Lassa fever vaccine enters phase 1 clinical trial

This dose-ranging study will assess the safety and immunogenicity of the candidate vaccine for both the rabies virus and LASV

2025-03-17

(Press-News.org) Thomas Jefferson University has initiated a phase 1 clinical trial for a Lassa virus (LASV) vaccine developed at Jefferson in collaboration with the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), at the Center of Vaccine Development and Global Health, UMB. Currently, there are no approved vaccines against the Lassa virus. The clinical study is a dose-ranging study that will assess the safety and immunogenicity of the candidate vaccine for both the rabies virus and LASV.

The experimental vaccine is based on an attenuated and killed rabies virus vaccine similar to current rabies vaccines and has an additional LASV protein. Rabies vaccines are safe for all people, including pregnant women and children, and have been administered to millions of people worldwide with few side effects.

Lassa virus causes a viral hemorrhagic disease that can be fatal and causes permanent hearing loss in 30% of survivors. Lassa virus is endemic in West Africa, and it has a reservoir in rodents. There are an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 human infections yearly, which cause about 5,000 deaths. In addition, person-to-person transmission of LASV has been described. Notably, on October 28, 2024, a middle-aged resident of Iowa succumbed to the LASV-induced disease after returning from a trip to West Africa. This was the 9th case in the U.S since 1969.

The trial is currently enrolling healthy volunteers.

The candidate vaccine development is supported by a contract award from the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases HHSN272201700082C.

Media Contact: Deborah Balthazar, 267-254-9851, deborah.balthazar@jefferson.edu

About Jefferson

Nationally ranked, Jefferson, which is principally located in the greater Philadelphia region, Lehigh Valley and eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey, is reimagining health care and higher education to create unparalleled value. Jefferson is more than 65,000 people strong, dedicated to providing the highest-quality, compassionate clinical care for patients; making our communities healthier and stronger; preparing tomorrow's professional leaders for 21st-century careers; and creating new knowledge through basic/programmatic, clinical and applied research. Thomas Jefferson University, home of Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Jefferson College of Nursing, and the Kanbar College of Design, Engineering and Commerce, dates back to 1824 and today comprises 10 colleges and three schools offering 200+ undergraduate and graduate programs to more than 8,300 students. Jefferson Health, nationally ranked as one of the top 15 not-for-profit health care systems in the country and the largest provider in the Philadelphia and Lehigh Valley areas, serves patients through millions of encounters each year at 32 hospital campuses and more than 700 outpatient and urgent care locations throughout the region. Jefferson Health Plans is a not-for-profit managed health care organization providing a broad range of health coverage options in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for more than 35 years.

END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Institute for Healthcare Improvement Honors Hebrew SeniorLife’s Orchard Cove and NewBridge on the Charles

2025-03-17

Outpatient primary care clinics at Hebrew SeniorLife’s Orchard Cove and NewBridge on the Charles communities have been recognized by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) as Age-Friendly Health Systems — Committed to Care Excellence. “I want to express my gratitude to the team at Hebrew SeniorLife for your dedication to age-friendly care,” said Leslie Pelton, MPA, Vice President, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). “Age-Friendly Health Systems and IHI celebrate your recognition as an Age-Friendly ...

Dialing in the temperature needed for precise nuclear timekeeping

2025-03-17

For decades, atomic clocks have been the pinnacle of precision timekeeping, enabling GPS navigation, cutting-edge physics research, and tests of fundamental theories. But researchers at JILA, led by JILA and NIST Fellow and University of Colorado Boulder physics professor Jun Ye, in collaboration with the Technical University of Vienna, are pushing beyond atomic transitions to something potentially even more stable: a nuclear clock. This clock could revolutionize timekeeping by using a uniquely low-energy transition within the nucleus of a thorium-229 atom. This transition is less sensitive to environmental disturbances than modern atomic clocks and has been proposed for tests of fundamental ...

Fewer than half of Medicaid managed care plans provide all FDA-approved medications for alcohol use disorder

2025-03-17

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, March 17, 2025 Contact: Jillian McKoy, jpmckoy@bu.edu Michael Saunders, msaunder@bu.edu ## As health complications and deaths from alcohol use disorder (AUD) increase in the United States, it is critical that people who could benefit from medications have access to the drugs that the US Food and Drug Administration has approved to treat AUD. Yet, for individuals who have alcohol use disorder and are covered by Medicaid, accessing these medications is difficult; past research indicates that only about 1 in 20 Medicaid enrollees with alcohol use disorder receive these ...

Mount Sinai researchers specific therapy that teaches patients to tolerate stomach and body discomfort improved functional brain deficits linked to visceral disgust that can cause of food avoidance in

2025-03-17

Mount Sinai Researchers Find Specific Therapy That Teaches Patients to Tolerate Stomach and Body Discomfort Improved Functional Brain Deficits Linked to Visceral Disgust That Can Cause Food Avoidance in Adolescent Females with Anorexia Nervosa and other Low-Weight Eating Disorders Corresponding Author: Kurt P. Schulz, PhD, Associate Professor, Center of Excellence in Eating and Weight Disorders, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, and other co-authors Bottom Line: A trial of interoceptive exposure - a therapy that teaches patients how to tolerate stomach and body discomfort in order to reduce restrictive eating - improved functional deficits in a brain region ...

New ACP guideline recommends combination therapy for acute episodic migraines

2025-03-17

Follow @Annalsofim on X, Facebook, Instagram, threads, and Linkedin Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf ...

Last supper of 15-million-year-old freshwater fish

2025-03-17

18th March 2025, Sydney: In an Australian first, a team of scientists led by Australian Museum and UNSW Sydney palaeontologist, Dr Matthew McCurry, have described a new species of 15-million-year-old fossilised freshwater fish, Ferruaspis brocksi, that shows preserved stomach contents as well as the pattern of colouration. The research is published today in The Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology (DOI - 10.1080/02724634.2024.2445684) Named after Professor Jochen J. Brocks from the Australian National University, who discovered several of the fossilised species at the Australian Museum’s, McGraths Flat fossil site near Gulgong, NSW, Ferruaspis brocksi is the first ...

Slow, silent ‘scream’ of epithelial cells detected for first time

2025-03-17

EMBARGOED UNTIL 3/17/2025, 3:00PM ET March 17, 2025 Slow, Silent ‘Scream’ of Epithelial Cells Detected for First Time Team from UMass Amherst uncovers communication by “electric spiking” in cells once thought to be mute, which could enable bioelectric applications AMHERST, Mass. — It has long been thought that only nerve and heart cells use electric impulses to communicate, while epithelial cells — which compose the linings of our skin, organs ...

How big brains and flexible skulls led to the evolution of modern birds

2025-03-17

Modern birds are the living relatives of dinosaurs. Take a look at the features of flightless birds like chickens and ostriches that walk upright on two hind legs, or predators like eagles and hawks with their sharp talons and keen eyesight, and the similarities to small theropod dinosaurs like the velociraptors of Jurassic Park fame are striking. Yet birds differ from their reptile ancestors in many important ways. A turning point in their evolution was the development of larger brains, which in turn led to changes in the size and shape of their skulls. New research from ...

Iguanas floated one-fifth of the way around the world to colonize Fiji

2025-03-17

Iguanas have often been spotted rafting around the Caribbean on vegetation and, ages ago, evidently caught a 600-mile ride from Central America to colonize the Galapagos Islands. But for long distance travel, the Fiji iguanas can't be touched. A new analysis conducted by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of San Francisco (USF) suggests that sometime after about 34 million years ago, Fiji iguanas landed on the isolated group of South Pacific islands after voyaging 5,000 miles from the western coast of North America — the longest known transoceanic dispersal of any terrestrial vertebrate. Overwater ...

‘Audible enclaves’ could enable private listening without headphones

2025-03-17

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — It may someday be possible to listen to a favorite podcast or song without disturbing the people around you, even without wearing headphones. In a new advancement in audio engineering, a team of researchers led by Yun Jing, professor of acoustics in the Penn State College of Engineering, has precisely narrowed where sound is perceived by creating localized pockets of sound zones, called audible enclaves. In an enclave, a listener can hear sound, while others standing nearby cannot, even if the people are in an enclosed space, like a vehicle, or standing ...

Mount Sinai researchers specific therapy that teaches patients to tolerate stomach and body discomfort improved functional brain deficits linked to visceral disgust that can cause of food avoidance in

Lassa fever vaccine enters phase 1 clinical trial

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: