Carbohydrates may be key to better malaria vaccine: study

Agencies

September 17, 2017

Melbourne, Sept 17: Scientists have for the first time found that carbohydrates on the surface of malaria parasites play a critical role in malaria's ability to infect mosquito and human hosts.

The discovery may help improve the only vaccine approved to protect people against Plasmodium falciparum malaria - the most deadly form of the disease, researchers said.

The study found that the malaria parasite 'tags' its proteins with carbohydrates in order to stabilise and transport them, and this process was crucial to completing the parasite's lifecycle.

"We found that the parasite's ability to 'tag' key proteins with carbohydrates is important for two stages of the malaria lifecycle," said Justin Boddey, from Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Australia.

"It is critical for the the earliest stages of human infection, when the parasite migrates through the body and invades in the liver, and later when it is transmitted back to the mosquito from an infected human, enabling the parasite to be spread between people," said Boddey, who led the study published in the journal Nature Communications.

Interfering with the parasite's ability to attach these carbohydrates to its proteins hinders liver infection and transmission to the mosquito, and weakens the parasite to the point that it cannot survive in the host, researchers said.

Malaria infects over 200 million people worldwide each year and kills around 650,000 people, predominantly pregnant women and children.

Efforts to eradicate malaria require the development of new therapeutics, particularly an effective malaria vaccine.

The first malaria vaccine approved for human use - RTS,S/AS01 - was approved by European regulators in July 2015 but has not been as successful as hoped, with marginal efficacy that wanes over time, researchers said.

"The protein used in the RTS,S vaccine mimics one of the proteins we have been studying on the surface of the malaria parasite that is readily recognised by the immune system," said Ethan Goddard-Borger from Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.

"With this study, we have shown that the parasite protein is tagged with carbohydrates, making it slightly different to the vaccine, so the antibodies produced may not be optimal for recognising target parasites," Goddard-Borger said.

He said there were many documented cases where attaching carbohydrates to a protein improved its efficacy as a vaccine.

"It may be that a version of RTS,S with added carbohydrates will perform better than the current vaccine," Goddard-Borger said.

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Alzheimer can spread it roots if you lose even one night's sleep!

Agencies

January 12,2020

Washington D.C., Jan 12: Disruption in one night's sleep can lead to getting Alzheimer's disease, a recent study has stated.

The interruption in the sound sleep for a single night aggravates the level of tau protein in any young male's body, thus gives rise to the chances of developing the disease.

According to CNN, the report was published on Wednesday in neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"Our study focuses on the fact that even in young, healthy individuals, missing one night of sleep increases the level of tau in blood suggesting that over time, such sleep deprivation could possibly have detrimental effects," says study author Dr Jonathan Cedernaes, a neurologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.

As defined by the Alzheimer's Association, tau is the name of a protein that helps in stabilizing the internal structure of the brain's nerve cells. An abnormal build-up of tau protein in the body can end up in causing interior cells to fall apart and eventually developing Alzheimer's.

"When you get more of that deep sleep and you get the REM sleep in the normal amounts, that improves clearance of abnormal proteins which we think is good," said Mayo Clinic neurologist Dr Donn Dexter, not the study author but a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology.

Earlier studies have also shown that getting deprived of sleep can allow higher tau development and accumulation. Thus that poor sleep can hasten the development of cognitive issues.

Researchers caution that the study is small and inconclusive, and acknowledged they were not able to determine what the increased levels might mean.

"This study raises more questions than answers," agreed Dexter on a concluding note, sharing, "What this is telling us is that we have to dig more deeply. Despite something we do for a third of our lives, we know so little about sleep and we're learning every day, particularly when it comes to sleep and dementia."

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COVID-19: AstraZeneca, Moderna leading vaccine race, says WHO

Agencies

June 27,2020

After admitting that the world may have a COVID-19 vaccine within one year or even a few months earlier, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Friday said that UK-based AstraZeneca is leading the vaccine race while US-based pharmaceutical major Moderna is not far behind.

WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan stated that the AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine candidate is the most advanced vaccine currently in terms of development.

"I think AstraZeneca certainly has a more global scope at the moment in terms of where they are doing and planning their vaccine trials," she told the media.

AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine candidate developed by researchers from the Oxford University will likely provide protection against the disease for one year, the British drug maker's CEO told Belgian radio station Bel RTL this month.

The Oxford University last month announced the start of a Phase II/III UK trial of the vaccine, named AZD1222 (formerly known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19), in about 10,000 adult volunteers. Other late-stage trials are due to begin in a number of countries.

Last week, Swaminathan had said that nearly 2 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine would be ready by the end of next year.

Addressing the media from Geneva, she said that "at the moment, we do not have a proven vaccine but if we are lucky, there will be one or two successful candidates before the end of this year" and 2 billion doses by the end of next year.

Scientists predict that the world may have a COVID-19 vaccine within one year or even a few months earlier, said the Director-General of the World Health Organization even as he underlined the importance of global cooperation to develop, manufacture and distribute the vaccines.

However, making the vaccine available and distributing it to all will be a challenge and will require political will, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday during a meeting with the European Parliament's Committee for Environment, Public Health and Food Safety.

One option would be to give the vaccine only to those who are most vulnerable to the virus.

There are currently over 100 COVID-19 vaccine candidates in various stages of development.

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