Recent News

By Category: Agents & Toxins

The chilling implications of an ancient virus dug up in Siberia

(Mail Online) At first, oil worker David Smith thought he had something like the flu. He wasn’t that surprised, as he normally caught some sort of bug after the flight from Moscow. He spent the first day back home in Manchester in bed, head and muscles aching. He felt wretched, although he had enough strength Read More »

March 13, 2014
| Filed under Europe, Agents & Toxins, Biosafety, International, and Public Health
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UTMB Collaborates on Program Targeting Potential Bioterrorist Pathogens

(Global Biodefense) The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Profectus Biosciences, Tekmira Pharmaceuticals and the Vanderbilt University Medical Center have been awarded up to $26 million to advance treatments of the highly lethal hemorrhagic fever viruses Ebola and Marburg. These filoviruses are considered “Tier 1″ pathogens by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Read More »

March 11, 2014
| Filed under Agents & Toxins, Bioterrorism, Countermeasures, and Research
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Emerging multi-drug resistant infections lack standard definition and treatment

(EurekAlert) Infection control practices for detecting and treating patients infected with emerging multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacteria (MDR-GNB) vary significantly between hospitals. A study from the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America Research Network, a consortium of more than 200 hospitals collaborating on multi-center research projects, found this inconsistency could be contributing to the increase in multidrug-resistant Read More »

March 11, 2014
| Filed under Agents & Toxins, Public Health, and Research
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Giant virus on ice for 30,000 years could signal danger

(Whitsunday Times) THE discovery of an infectious giant virus that had been entombed in Siberian permafrost for 30,000 years has led scientists to warn of other disease-causing viruses and microbes that may escape from the frozen earth once it has melted. Scientists in France and Russia discovered the virus in samples of frozen earth taken Read More »

March 11, 2014
| Filed under Europe, Agents & Toxins, Biosafety, International, and Public Health
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Notre Dame chemists discover new class of antibiotics

(Notre Dame News) A team of University of Notre Dame researchers led by Mayland Chang and Shahriar Mobashery have discovered a new class of antibiotics to fight bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other drug-resistant bacteria that threaten public health. Their research is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in Read More »