Kenneth Ataga, MD, director of the UNC Comprehensive Sickle Cell Program, was featured in a video by the American Society of Hematology in which he discussed the favorable results of a yearlong clinical trial studying crizanlizumab as a therapy to prevent and treat painful crisis events in patients with sickle cell disease.
By re-engineering a tiny chain of amino acids in one type of dengue virus, Ralph Baric and Aravinda de Silva discover a new path toward solving the dengue vaccine dilemma. The research has the potential to transform vaccine development for other diseases, including SARS and HIV.
In this new series, we profile graduate students who conduct research in labs across the UNC School of Medicine. First up is Kizzmekia Corbett, who received an off-campus dissertation fellowship from the UNC Graduate School to travel to Sri Lanka. Corbett will collect blood samples to search for a specific antibody response to the dengue virus, a key step in creating a vaccine for the world's most widespread mosquito-borne disease.
More than 8,000 women participated in the NIH-funded study, which was conducted in part at UNC. The vaccine was partially effective at preventing herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), but did not protect women from herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2).
