Next generation vaccines for COVID-19 should aim to induce an immune response against 'replication proteins', essential for the very earliest stages of the viral cycle, concludes new research carried out by UCL scientists.

By designing vaccines that activate immune memory cells, known as T cells, to attack infected cells expressing this part of the virus’s internal machinery, it may be possible to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 at the very outset, thereby helping stop its spread.

In recent years, much scientific effort and funding has focused on developing drugs that target an enzyme with the unwieldy name of Src homology 2-containing protein tyrosine phosphatase 2 or more briefly, Shp2.

Shp2 is a phosphotyrosine phosphatase; its job is to remove phosphates from protein tyrosine residues, aiding and abetting signal communications within cells.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists looking for drugs to improve survival of children with high-risk neuroblastoma found a promising candidate in CX-5461. Then researchers identified safety concerns with the experimental drug that have implications for current clinical trials in adults. The study appears today in Nature Communications.

Among the populations most significantly affected by COVID-19 are the elderly and patients with preexisting medical conditions including diabetes, hypertension, obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease and chronic lung diseases like COPD and asthma.

Treatment options for COVID-19 remain limited. Researchers at the University of Helsinki and the University of Eastern Finland first searched for suitable drug targets and repurposable drugs for these, leading to finding six candidate drugs that demonstrate antiviral effects against SARS-CoV-2.

Understanding viral pathogenesis at the molecular level is critical in developing effective therapies for COVID-19.

A therapeutic antibody developed by scientists at UCL has been shown to unblock and normalise blood vessels inside cancerous tumours, enabling the more effective delivery of targeted cancer treatments.

The findings in mice, published in the journal MED, are the first to demonstrate that inhibiting the activity of LRG1, a protein produced in many tumorous tissues, liberates disorganised angiogenesis (blood vessel formation) - a leading cause of morbidity in numerous diseases including cancer.

A study led by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research has revealed a guide to developing COVID-19 vaccines that both prevent the coronavirus from infecting human cells and that are more resistant to evolving viral strains.

The team’s key criteria for antibodies generated by future vaccines are to target regions of the SARS-CoV-2 viral surface that are unlikely to mutate and share key features that the researchers found could block the virus from infecting human cells.