Recent News

By Category: Countermeasures

Rediscovered Native American remedy kills poxvirus

(Chemistry World) Smallpox has been eradicated, but the finding offers a possible treatment for poxvirus in the unlikely event of a bioterror attack or increased incidence of similar poxviruses such as monkey pox. Smallpox ravaged human populations for thousands of …

March 21, 2012
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Countermeasures, and Research
Share

Ebola: Advances Suggest Possible Cures for Fearsome Hemorrhagic Fevers

(The New York Times) Late last month, scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reported that two well-known cancer drugs used against leukemia, Gleevec and Tasigna, prevented Ebola virus from replicating in a lab colony of human kidney cells. Earlier this month, researchers at the United States Army Medical Institute of Infectious Read More »

March 21, 2012
| Filed under North America, Countermeasures, and Research
Share

Military advances battle against flu

(UPI) FORT BELVOIR, VA — U.S. drug-development company MediVector has been given a military contract to further develop a therapeutic against multiple influenza viruses. The broad-based therapeutic is Favipiravir (T-705). It could be effective against the 2009 H1N1 pandemic virus and drug-resistant influenza strains as well as common influenza.

March 21, 2012
| Filed under North America, Countermeasures, Public Health, and Research
Share

Killer silk: Making silk fibers that kill anthrax and other microbes in minutes

(Canada Free Press) A simple, inexpensive dip-and-dry treatment can convert ordinary silk into a fabric that kills disease-causing bacteria — even the armor-coated spores of microbes like anthrax — in minutes, scientists are reporting in the journal ACS Applied …

March 15, 2012
| Filed under North America, Countermeasures, and Research
Share

Post-exposure antibody treatment protects primates from Ebola, Marburg viruses

(US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) Army scientists have demonstrated, for the first time, that antibody-based therapies can successfully protect monkeys from the deadly Ebola and Marburg viruses. In addition, the animals were fully protected even when treatment was administered two days post-infection, an accomplishment unmatched by any experimental therapy for these viruses Read More »