T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) is a very aggressive type of blood cancer. It is relatively rare but still draws a lot of attention as it mostly develops in children under the age of 20. The standard treatment for T-ALL involves heavy chemotherapy procedures, which result in favorable outcomes with an overall survival of 75% after 5 years.

A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, mass vaccinations have begun to raise the tantalizing prospect of herd immunity that eventually curtails or halts the spread of SARS-CoV-2. But what if herd immunity is never fully achieved - or if the mutating virus gives rise to hyper-virulent variants that diminish the benefits of vaccination?

Scientists from several hospitals and research centers have shown what happens in individual cells of patients who died of COVID-19. In a study published in Nature, the researchers describe how infected cells from multiple organs exhibited a range of molecular and genomic changes. They also saw signs of multiple, unsuccessful attempts by the lungs to repair themselves in response to respiratory failure, which is the leading cause of death in COVID-19 patients.

Even though more and more vaccines against the coronavirus are being administered all over the world, many countries are still battling with outbreaks and face difficulties providing help to those in need.

One of those countries is Brazil. Here, they are facing a massive second wave outbreak, many daily deaths and instances of the health care systems collapsing.

When combined with drugs currently used to treat hepatitis C, the antiviral remdesivir is 10 times more effective in treating cells infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Published this week in Cell Reports, this finding - from Gaetano Montelione, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and his collaborators at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the University of Texas at Austin - raises the potential for repurposing available drugs as COVID-19 antivirals in cases where a vaccine isn't practical or effective.

Just one third of people in the UK managed to access the hospital care they needed at the peak of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic - according to new research from the University of East Anglia.

A new study published today looks at the extent to which people managed to access NHS healthcare in April 2020, and as lockdown restrictions eased.

The human immune defense is based on the ability of white blood cells to accurately identify disease-causing pathogens and to initiate a defense reaction against them. The immune defense is able to recall the pathogens it has encountered previously, on which, for example, the effectiveness of vaccines is based.