Our own immune cells can destroy other healthy cells to cause severe and chronic diseases. Maureen Su, MD, a 2014 Jefferson-Pilot award winner, studies how this autoimmunity happens and what it might tell us about potential cancer therapies.
Edward Miao, MD, PhD, earns a Jefferson-Pilot Award for his groundbreaking work on the interplay between dangerous pathogens and the human immune response.
Graduate student Ellen Perkowski created a new tool to study how tuberculosis survives, thrives, and escapes our immune system defenses.
The discovery could lead to new therapies and better diagnostics, resulting in fewer hospitalizations of children with respiratory syncytial virus, the leading cause of severe lung infection in babies.
Rita Tamayo, PhD, a UNC School of Medicine Simmons Scholar, takes on two dangerous microbes that infiltrate water supplies and hospitals.
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.
A research team led by Blossom Damania, PhD, found that suppressing the TLK enzyme causes the activation of the lytic cycle of both EBV and KSHV. During this active phase, these viruses begin to spread and replicate, and become vulnerable to anti-viral treatments.
Attribute of dominant MRSA strain enables it to persist on skin and spread in community.
A University of North Carolina School of Medicine study may have implications for thwarting the effects of bioterrorism attack with lethal microbes, as well as finding a way to save people in septic shock, an overwhelming bacterial infection of the blood.
Scientists at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have used injections of antibodies to rapidly reverse the onset of Type I diabetes in mice genetically bred to develop the disease.
