Smallpox News and Research

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Smallpox is a highly contagious disease caused by the variola virus, a member of the Orthopox virus family. It is one of the most devastating diseases known to humanity, with a mortality rate as high as 30%. In 1967, the World Health Organization embarked upon an intensified vaccination campaign to eliminate smallpox, which culminated in the successful eradication of the disease globally by 1980.

By the mid-1980s, there were only two known repositories of variola virus: the Institute of Virus Preparations in Russia, and the US CDC. The events in the US in September and October 2001 highlighted the risk that the variola virus might be used as an agent of bioterrorism. Governments around the world are taking precautionary measures to be ready to deal with a potential smallpox outbreak.

Inviragen to initiate second stage of DENVax Phase 2 study in dengue

Inviragen, Inc. today announced the initiation of the second stage of an ongoing Phase 2, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of DENVax, the Company's investigational dengue vaccine.

27 Feb 2013

Polio eradication strategy must be adjusted for local contexts

"It has been a particularly busy couple of months for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI)," SciDev.Net Director Nick Ishmael Perkins writes in a SciDev.Net editorial. "The deadly attacks on vaccinators in Pakistan brought renewed global attention to the campaign, and then Bill Gates went public with his personal commitment to end polio," he states, adding, "The GPEI has responded with a strategy for what it calls the 'endgame.'"

26 Feb 2013

Washington University creates new type of air-cleaning technology

Washington University engineering researchers have created a new type of air-cleaning technology that could better protect human lungs from allergens, airborne viruses and ultrafine particles in the air.

23 Feb 2013

Working toward polio eradication in 2018

"Since the eradication of smallpox in the late 1970s, no other diseases have followed suit; the goal that has come closest so far is eradication of polio," a Lancet Infectious Diseases editorial states, noting that in 2012 only about 250 people were infected with polio worldwide.

20 Feb 2013

Disease eradication efforts set sights on polio, Guinea worm

"It's not a race, exactly, but there's an intriguing uncertainty about whether a former U.S. president or a software magnate will cause the next deliberate extinction of a species in the wild. Will Jimmy Carter eradicate Guinea worm before Bill Gates eradicates polio?" Wall Street Journal commentator Matt Ridley asks in his "Mind & Matter" column.

13 Feb 2013

Viewpoints: 'Empty budget gestures'; GOP should endorse 'doomsday' sequester; 'Imagined dangers' imperil vaccine successes

President Obama on Tuesday called on Congress to put off -- again -- the start of the "sequester," a series of across-the-board spending cuts that would save $1.2 billion over 10 years.

9 Feb 2013

NEJM examines global disease eradication efforts

"Since the last case of naturally occurring smallpox, in 1977, there have been three major international conferences devoted to the concept of disease eradication," an article in the New England Journal of Medicine reports and includes "a brief review of five diseases selected for eradication or elimination that illustrate the potential benefits of such efforts and some of the challenges they pose."

9 Jan 2013

West African human population genomes provide important clues about evolution of HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) may have affected humans for much longer than is currently believed. Alfred Roca, an assistant professor in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois, thinks that the genomes of an isolated West African human population provide important clues about how the disease has evolved.

20 Dec 2012

Australian scientists receive grants for research on cancer, malaria and rheumatoid arthritis

Scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia, have received more than $16 million in Australian Government funding to pursue research into cancer, malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and the immune system, it was announced today.

19 Dec 2012

Examining ethics surrounding Taliban's ban on polio vaccination in Pakistan

Writing in the Global Bioethics Blog, Stuart Rennie, a bioethics researcher and professor, notes another polio worker was killed in Pakistan last week and describes Taliban opposition to U.S.-supported polio vaccination efforts in Pakistan.

23 Oct 2012

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health epidemiologist receives Dean's Medal honor

Michael J. Klag, MD, MPH, dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has awarded the Dean's Medal-the School's highest honor-to William Foege, MD, MPH. Foege is a celebrated epidemiologist and physician who played a leading role in many of the important public health campaigns of the past half-century, including efforts to eradicate smallpox and to control onchocerciasis (the cause of river blindness) and guinea worm.

8 Oct 2012

Guinea worm disease on verge of eradication, WHO reports

"The World Health Organization reports Guinea worm disease, which has plagued people for thousands of years, is on the verge of eradication," VOA News reports. "The U.N. agency says fewer than 400 cases of the infectious parasitic disease exist in four African countries, and that it will soon become only the second, after smallpox, to be wiped off the face of the earth," the news service writes.

30 Aug 2012

Washington Post examines Guinea worm eradication efforts

The Washington Post examines global efforts to eradicate Guinea worm disease, writing, "The parasitic infection which has sickened millions, mostly in Asia and Africa, is on the verge of being done in not by sophisticated medicine but by aggressive public health efforts in some of the poorest and most remote parts of the world."

29 Aug 2012

Detect-to-Protect project to measure performance of new sensors for biological agents

The idea that disease and infection might be used as weapons is truly dreadful, but there is plenty of evidence showing that biological weapons have been around since ancient times. Bioterrorism, as it is dubbed, is nothing new, and although medicines have made the world a safer place against a myriad of old scourges both natural and manmade, it still remains all too easy today to uncork a nasty cloud of germs.

27 Aug 2012

Study helps explain how large DNA viruses undergo rapid evolution

Scientists have discovered that poxviruses, which are responsible for smallpox and other diseases, can adapt to defeat different host antiviral defenses by quickly and temporarily producing multiple copies of a gene that helps the viruses to counter host immunity.

17 Aug 2012

PharmAthene receives clinical hold order from FDA for SparVax rPA anthrax vaccine program

PharmAthene, Inc., a biodefense company developing medical countermeasures against biological and chemical threats, announced today it has received notification from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that its SparVax rPA anthrax vaccine program has been placed on clinical hold.

12 Aug 2012

HIV would 'remain a threat' even if world achieved 'AIDS-free generation' by any definition

Lawrence Altman, former senior medical correspondent for the New York Times, writes in an opinion analysis in the newspaper that while there was much discussion about "ending the AIDS epidemic" and an "AIDS-free generation" at the XIX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) last week in Washington, D.C., "[o]ne obstacle is a failure to clearly define the epidemic or what it means to have an AIDS-free generation."

1 Aug 2012

Merck, Chimerix sign license agreement for CMX157 to treat HIV infection

Chimerix, Inc. today announced the execution of a license agreement granting Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, exclusive worldwide rights to CMX157, Chimerix's novel lipid acyclic nucleoside phosphonate currently being evaluated to treat HIV infection.

24 Jul 2012

Polio eradication: an interview with Dr. Kathleen O’Reilly

Polio is a disease caused by a virus and results in paralysis, usually in the legs, of those affected. The paralysis is irreversible. In some extreme cases the virus spreads to the nerve cells of the brain reducing breathing capacity and this rarer form can be fatal.

16 Jul 2012

InVitria receives new SBIR grant from NIAID

Ventria Bioscience today announced that its non-therapeutic products division InVitria has been awarded a new Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

6 Jun 2012