus envelope could produce a more robust response. Haynes says the next step is designing a vaccine with at least three components, all aimed at distinct regions of the virus. The goal is to guide the B cells to become much stronger neutralizers, Haynes says. “We’re going to move forward and build on what we have learned.”

-via WIRED, May 17, 2024

A new giant-screen film is on view in the Museum’s LeFrak Theater, starting today! In Turtle Odyssey, discover the wondrous life of a sea turtle named Bunji, from hatchling to adulthood, and the great migration undertaken by generations before her. As this turtle leaves the rookery on the Great Barrier Reef and swims hundreds of miles, she encounters many marine animals—including humpback whales, parrot fish, and even a great white shark—as well as threats to her survival, like plastic waste.

Beat the heat, visit the Museum, and enjoy this immersive giant-screen film on a 40-foot-high, 66-foot-wide screen with state-of-the-art digital sound!

What has no heart and no brain? No, it’s not your ex… it’s the barrel jellyfish (Rhizostoma pulmo). Also known as the dustbin-lid jellyfish (yes, really), this species can reach an impressive 35 in (90 cm) in diameter and can weigh up to 77 lbs (35 kg)! Like other jellies, this critter relies on its nervous system to function.

Photo: tato grasso, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Babesia

Just found out about the weirdest shark ever

Prickly dogfish

Caenorhabditis elegans

Photo credit: Unknown. All earliest source links (circa 2008) are dead.

Some of you may be familiar with model organisms in biology but even so, you may think about mice, rabbits or flies rather than ctenophores. The whole purpose of having a model organism is to be able to understand particular biological functions/processes by using an organism that can be maintained easily, has a relatively short generation time and has its genome sequenced (this allows us to really understand their genetic makeup). Since this species of ctenophore (Mnemiopsis leidyi) has had its genome sequenced it allows us to identify key genes/proteins and try to determine their function.

The work I am currently doing for my project is focused on understanding the origin of the nervous system.

There's been a long standing debate amongst scientists over which species of animal first diverged from all other metazoans whether it be sponges or ctenophores. For a long time it has been thought that sponges are the sister group to all metazoans, although more recently studies have suggested that ctenophores are. Sponges are really simple animals that lack nervous systems, whereas ctenophores are more complex and have a nervous system. If ctenophores are then in fact found to be the sister group to all other metazoans, it poses the questions about whether the complex structures such as neurons and synapses evolved once or multiple times independently?

If you check you can see a diagram showing what I mean by the "sister group" to all metazoans. The first pic identifies sponges as the sister group, but with more analysis on a molecular basis, the 3rd pic could be possible.

Since most of the studies on neurons and nervous systems more generally are focused on metazoans, the work at this lab uses ctenophores to understand more about their complex biology with the aim of understanding the origins of neurons.

Nothing like a good case of ringworm to make you aware of literally every itchy part on your body