Vaccine Guru

Google Doodle celebrates Dr Salk, who developed one of the best and most effective vaccines ever.

A recent article found on finalcall.com is making the rounds on social media.  In a nutshell, the Minister of the Nation of Islam claims that the western world conducted a massive clinical trial of an Ebola vaccine just before the latest  outbreak in West Africa that killed several thousands. Again conspiracy theorists are out to make Ebola as a man-made disaster that is killing Africans. There are some true facts in the story, particularly those about ZMapp being made available to a select few and not available to a large number of patients, especially poor Africans! It would have created quite an outrage if the ZMapp antibody was administered to poor Africans and many died!! The fact that it was tried on some Americans point to the fact that ZMapp did not want to be named and shamed as a company that uses poor Africans as guinea pigs. It is pathetic that scientific facts are not debated intelligently before publication in obscure publications that promote conspiracy theories.

Nobel Laureate David Baltimore presented his findings  at the Lou Siminovitch Lecture in Toronto and gave a glimpse of all the recent findings related to the plethora of antibodies that are known to bind to HIV. Many of these have broad specificities and high affinities. It is a fun time for antibody research considering the advances made in deciphering the crystal structure of the viral glycoprotein. Baltimore introduced the work of his lab, particularly that of Alex Balazs, in developing a novel form of therapeutics. Termed "Vectored ImmunoProphylaxis" or VIP, the concept is that of getting the body to make antibodies against the virus. Basically, Baltimore and Balazs engineered an Adeno-associated Virus (AAV) which has a small genome to express the heavy and light chains of their favourite antibody. This could be against HIV, Hepatitis or Malaria. The virus is injected into the muscle of mice where the vector starts expressing the antibody protein. When the mouse is