For at least six months after COVID-19 vaccination, antibodies produced by immune cells become steadily more formidable and more precisely targeted against the virus that causes COVID-19, according to a study of the antibody response to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine have identified a powerful combination of antivirals to treat COVID-19. The researchers showed that combining the experimental drug brequinar with either of the two drugs already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use, remdesivir or molnupiravir, inhibited growth of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in human lung cells and in mice.

A nationwide study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the first to show that immunity against severe COVID-19 disease begins to wane 4 months after receipt of the third dose of an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna). Waning immunity was observed during both the Delta and Omicron variant waves in similar fashion to how mRNA vaccine effectiveness wanes after a second dose.

Uppsala researchers have succeeded in designing a molecule that inhibits the replication of coronaviruses and that has great potential for development into a drug suitable for treating COVID-19. The molecule is effective against both the new variant and previously identified coronaviruses. The article has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The COVID-causing virus SARS-CoV-2 harbors a vulnerable site at the base of its spike protein that is found also on closely related coronaviruses, according to a new study from Scripps Research. The discovery, published in Science Translational Medicine, could inform the design of broad-acting vaccines and antibody therapies capable of stopping future coronavirus pandemics.

Why some patients develop metastases and others do not is largely unclear. Researchers around ISTA professor Daria Siekhaus are now contributing to a better understanding of the process in certain types of cancer. They took a close look at the role of a protein called MFSD1 - the mammalian relative of a protein they had previously identified as affecting cell migration in fruit flies.

A study by Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center researchers published in today's print edition of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics shows that triplatin is effective against triple negative breast cancer, which is the most aggressive form of breast cancer and has few targeted therapies.