Archive for the ‘Vaccines: General’ Category

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“Plant cell pack” workshop

23 November, 2015

As molecular farmers, we were much impressed last year by a technology developed by the folk at the Fraunhofer IME in Aachen: this is “METHOD FOR THE GENERATION AND CULTIVATION OF A PLANT CELL PACK“, with Thomas Rademacher as sole inventor on the patent application.  Basically, this involves

  • making a “cookie” or cell pack with cultured plant cells, by suction of a suspension onto a membrane
  • drizzling recombinant Agrobacterium tumefaciens onto the cookie, then sucking away excess fluid
  • incubating the cell cookie in a humid environment for a few days, until the desired level of protein expression has been reached

There are all sorts of things one could dream up for the application of this technology, given that one can make cookies of all sorts of depths and widths, in everything from spin columns to multiwell plates – and high-throughput screening of expression constructs comes to mind immediately.

Now fortunately, Inga Hitzeroth of our Biopharming Research Unit here at UCT (the BRU) has a National Research Foundation-administered bilateral grant with the folk at the Fraunhofer IME, which has meant we have money for joint workshops and the like – so we are having a hands-on Workshop on “Plant Cell Packs for Transient Expression: Innovating the Field of Molecular Biopharming” affiliated to our “Virology Africa 2015” conference next week.  We plan to develop an illustrated manual along with a full suite of technical tips after the Workshop.

And as part of which, one has of course to feed and entertain the participants – hence our expedition to The Spice Route wine farm complex yesterday.  Hard work, this science…B-)

The BRU-IME Cookie Workshop team: from left; Romana Yanez (BRU), Tanja Holland, Susanne Bethke, Markus Sack, Juergen Drossard, Gueven Edgu all IME), Ed Rybicki (BRU)

The BRU-IME Cookie Workshop team: from left; Romana Yanez (BRU), Tanja Holland, Susanne Bethke, Markus Sack, Juergen Drossard, Gueven Edgu (all IME), Ed Rybicki (BRU)

 

 

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Posted in biofarming, biotechnology, GMOs, Vaccines: General | 1 Comment »

Rounding Up The Last Of A Deadly Cattle Virus

16 November, 2015

Rinderpest, or cattle plague, was declared eradicated in 2011. But many research institutes still have samples of the rinderpest virus in storage. Disease experts want those samples destroyed.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.npr.org

I have written a lot about rinderpest, and covered it in my book on virus history, as well as covering the debate on whether or not smallpox virus stocks should be eliminated.

And if they haven’t yet, despite years of debate, why should rinderpest virus stocks?

Consider: we have an effective vaccine(s); we still have the related peste des petits ruminants virus knocking around, with vaccines to it – so why shouldn’t stocks of the live virus strains be preserved?

How many viruses have in fact made it out of fridges, and back into the world?  Well, there was that purported 1977 H1N1 release in Russia/Mongolia…but can anyone think of another well-documented one?  Just one?

The fact is that it is FAR easier to deliberately spread endemic viruses around – like foot-and-mouth disease virus – than it would be to reactivate and spread something from a lab freezer.

Rather let us conduct an inventory of who has what, consolidate it like they did with smallpox, and forget about the unknowable, which is obscure freezers in far-flung rural centres where no-one remembers what is there – and where powercuts have probably thawed the samples more than once.

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

Posted in biotechnology, Evolution, General Virology, history, Vaccines: General, Viruses | Leave a Comment »

So that’s what you lot like, is it?

21 October, 2015

My_Stats_—_WordPress_com

Posted in biofarming, biotechnology, Ebola, Evolution, geminivirus, General, General Virology, GMOs, history, Marine Viruses, phages, plant viruses, prions, Scoop.it, Teaching, techniques, Vaccines: General, Viruses | Leave a Comment »

Emerging Infectious Diseases 20-year Timeline – Emerging Infectious Disease journal – CDC

7 September, 2015

Emerging Infectious Diseases 20-year Timeline

Sourced through Scoop.it from: wwwnc.cdc.gov

It is well worth remembering that the CDC’s EID has been in the forefront of reliable reporting on emerging viral diseases – as well as others, of course – for a quarter century now.

And I’ve been getting it that long…they used to send it out for free, AND it was available on the Web from very early on, so I used to regularly use articles from it for teaching 3rd year students.

It is a great institution, and I wish it well!

See on Scoop.it – Aquatic Viruses

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Posted in Ebola, Ebola, Evolution, General, General Virology, history, HIV, Vaccines: General, Viruses | 1 Comment »

Virology Africa 2015: Update and Registration

19 August, 2015

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN – VIROLOGY AFRICA 2015

On behalf of the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine of the University of Cape Town and the Poliomyelitis Research Foundation, we are pleased to invite you to Virology Africa 2015 at the Cape Town Waterfront.

VENUE AND DATES:

The conference will run from Tuesday 1st – Thursday 3rd December 2015. The conference venue is the Radisson Blu Hotel with a magnificent view of the ocean. The hotel school next door will host the cocktail party on the Monday night 30th November and in keeping with Virology Africa tradition, the dinner venue is the Two Oceans Aquarium.

IMPORTANT DATES

Early Bird Registration closes – 30 September 2015
Abstract Submissions deadline – 30 September 2015

The ACADEMIC PROGRAMME will include plenary-type presentations from internationally recognised speakers. We wish to emphasise that this is intended as a general virology conference – which means we will welcome plant, human, animal and bacterial virology contributions. The venue will allow for parallel workshops of oral presentations. There will also be poster sessions. Senior students will be encouraged to present their research. We have sponsorship for students to attend the meeting and details will be announced later in the year.

A program outline has been added to the website

WORKSHOPS

Our preliminary programme includes two workshops.

There is a hands-on workshop on “Plant cell packs for transient expression: Innovating the field of molecular biopharming”, with the contact person being Dr Inga Hitzeroth – Inga.Hitzeroth@uct.ac.za. This workshop will run at UCT one day before the conference, 30th November, and a second day, 4th December, after the conference.

The second workshop is on “”Viromics for virus discovery and viral community analysis”. The workshop at UCT will be on 4 and 5 December with the contact person being Dr Tracy Meiring – tracy.meiring@uct.ac.za.

Some of the workshop presenters will be integrated into the conference programme but the practical components will be run at University of Cape Town. Separate applications are necessary for each workshop.

If you are prepared to fund an internationally recognised scientist to speak at the conference or if you wish to organise a specialist workshop as part of the conference, please contact
Anna-Lise Williamson or Ed Rybicki.

For any enquiries please contact
Miss Bridget Petersen/ Email: conference1@onscreenav.co.za or phone: +27 21 486 9111
Ms Deborah McTeer/Email: conference@onscreenav.co.za or +27 83 457 1975

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Posted in biofarming, biotechnology, Ebola, Ebola, Evolution, geminivirus, General, General Virology, history, HIV, HPV, Influenza viruses, Marine Viruses, phages, plant viruses, Teaching, techniques, Vaccines: General, Viruses | 1 Comment »

Laurie Garrett on Ebola: the recent history

18 August, 2015

20 years after I first posted something by Laurie Garrett – who has written two of the the most thought-provoking, informative and frightening books I have ever read (The Coming Plague, and Betrayal of Trust) – I see she has just published possibly the single best account of the recent Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa.

Seriously.  Exhaustive, deep, analytical – and like her books, throwing some harsh light on world health care systems (or the lack thereof, in the case of the WHO), while at the same time making useful suggestions.

Like this one:

“And so it comes back to money. The world will get what it pays for—and right now, that is not very much.”

Absolutely: consider that the late and haphazard and meagre response by most governments let the epidemic peak and then start to subside – without actually, in the case of the US, managing to get more than one treatment centre functional in Liberia, before they ran out of patients.  That the health systems of all three countries are in such bad shape that they can’t deal with childbirth and malaria right now.

Laurie, it’s a great piece, really it is. It’s also depressing as hell.  But that’s life!

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Posted in biotechnology, Ebola, Ebola, Evolution, General Virology, history, Teaching, Vaccines: General, Viruses | Leave a Comment »

How should we preserve old viruses?

12 August, 2015

I was reminded via Twitter by Vincent Racaniello, he of “virology blog” fame, of the problem of preserving stocks of old viruses.

Particularly, in his case, of stocks of a virus that may be eradicated in the wild in a few years, and then – according to him – will need to be destroyed.

Surely we need to at least preserve sequence information of these pathogens before we let them go into oblivion, the way variola and rinderpest viruses have already gone?

So I wrote this to him:

“Great that you have preserved these samples – but a longer-term strategy needs to be adopted, before completely irreplaceable specimens are lost forever, to you and to science in general.

tmv sedimI have the same problem: a colleagues’ samples of plant viruses; beautifully preserved in heat-sealed glass vials, dried over silica gel, dating back in some cases to the early 1960s. For that matter, I have about a thousand glass bottles of liquid plant virus samples at 4degC, dating back in some cases over 40 years – and still viable.

Surely there is a case to be made for preserving some of these viruses? Mining them for sequence in this metagenomic age is not that difficult; preserving their infectivity, however – another matter. Some of my plant viruses are probably bomb-proof; your poliovirus samples, on the other hand – probably slowly deteriorating as we watch.

A wider conversation is needed: I know of other archives, of old poxvirus collections for example, that will be lost forever in a few years. Should we not get an international effort going to log them, sequence them, preserve them?

I think so.

Want to join in?

Yours,

Ed”

If any of you out there have a similar problem, let’s hear from you – and maybe we can do something to at least preserve the genetic information in unique collections.

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Posted in biotechnology, Evolution, General, General Virology, history, phages, Teaching, Vaccines: General, Viruses | Leave a Comment »

Anyone interested? A candidate virology textbook…

28 July, 2015

I would like to test the response to a Introduction to Virology ebook that I want to develop from my extant Web-based material, given that this is likely to disappear soon with our Web renewal project here at UCT.

Virus_Picture_Book_copy_iba

Download the Virus Picture Book excerpt here. And then please tell me what you think / whether you would buy one (projected price US$15 – 20)?  Ta!

Posted in biotechnology, Ebola, Ebola, Evolution, geminivirus, General, General Virology, history, HIV, HPV, Influenza viruses, Marine Viruses, phages, plant viruses, techniques, Vaccines: General, Viruses | 7 Comments »

Ebola on the Web – 20 years on

21 July, 2015

I have already done a partial retrospective on having been reporting on Ebola haemorrhagic fever viruses for just over 20 years – but I totally forgot to commemorate that I have been producing Web pages for just over 21! So I’m going to go on a nostalgic ramble through the past, mainly using Ebola as the vehicle, and highlighting some of the history of virology along the way.

By the way, I HAVE to commend the Wayback Machine here: I have also previously bemoaned the fact that Web pages are NEVER preserved by their creators at regular intervals – but this is exactly what they do.  From 1997 onwards in the case of the whole of the University of Cape Town’s site and mine as part of that – and how interesting it has been to go back and look at what I thought was cool then!  But actually, what’s not to like? I mean, there’s hepatitis G, Congo fever, smallpox, Ebola, “equine morbillivirus” (aka Hendra virus) – and life on Mars. Or not B-)

What’s interesting, though, is that they have preserved almost all of my Ebola news pages – dating from May 1995, from right near the onset of the Kikwit Ebola epidemic.  There’s all sorts of interesting stuff there – though with some holes, caused by Lost Pages – ranging from a discussion of the possibility of finding Ebola in cotton plants [not!], with my old friend Murilo Zerbini, to a thread on “Candidate for the Ebola Reservoir Organism” from the late lamented bionet.virology discussion group, to whether Ebola Reston was airborne (probably not).

Great historical stuff, right there – and thank deities it is preserved via Wayback, because our upcoming Web renewal project here at UCT will kill ALL links from our Departmental site.  Get it while you can!

And while we’re at it: here’s a useful list of all Ebola-related posts on ViroBlogy since 2011.  Note when the first mention of plant-made antibodies to Ebola virus was….

Molecular evidence of Ebola Reston virus infection in Philippine bats

18 July, 2015

The Discovery of Filoviruses

10 March, 2015

Ebola virus mutating, scientists say

29 January, 2015

First Ebola case linked to bat play – really?

30 December, 2014

Ethical dilemma for Ebola drug trials

13 November, 2014

Rabies Vaccine Protects Nonhuman Primates against Deadly Ebola Virus

26 October, 2014

Packs of wild dogs spread Ebola after eating corpses!! Or…not, maybe?

13 October, 2014

Norway to get world’s last dose of ZMapp – update

8 October, 2014

Ebola: “We Could Have Stopped This”

8 September, 2014

20 years on, and here we are with Ebola, again

25 August, 2014

5 Viruses That Are More Frightening Than Ebola

20 August, 2014

What Would Happen if You Got Ebola?

13 August, 2014

Plant-made antibodies used as therapy for Ebola in humans: post-exposure prophylaxis goes green!

5 August, 2014

Has the Time Come to Test Experimental Ebola Vaccines?

30 July, 2014

Legends of Virology

31 January, 2014

Plant-Based Antibodies, Vaccines and Biologics 5, Part 5

3 September, 2013

Ebola Outbreak in Uganda: CDC Rushes to Contain Virus

8 August, 2012

More Ugandans Admitted with Possible Ebola

1 August, 2012

Ebola reaches Uganda’s capital

31 July, 2012

‘SA safe from Ebola’ – Times LIVE

31 July, 2012

Canadian researchers thwart Ebola virus

14 June, 2012

African monkey meat that could be behind the next HIV

25 May, 2012

Current Opinion in Virology – Mass extinctions, biodiversity and mitochondrial function: are bats ‘special’ as reservoirs for emerging viruses?

5 April, 2012

When dinner could kill you: smoked chimpanzee, anyone?

14 January, 2012

Virology Africa 2011: viruses at the V&A Waterfront 2

19 December, 2011

Ebola: ex tobacco, semper a vaccine novi

6 December, 2011

Posted in biotechnology, Ebola, Ebola, Evolution, General Virology, history, Vaccines: General, Viruses | 2 Comments »

Molecular evidence of Ebola Reston virus infection in Philippine bats

18 July, 2015

In 2008–09, evidence of Reston ebolavirus (RESTV) infection was found in domestic pigs and pig workers in the Philippines. With species of bats having been shown to be the cryptic reservoir of filoviruses elsewhere, the Philippine government, in conjunction with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, assembled a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional team to investigate Philippine bats as the possible reservoir of RESTV.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.virologyj.com

I recall at the time of its discovery, thinking that the virus must have reservoir species back home in the East – and that the fact that no disease had ever been reported from there in humans, meant it was completely under the radar.

There was also the issue that the virus seemed to have been transmitted between monkeys in the Reston facility without any direct contact – and even between rooms, which would imply airborne transmission.

Which frightened the cr@p out of many people, and I am sure especially those primate centre workers who were found to be seropositive for the virus, in the absence of any symptoms – even though at teh time, unsanitary conditions and overcrowding were blamed (http://www.mcb.uct.ac.za/ebola/ebolair.html).

It is still something that needs to be looked at seriously: is Ebola Reston more transmissible than Zaire, Sudan and the rest – and if so, why?

Those interested can pick up on what happened at the time, here on the Ebola information pages I ran for a while:

http://www.mcb.uct.ac.za/ebola/ebopage.htm

 

 

See on Scoop.it – Plant Molecular Farming

Posted in biotechnology, Ebola, Ebola, Evolution, General, General Virology, Vaccines: General, Viruses | 1 Comment »

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