Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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Cynthia Derdeyn

HIV vaccine news: a glass half full

This week, researchers from Yerkes and Emory Vaccine Center led by Cindy Derdeyn published a paper that I first thought was disturbing. It describes how monkeys vaccinated against HIV’s relative SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus) still become infected when challenged with the virus. Moreover, it’s not clear whether the vaccine-induced antibodies are exerting any selective pressure on the virus that gets through.

But then I realized that this might be an example of “burying the lead,” since we haven’t made a big hoopla about the underlying vaccine studies, conducted by Rama Amara. Some of these studies showed that a majority of monkeys can be protected from repeated viral challenge. The more effective vaccine regimens include adjuvants such as the immune-stimulating molecules GM-CSF or CD40L (links are the papers on the protective effects). Read more

Posted on August 13, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment

What if HIV was just another virus

Imagine that HIV was a “normal” virus. An infection begins and the body responds, without getting trapped in a cycle where CD4+ T cells are consumed and the immune system is crippled.

SIV can infect sooty mangabeys but it doesn't cripple their immune systems.

The attractiveness of this idea explains some of why scientists are interested in sooty mangabeys and other non-human primates. HIV’s relative SIV can infect them, but they usually don’t develop immunodeficiency.

At last week’s AIDS Vaccine 2010 conference, Cynthia Derdeyn reported her laboratory’s recent results investigating sooty mangabeys, which don’t develop high levels of neutralizing antibodies against SIV when infected. Derdeyn’s group at Emory Vaccine Center and Yerkes National Primate Research Center studies how HIV and SIV evade the immune system.

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Posted on October 7, 2010 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment

Reality check for HIV vaccine design

HIV doesn’t have a brain and it doesn’t strategize.

But the way that the virus mutates and evades the immune system in the early part of an infection, you might think it did.

Emory Vaccine Center researcher Cynthia Derdeyn and her colleagues have a new paper in PLOS Pathogens that is a reality check for researchers designing possible HIV vaccines. The results come from a collaboration with the Rwanda Zambia HIV Research Group. (Although the patients in this paper are from Zambia only.)

Red and green depict the parts of the HIV envelope protein that mutated in two patients (185F and 205F) in response to pressure from their immune systems. The rest of the envelope protein is blue.

Red and green depict the parts of the HIV envelope protein that mutated in two patients (185F and 205F) in response to pressure from their immune systems.

Recently there has been some excitement over the discovery of robust neutralizing antibodies in patients.

The bottom line, according to Derdeyn’s team: even if a vaccine succeeds in stimulating antibodies that can neutralize HIV, the virus is still going to mutate furiously and may escape those antibodies. To resist HIV, someone’s immune system may need to have several types of antibodies ready to go, their results suggest.

A companion paper in the same issue of PLOS Pathogens from South African scientists has similarly bracing results.

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment