Research News

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is committing $100 million to a new Emerging Pathogens Initiative to support basic research targeted at preparedness for emerging pathogens that could threaten human health in the future.

Congratulations to Daniel Saban‘s lab including Chen Yu, Sejiro Littleton, Joan Kalnitsky, Rose Mathew and colleagues for the research published this week that shows women may be better equipped to fight COVID than men.

Read the press release.  The press release issued by Duke Health has generated quite a bit of news coverage and social media buzz on a very timely topic.

In tests in mice, the vaccine administered directly to the bladder cleared bacteria. Read the full story here.

Elizabeth Deerhake, a fifth year student doing research in Dr. Mari Shinohara's laboratory, had a first author article published in IMMUNITY.  Read the full article.

In a paper appearing Sept. 1 in Cell Reports, a collaboration between the laboratories of Ashley Moseman and Nicholas Heaton reports on the remarkably robust immune response of olfactory sensory neurons, the smell receptors that line the nose, where a virus might first be encountered. Their finding reveals not only a successful strategy against infection, it points out the diversity of immune responses from one kind of cell to another.

Jianxuan Wu, a fifth year student doing research in Dr. Soman Abraham's laboratory, had a first author article published in Nature Immunology.  The research found that an unusual immune response, TH2-coordinated tissue repair in the bladder, takes precedence over long-term protective immunity in urinary tract infections. Although this response is effective in the interim, it can lead to recurrent infections and bladder dysfunction and appears to drive repeat UTIs.  Read more in the