Publisher Health

While scientists have struggled in the past to create an effective vaccine against HIV, a novel vaccine design strategy being pursued by researchers at Scripps Research, IAVI, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (Fred Hutch) and the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Vaccine Research Center (VRC) shows new promise, according to data from a first-in-human clinical trial.
In a paper published in Science on December 2, 2022, the scientists reveal critical new insights into their novel vaccine strategy, which involves a stepwise approach to producing antibodies capable of targeting a wide range of HIV variants.
“The data we are publishing in Science demonstrates for the first time that one can design a vaccine that elicits made-to-order antibodies in humans. We specified in advance certain molecular properties of the antibodies that we wanted to elicit, and the results of this trial show that our vaccine antigen consistently induced precisely those types of antibodies,” says co-senior author William Schief, PhD, a professor and immunologist at Scripps Research and executive director of vaccine design at IAVI’s Neutralizing Antibody Center, whose laboratory developed the vaccine antigen. “We believe this vaccine design strategy will be essential to make an HIV vaccine and may help the field create vaccines for other difficult pathogens.”
The Phase 1 trial, known as IAVI G001, tested the first stage in a multi-stage HIV vaccine regimen the researchers are developing. The trial results show that the vaccine had a favorable safety profile and induced the targeted response in 97% of people who were vaccinated. Importantly, the Science study also provides a detailed immunological analysis of the vaccine responses.
“HIV represents an area of dire unmet need across the world, which is what makes the findings from our Phase 1 clinical trial so encouraging,” says Mark Feinberg, MD, PhD, president and CEO of IAVI. “Through the close-knit collaboration of many different scientists, disciplines and institutions, we are that much closer to designing an effective vaccine that could help end the HIV pandemic.”
Priming the Immune System
Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) are a rare type of antibody that can fight and protect against many different variants of a virus — including HIV. This is why scientists have tried to develop an HIV vaccine that induces bnAbs, but thus far without success.

Our palms tell us a lot about our emotional state, tending to get wet when people are excited or nervous. This reaction is used to measure emotional stress and help people with mental health issues, but the devices to do it now are bulky, unreliable and can perpetuate social stigma by sticking very visible sensors on prominent parts of the body.
Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have applied emerging electronic tattoo (e-tattoo) technology to this type of monitoring, known as electrodermal activity or EDA sensing. In a new paper published recently in Nature Communications, the researchers created a graphene-based e-tattoo that attaches to the palm, is nearly invisible and connects to a smart watch.
“It’s so unobstructive that people sometimes forget they had them on, and it also reduces the social stigma of wearing these devices in such prominent places on the body,” said Nanshu Lu, professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics and leader of the project.
Lu and her collaborators have been advancing wearable e-tattoo technology for many years. Graphene has been a favorite material because of how thin it is and how well it measures electrical potential from human body, leading to very accurate readings.
But, such ultra-thin materials can’t handle much, if any strain. So that makes applying them to parts of the body that include a lot of movement, such as the palm/wrist, challenging.
The secret sauce of this discovery is how the e-tattoo on the palm is able to successfully transfer data to a rigid circuit — in this case a commercially available smart watch, in out-of-lab, ambulatory settings. They used a serpentine ribbon that has two layers of graphene and gold partially overlapped. By snaking the ribbon back and forth, it can handle the strain that comes with movements of the hand for everyday activities like holding the steering wheel while driving, opening doors, running etc.
Current palm monitoring tech uses bulky electrodes that fall off and are very visible, or EDA sensors applied to other parts of the body, which gives a less accurate reading.
Other researchers have tried similar methods using nanometer-thick straight-line ribbons to connect the tattoo to a reader, but they couldn’t handle the strain of constant movement.
Lu said the researchers were inspired by virtual reality (VR), gaming and the incoming metaverse for this research. VR is used in some cases to treat mental illness; however, the human-aware capability in VR remains lacking in many ways.
“You want to know whether people are responding to this treatment,” Lu said. “Is it helping them? Right now, that’s hard to tell.”
Other members of the team include Hongwoo Jang and Eunbin Kim from the Texas Materials Institute; Sangjun Kim and Kyoung-Ho Ha from the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering; Xiangxing Yang from the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Kaan Sel and Roozbeh Jafari from Texas A&M’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
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Does stress during pregnancy impact children’s cell aging, and does race matter? The answer is yes, according to a new UC San Francisco study published Dec. 2 in Psychological Medicine.
UCSF researchers followed 110 white and 112 Black women from age 10 to about 40 as well as their first child (average age 8) to understand stress influences on the women’s health and its effects on their children.
What they found surprised them. Financial stress during pregnancy, such as job loss and the inability to pay bills, was linked to accelerated cellular aging of white children but not Black children.
“Ours is the first study we know of that examined effects of stressor type and timing on this aspect of health for white and Black mothers and their children,” said lead study author Stefanie Mayer, PhD, UCSF assistant professor of psychiatry at the Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “We can speculate on the reasons for the results, but the truth is we need to do more research to understand them.”
Cellular age can be measured by the length of one’s telomeres, the protective DNA caps at the end of chromosomes. Telomere length naturally shortens with age, and shorter telomeres predict earlier onset of illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes as well as earlier death.
Previous studies showed that prenatal stressors are linked to shorter offspring telomeres, but those studies comprised mostly white mothers. The UCSF study recruited an equal number of white and Black mothers, and examined how stressors that occurred during their adolescence (pre-pregnancy), pregnancy and throughout their lifespan affected their children’s telomeres.

As inflation rises, assisted living and home health aides are becoming more expensive. We want to hear from people who are dealing with this type of financial stress.Many older Americans in need of long-term care are struggling to afford assisted living facilities, home health aides or nursing homes. Inflation is making these services even more expensive than before. Reporters from The New York Times and Kaiser Health News want to hear from people who are under financial strain because of long-term care.Have you or your relatives run out of money for long-term care? How are you coping financially and ensuring you or your loved ones get the necessary care?How has inflation made it harder or impossible to afford long-term care? How have higher prices affected how much you or your family can spend on an older person who needs assistance?Has an older person in your life had to leave a care facility or give up paid in-home care because of the rising costs or lack of funds? If so, how are you managing?Please fill out the form below, and a reporter may contact you to follow up. We won’t publish any part of your submission without contacting you first.How has the rising cost of long-term health care affected you?

Thank you for sharing your story with us! We may contact some respondents for a more in-depth conversation in the coming weeks.

B cells are critical to the proper functioning of the immune system. However, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have shown that they can sometimes do more harm than good, as their numbers greatly increase after bowel damage, preventing the tissue from healing. The results, which are presented in the journal Immunity, can be of significance to the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease.
B cells are a type of white blood cell that have an important function in the immune system, in part by producing the antibodies that attack bacteria and viruses. Previous research has shown that people with chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, have many more B cells in their intestines than healthy individuals. It has therefore been proposed that B cells might affect the severity of these diseases. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now tried to discover if, and if so how, B cells contribute to IBD.
Sharp increase during healing
“We’ve been able to show that the B cell population increases sharply in the colon during the healing of colonic lesions, and that these cells mainly accumulate in areas where the damage is severe,” says principal investigator Eduardo Villablanca, associate professor at the Department of Medicine (Solna), Karolinska Institutet. “This prevents, in turn, the interaction between two other cell types — stromal and epithelial cells — which is needed for the tissue to heal.”
The researchers studied an experimental model of colitis and tissue from patients with ulcerative colitis, using a range of methods to analyse cell populations. Focusing particularly on how B cells affect healing in the intestinal mucosa, they found that mice lacking B cells recovered much more quickly after bowel damage than regular mice. The finding that the B cells seem to do more harm than good in colonic inflammation can be of significance to the treatment of IBD.
Drugs that affect B cells
“There are already approved drugs that affect the B cell response and that are used for other diseases,” says Gustavo Monasterio, postdoc in Dr Villablanca’s research group at Karolinska Institutet and one of the leading authors. “We now want to test if depleting B cells at specific time windows could also work with IBD. We also need to find out if the accumulation of B cells can have a long-term beneficial effect, such as by changing the composition of bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract.”
The study was supported by grants from the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Cancer Society, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (the Wallenberg Academy Fellow programme) and the German research foundation DFG. Eduardo Villablanca has received research grants from the pharmaceutical company F. Hoffmann-La Roche and co-author Camilla Engblom is scientific consultant for the biotech company 10X Genomics Inc. Julio Saez-Rodriguez receives funding from Glaxo Smith Kline and Sanofi and consultancy fees from Travere Therapeutics.
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An international study led by Aarhus University researchers sheds new light on our understanding of the metabolism in the kidneys, and how to use it for instance against SARS-CoV-2 protection. The study is published in the journal Science Signaling.
Our kidney filters 180 liters of blood every day and retains nutrients through a process called ‘endocytosis’ and through active transport in the kidney cells. In a new international study, an international team of researchers, led by Markus Rinschen from Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies and the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University, investigated how this process of ‘endocytosis’ is regulated by a very central enzyme, the ‘lipid kinase’ VPS34, in mice. This lipid kinase is involved in vesicular trafficking and endocytic sorting of membrane proteins. A process that is crucial for the body to obtain the right nutrients, but also to block out the unhealthy ones, such a viruses.
Multiomics — combining multiple datasets
The researchers have applied a new method of ‘multiomics,’ an approach where multiple data sets are combined during analysis to provide a comprehensive view of cell physiology. This approach is hypothesis-free but can quantify the functions of many transporters and enzymes as well as their interactions — the entire system. This multiomics analysis of the study showed that a lack of lipid kinase in proximal tubule cells in mice lowered the abundance of nutrient transporters on the cell surface, which was associated with increased urinary loss of lipids, amino acids, sugars and proteins. In addition, the number of viral entry receptors on the cell surface was reduced. Accordingly, treatment with a lipid kinase inhibitor reduced the entry of the virus SARS-CoV-2 in cultured proximal tubular cells and human kidney organoids.
A gatekeeper for viral infections — Lipid kinase
The results of the study show that blocking of the enzyme lipid kinase could be used to treat diseases in which limiting the retention of nutrients gives clinical benefit, such as kidney cancer or diabetes, or to block a viral infection of the kidney.
‘Our primary goal in this study was to gather and organize novel knowledge of the fundamental processes of cell physiology. Although this is hypothesis-free, these comprehensive large-scale datasets can be central to understand medical problems. In this case, we ultimately improved targeted drug treatment for instance for kidney related diseases or infections,’ said Markus Rinschen, first-author of the study and Associate Professor at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies and the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University. ‘Of course, more knowledge needs to be gathered before any conclusions regarding human relevance can be made.’
The study was a collaboration between researchers at Aarhus University, the University Hospital Hamburg Eppendorf, University of Kiel and University of Michigan.
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Materials provided by Aarhus University. Original written by Lena Bering. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

As the Christmas season starts to ramp up, University of South Australia researchers are reminding people to prioritise a good night’s sleep as new research shows that a troubled sleep may be associated with risk factors for type 2 diabetes.
In the first study of its kind, researchers found that people who reported trouble sleeping were on average more likely to have indicators of poor cardiometabolic health — inflammatory markers, cholesterol and body weight — which can contribute to type 2 diabetes.
In Australia, almost one million adults have type 2 diabetes. Globally, type 2 diabetes affects more than 422 million people.
UniSA researcher Dr Lisa Matricciani says different aspects of sleep are associated with risk factors for diabetes.
“Everyone knows that sleep is important. But when we think about sleep, we mainly focus on how many hours of sleep we get, when we should also be looking at our sleep experience as a whole,” Dr Matricciani says.
“How soundly we sleep, when we go to bed and get up, and how regular our sleep habits are, may be just as important as sleep duration.”
“In this study, we examined the association of different aspects of sleep, and risk factors for diabetes, and found a connection between those who had troubled sleep and those who were at risk of type 2 diabetes.”
The study assessed more than 1000 Australian adults* with a median age of 44.8 years. Researchers examined a range of sleep characteristics: self-report trouble sleeping, duration, timing, efficiency, and day-to-day sleep length variability.
“People who reported having trouble sleeping were also more likely to have a higher body mass index, as well as blood markers of cholesterol and inflammation,” Dr Matricciani says.
“When it comes down to the crunch, we know we must prioritise our sleep to help stay in good health. More research is needed, but as this study shows, it’s important to think about sleep as a whole, not just as one aspect.”
Notes *Most participants (87 per cent) were mothers. Approximately half of all participants (48 per cent) reported that they never had troubled sleep.
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Exposure to traffic related air pollution is associated with an increased likelihood of having multiple long-term physical and mental health conditions according to a new study of more than 364,000 people in England.
Led by researchers from Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London, this is the largest study worldwide to examine whether air pollution exposure is linked with the occurrence of multiple long-term health conditions.
Multimorbidity is defined as having two or more physical or mental health conditions and affects 27 per cent of adults in UK primary care. It increases the use of healthcare services and the costs of primary and secondary care, but its association with air pollution has not been studied in the UK until now.
Published in Frontiers in Public Health the study showed that high levels of traffic-related air pollution — fine particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) — were associated with an increased risk of having at least two long term health conditions. The strongest associations were observed for co-occurring neurological, respiratory, cardiovascular and common mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.
This research was funded by National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre and NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London.
Dr Amy Ronaldson, Research Associate at Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London and first author on the study said: “People with more than one long-term health condition have a lower quality of life and greater dependence on the healthcare system. Our NIHR funded research has indicated that those people that live in areas of higher traffic-related air pollution are at greater risk of having multiple health conditions. The study does not prove that air pollution causes multimorbidity, but it does warrant further research in this area. It could be that simple measures to reduce traffic levels could potentially improve lives and lessen the pressure on our healthcare systems.”
Researchers analysed data from UK Biobank — a large-scale biomedical database and research resource containing anonymised genetic, lifestyle and health information from half a million UK participants. aged between 40 and 69 years. Participants were assessed for 36 physical and five mental health chronic conditions. Multimorbidity was defined as having two or more of these conditions.

In a new study published online in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, researchers sought to determine the percentage of COVID-19 patients discharged from the hospital who had a type of fibrotic lung damage, known as interstitial lung disease, that requires ongoing follow-up care. These patients had varying degrees of COVID-19 severity at hospital admission.
In “Residual Lung Abnormalities Following COVID-19 Hospitalization: Interim Analysis of the UKILD Long-COVID Study,” the authors examined evidence of abnormal lung patterns on follow-up CT scans from COVID-19 patients discharged from the hospital — patterns which could be suggestive of interstitial lung disease. The characteristics of the 209 study participants who had CT scans were applied to a wider post-hospitalization cohort of almost 3,500 people without a CT to stratify risk of residual lung abnormalities.
“Interstitial lung disease” refers to a broad group of diseases that are characterized by lung scarring, including idiopathic lung fibrosis. This scarring makes it difficult to breathe and get oxygen into the bloodstream. Lung damage from this group of diseases may be irreversible and get worse over time.
“We estimated that up to 11 percent of hospitalized COVID patients had fibrotic patterning after recovery from the acute illness,” said corresponding author Iain Stewart, PhD, advanced research fellow (Rayne Foundation), Margaret Turner Warwick Centre for Fibrosing Lung Disease, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London. “Whilst many people experience prolonged breathlessness, the major implication of these findings is that a substantial number of people discharged from a COVID hospitalization may also have fibrotic abnormalities in their lungs. These results should help concentrate efforts to closely follow at-risk patients. This follow-up should include repeat radiological imaging and lung function testing.”
He added, “For some people these fibrotic patterns may be stable or resolve, while for others they may lead to longer term lung fibrosis progression, worse quality of life and decreased life expectancy. Earlier detection of progression is essential to improving outcomes.”
The UK Interstitial Lung Disease (UKILD) study was performed in cooperation with the PHOSP (post hospitalization)-COVID study, which consists of researchers and clinicians from across the United Kingdom, to look at how different patients who were hospitalized with COVID-19 subsequently recovered. The UKILD COVID study excluded patients in PHOSP-COVID who had interstitial lung disease prior to COVID-related hospital admission.
Interim study participants were discharged from the hospital by the end of March 2021, while interim data were collected until October 2021, restricting the analysis to 240 days after discharge. The researchers identified patients with thoracic CTs from the PHOSP-COVID database. The primary outcome they sought to determine was the prevalence of residual lung abnormalities in people discharged from a COVID-19 hospitalization. Analyses were performed to determine participants’ risk factors of residual lung abnormalities in those who did not receive a CT scan. These risks were used to estimate prevalence in the overall population hospitalized by the end of March 2021.
According to the authors, “The UKILD Post-COVID interim analysis of residual lung abnormalities in patients hospitalized for COVID-19 offers the largest assessment of prevalence in hospitalized individuals to date, and is consistent with findings from a number of smaller studies that demonstrate persistent radiological patterns and impaired gas transfer during the extended follow up of patients with COVID-19. At the time of this interim analysis it is not possible to determine whether the observed residual lung abnormalities represent early interstitial lung disease with potential for progression, or whether they reflect pneumonitis that may be stable or resolve over time.”
“The next phase of the study is a primary analysis, which will be performed at 12 months. At that time, we will also use linked electronic health records of hospital admissions and mortality data to support our analyses. We expect to have the final results in early 2023.”
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What if you could tell if your surroundings contained COVID-19 particles or droplets the moment they or you entered the vicinity? A collaborative research group has engineered a self-sustaining device that brings this closer to reality.
The device, which requires no batteries, employs a magnetostrictive clad plate composed of iron, cobalt and nickel, generating power via alternative magnetization caused by vibration. The vibration resonance frequency of the Fe-Co/Ni plates, which were coated with the receptor protein coronaviruses use to enter our cells, changes when the virus is absorbed, alluding to COVID-19 particles being in the air.
“We know that resonance frequency changes when the weight of a magnetostrictive material changes, but we set out to answer whether this is also the case when a virus is absorbed and if this absorption is detectable,” said Fumio Narita, co-author of the study and professor at Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Environmental Studies.
To answer these questions, Fumio and his team first had to create an efficient inverse magnetostrictive sensing system that could operate without batteries and communicate information wirelessly.
They modified a 0.2mm thick Fe-Co/Ni plate with a rectifier/storage circuit that harvested bending vibration energy and enabled the wireless transmission of information. The plate transmitted signals with the power obtained from bending vibration at 115 Hz or 116 Hz. A change in clad plate weight affected the resonance frequency and altered the transmission intervals, meaning it could detect any substances that adhered to the clad plate.
Next, the group created the bio recognition layer, choosing to focus on human coronavirus 229E (HCoV-229E) — one of the seven types of coronavirus that affects humans. They immersed the clad plate in a CD13 protein solution and performed sensing experiments. When the coated clad plate was subjected to bending vibration, the resonance frequency decreased after HCoV-229 was absorbed, verifying whether the charged power could transmit virus detection as a signal.
“We were able to confirm that the magnetostrictive composite material can detect the virus and transmit this detection data using power generated by itself,” added Narita. “The self-sustaining nature of the device renders it possible to link it to IoT technologies in the future, something not capable with current biosensors.”
The device could be used on other pathogens with modifications to the bio recognition layer. “In the future, we hope to further develop our device and see if it applies to other viruses, such as MERS, SARS and COVID-19,” said Narita.
Further details of their study were published in the journal Sensors and Actuators A: Physical.
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