Leading Ebola researcher says there’s an effective treatment for Ebola

A leading U.S. Ebola researcher from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has gone on record stating that a blend of three monoclonal antibodies can completely protect monkeys against a lethal dose of Ebola virus up to 5 days after infection, at a time when the disease is severe.

Thomas Geisbert, professor of microbiology and immunology, has written an editorial for Nature discussing advances in Ebola treatment research. The filoviruses known as Ebola virus and Marburg virus are among the most deadly of pathogens, with fatality rates of up to 90 percent.

Since the discovery of Ebola in 1976, researchers have been actively working on treatments to combat infection. Studies over the past decade have uncovered three treatments that offer partial protection for monkeys against Ebola when given within an hour of virus exposure. One of these treatments, a VSV-based vaccine was used in 2009 to treat a laboratory worker in Germany shortly after she was accidentally stuck with a needle possibly contaminated by an Ebola-infected animal.

Further advances have been made that can completely protect monkeys against Ebola using small ‘interfering’ RNAs and various combinations of antibodies. But these treatments need to be given within two days of Ebola exposure.

“So although these approaches are highly important and can be used to treat known exposures, the need for treatments that can protect at later times after infection was paramount,” said Geisbert.

Further research led to a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies that protected 43% of monkeys when given as late as five days after Ebola exposure, at a time when the clinical signs of the disease are showing.

The new study from Qui and colleagues at MAPP Biopharmaceutical Inc. used ZMAPP to treat monkeys given a lethal dose of Ebola. All of the animals survived and did not show any evidence of the virus in their systems 21 days after infection, even after receiving the treatment 5 days after infection. They also showed that ZMAPP inhibits replication of the Ebola virus in cell culture.

ZMAPP has been used to treat several patients on compassionate grounds. Of these, two US healthcare workers have recovered, although but whether ZMAPP had any effect is unknown, as 45% of patients in this outbreak survive without treatment. There were also two patients treated with ZMAPP who did not survive, but this may be because the treatment was started too late in the disease course.

“The diversity of strains and species of the Ebola and Marburg filoviruses is an obstacle for all candidate treatments,” said Geisbert. “Treatments that may protect against one species of Ebola will probably not protect against a different species of the virus, and may not protect against a different strain within the species.”

Although we certainly need treatments for filovirus infections, the most effective way to manage and control future outbreaks might be through vaccines, some of which have been designed to protect against multiple species and strains. During outbreaks, single-injection vaccines are needed to ensure rapid use and protection. At least five preventative vaccines have been reported to completely protect monkeys against Ebola and Marburg infection. But only the VSV-based vaccines have been shown to complete protect monkeys against Ebola after a single injection.

“Antibody therapies and several other strategies should be included in the arsenal of interventions for controlling future Ebola outbreaks,” said Geisbert. “Although ZMAPP in particular has been administered for compassionate use, the next crucial step will be to formally assess its safety and effectiveness.”

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The above story is based on materials provided by University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Researchers develop treatment effective against lethal Marburg virus

For the first time, researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, in collaboration with Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, have protected nonhuman primates against Marburg virus – Angola hemorrhagic fever. Their treatment was shown to be effective at a point when animals have detectable levels of the virus in their system and begin to show symptoms of the disease. The study appears in the August 20 edition of the journal Science Translational Medicine.

There are currently no vaccines or drugs approved for human use and no post-exposure treatment that has completely protected nonhuman primates against MARV-Angola, the most deadly Marburg viral strain, with a mortality rate of up to 90 percent. This virus, which is in the same family as Ebola, has a rapid disease course (seven to nine days) in nonhuman primates. There have been two recent imported cases of MARV HF to Europe and the United States, further increasing concern regarding the public health threat posed by this deadly virus.

“The increasingly frequent outbreaks of filoviral HF in Africa evidenced by the current rapidly spreading outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone illustrate the clear and present danger filoviruses represent to human health,” stated UTMB’s Thomas Geisbert, professor of microbiology and immunology. “As such, the development of effective countermeasures against these viruses is a critical need.”

Previous studies with nonhuman primates have examined countermeasures against MARV infection at times before the subjects showed any evidence of clinical illness. This goal of this study, led by Geisbert and Ian MacLachlan, executive vice president and chief technical officer of Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, was to determine whether it is possible to protect animals against a lethal MARV-Angola infection when treatment was started at a point when animals have detectable levels of the virus in their system and show the first clinical signs of disease.

Their strategy centered on the MARV RNA genome that encodes for seven structural proteins, two of which are responsible for replicating the genome. These seven genes and their products represent targets for the development of therapeutic agents and vaccines against MARV.

The research team demonstrated that their lipid encapsulated small interfering RNA treatment completely protected nonhuman primates against lethal MARV-Angola HF when treatment began even up to three days following infection.

“The significance of delaying treatment until three days after infection, which is the earliest time at which diagnosis by viral RNA can be detected and those infected show the first clinical signs of disease, is a critical step in triggering clinical interventions,” stated MacLachlan.

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Many in U.S. lack knowledge about Ebola, its transmission, poll finds

Although the Centers for Disease and Prevention (CDC) reports no known cases of Ebola transmission in the United States, a Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)/SSRS poll released shows that four in ten (39%) adults in the U.S. are concerned that there will be a large outbreak in the U.S., and a quarter (26%) are concerned that they or someone in their immediate family may get sick with Ebola over the next year.

The nationally representative poll of 1,025 adults was conducted August 13-17, 2014 by researchers at HSPH and SSRS, an independent research company. The margin of error for total respondents is +/-3.6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

Ebola hemorrhagic fever is a severe, often fatal disease in humans and nonhuman primates, such as monkeys, gorillas and chimpanzees. Four countries have reported infections: Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Officials report 1,350 have died as of August 21, 2014 and over 2,473 people have been infected since March 2014. For an update on the outbreak, see this CDC link: http://ift.tt/1oqFas9

The HSPH/SSRS poll found people with less education are more likely to be concerned about an outbreak in the U.S. (less than high school 50% vs. some college 36% vs. college grad or more 24%). People with less education are also more concerned they or their family will get sick with Ebola (less than high school 37% vs. some college 22% vs. college grad or more 14%). Perhaps related, those with less education are also less likely to be following the news about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa closely (total 63%; less than high school 57% and some college 62% vs. college grad or more 73%).

Two-thirds of people (68%) surveyed believe Ebola spreads “easily” (“very easily” or “somewhat easily”) from those who are sick with it. This perception may contrast with CDC, World Health Organization (WHO), and other health experts who note that Ebola is not an airborne illness, and is transmitted through direct contact with infected bodily fluids, infected objects, or infected animals. For more on how Ebola is transmitted: http://ift.tt/1jMYb6N

A third of those polled (33%) believe there is “an effective medicine to treat people who have gotten sick with Ebola.” According to the CDC and WHO, there is no proven anti-viral medicine, however, treating symptoms — such as maintaining fluids, oxygen levels, and blood pressure — can increase the odds of survival. To date, the media reports two people infected with Ebola overseas have been treated in the U.S.

“Many people are concerned about a large scale outbreak of Ebola occurring in the U.S.,” said Gillian SteelFisher, PhD, deputy director of the Harvard Opinion Research Program and research scientist in the HSPH Department of Health Policy and Management. “As they report on events related to Ebola, the media and public health officials need to better inform Americans of Ebola and how it is spread.”

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New monkey model of severe MERS-CoV disease established

National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists have found that Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection in marmosets closely mimics the severe pneumonia experienced by people infected with MERS-CoV, giving scientists the best animal model yet for testing potential treatments. Researchers at NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) used marmosets after predicting in computer models that the animals could be infected with MERS-CoV based on the binding properties of the virus.

The same NIAID group in December 2012 developed the first animal model of MERS-CoV infection using rhesus macaques. That model has proven difficult to use for evaluating potential treatments because it mimics mild to moderate human disease, and the animals quickly recover from infection. Several research groups are working to develop mouse models of MERS-CoV infection, but they have yet to establish a severe disease model.

The MERS outbreak, which began in 2012, continues throughout the Middle East. Since the outbreak began, NIAID researchers have focused on understanding how the virus causes disease and how it can be treated effectively. As of July 23rd, the World Health Organization has reported a total of 837 human cases of MERS-CoV infection, including at least 291 deaths.

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The marmoset animal model recapitulates disease symptoms of MERS infection in humans

An article published on August 21st in PLOS Pathogens reports the first animal model that recapitulates the severe and sometimes lethal respiratory symptoms seen in human patients and suggests that the common marmoset will play an important role in the development effective countermeasures against Middle East respiratory syndrome corona virus.

Recent studies had identified how the MERS-CoV recognizes and invades human cells: its spike protein binds to DPP4, a protein on the surface of human cells, and this leads to internalization of the virus which then takes over the human cell and turns it into a virus factory. Variations in DPP4 between animal species seem to determine susceptibility to MERS-CoV infection. For example, mice, hamsters, or ferrets, whose DPP4 is quite different from the human protein, seem resistant to the virus while rhesus macaques, whose DPP4 is very similar to the human one, are susceptible. However, while they can be infected with MERS-CoV, they develop only mild-to-moderate symptoms, unlike many human patients that carry very high loads of virus, get seriously ill, and sometimes die.

Rather than randomly testing animal species that might provide a better model by infecting them with MERS-CoV, researchers led by Heinz Feldmann and Vincent Munster (both from Rocky Mountain Laboratories, part of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Hamilton, Mont., USA) set out to identify animals whose DPP4 protein was similar to humans, especially the part known to bind directly to the viral spike protein. They found that marmoset DPP4 has an identical amino-acid sequence (amino acids are building blocks of proteins) to human DPP4 in the critical region. A three-dimensional model confirmed that any DPP4 amino acids that differed between the marmoset and human proteins are located away from the part of DPP4 that binds the viral spike protein.

Having thus good reasons to believe that marmosets would be susceptible to MERS-CoV infection, the researchers went on to infect nine animals with the virus. All of them got sick, and their lungs contained high loads of virus and showed signs of immune response and inflammation. Most animals developed progressive severe pneumonia, and two animals had to be euthanized according to pre-determined guidelines, because their condition worsened dramatically.

While this is an initial report and the researchers point to the need for additional experiments, they see several advantages of the marmoset over the rhesus macaque model and expect that “marmosets will serve as the animal of choice for future therapeutic studies where possible.” They also state that “the development of the more severe marmoset model will ensure a better pre-clinical analysis of treatments prior to clinical trials in humans” and express the hope that their model will make “a significant contribution to reducing the impact of MERS-CoV on global public health.”

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Philippine tarsier: Genetic proof of a new variety

It’s not a monkey. It’s not a lemur. It’s not an African Bush Baby or even a Madagascan Mouse. Meet the Philippine tarsier: a tiny, adorable and downright “cool” primate from Southeast Asia.

“It’s really not like any animals that Americans are familiar with,” said Rafe Brown, curator-in-charge at the University of Kansas’ Biodiversity Institute. “A tarsier has giant eyes and ears; an extremely cute, furry body; a long tail with a furry tuft at the end; and interesting expanded fingers and toe tips that look a bit like the disks on the digits of tree frogs.”

Brown said the tarsier (tar-SEER) has become the “flagship” iconic species for promoting environmental stewardship and ecotourism in the Philippines, a nation suffering from large-scale destruction of natural habitat.

“They’re threatened with habitat loss due to development, mining and deforestation from the timber industry,” Brown said. “On Bohol, where they are a big part of the tourist economy, literally thousands of animals are taken out of the wild, essentially harassed by tourists, and die in captivity due to the stress and inability of their captors to feed them an appropriate diet of live small animals. Tarsiers must eat an enormous amount every night to fuel their high metabolism.”

Because of threats to the tarsier, conservation efforts are mounting for the charismatic animal. But these have been thwarted by a lack of research: Too little has been known about the tarsier’s taxonomic diversity; there have been too few field studies; and a scarcity of genetic samples and voucher specimens in biodiversity repositories has left advocates of the tarsier in the dark. In short, to save the tarsier, experts have needed to know much more about the species.

“Basically, we can not legally protect something if we do not know that it exists,” Brown said.

Today, research by Brown and colleagues published by the journal PLOS ONE will shed new light on the animal’s genetic diversity and distribution. Additionally, the KU researchers have verified the presence of a new variety of tarsier, one heretofore only suspected to exist — the Dinagat-Caraga tarsier.

“Previously tarsiers were one species, divided into three named subspecies,” Brown said. “Our data disagree with that subspecies arrangement and instead demonstrate that the Philippine tarsiers are divided into three genetic units — but these units are from different localities than the named taxa. So our data provide an objective way to restructure conservation efforts and point the resources where they need to go, in order to really have an effective impact on preserving genetic diversity in the group.”

Brown’s student Anthony Barley performed genetic sequencing of the tarsiers’ mitochondrial DNA at KU, while fellow student Karen Olsen characterized the nuclear microsatellite loci variation of the animals.

According to Brown, the results “tell us that we need a protected area — such as a national park — in the ranges of each of the genetic units if our goal is to maximally preserve the genetic underpinnings of that biodiversity. Currently, the newly discovered entity, the Dinagat-Caraga tarsier, has no protection. It is known from a small island that is being extremely heavily mined. Thus, it emerges as a new lineage — and a new major conservation urgency.”

They question of just how many Philippine tarsiers exist has been “left sort of hanging” for 25 years until now, according to the researcher. The newly discovered Dinagat Island and Caraga Region tarsier was first recognized as possibly distinct by the Filipino biologist Dioscoro Rabor in the 1970s, and now is confirmed by the KU genetic analysis.

“The confirmation of Rabor’s early suspicions about the Dinagat Island tarsier population was extremely exciting, and it was very satisfying to affirm his very perceptive early observations,” Brown said. “He commented that it looked larger to him and had different shaped fingers and toes. I’m just glad we were able to bring new, modern tools to this problem and identify the Dinagat-Caraga tarsier as a real conservation priority.”

Brown and Filipino colleagues have called for the establishment of separate tarsier sanctuaries and protection programs within the range of “at least” the three genetic entities established by the research at the Biodiversity Institute. Each, he said, merits unique strategies and programs, along with identification and remediation of conservation threats — for instance “mining in Dinagat versus unregulated tourist industry on Bohol,” he said.

To do less, Brown said, would harm the tarsier’s long-term prospects, potentially depriving the Philippines and the rest of the world of one of nature’s most charming and curious mammals.

“They move very rapidly and jump from tree trunk to tree trunk with ‘ricochet locomotion,’” Brown said. “They bounce from small sapling trunk to trunk, then leap down to pounce on their prey. They’re completely carnivorous. This is relatively unique among primates. The tarsier is famous for not eating any vegetable material of any kind. They eat insects, small snakes, lizards, small mammals and birds. They communicate with ultrasonic calls outside the range of human hearing. The tarsier is so cool!”

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Hope for healthy hearts revealed in naked mole rat studies

Cardiovascular disease is the greatest killer of humans the world over, presenting huge financial and quality-of-life issues. It is well known that the heart becomes less efficient with age in all mammals studied to date, even in the absence of overt cardiac disease. However, scientists still don’t have a good understanding of how to prevent these functional declines that ultimately may lead to debilitating cardiovascular disease.

The longest-lived rodent, the naked mole rat, beats these odds and escapes cardiovascular aging, at least at ages equivalent to 92-year-old humans, researchers from the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio reported.

Kelly Grimes, a graduate student in the lab of Rochelle Buffenstein, Ph.D., at the Health Science Center’s Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies, has conducted the first studies of naked mole rat cardiovascular function. Her findings of maintained cardiovascular function during aging support earlier studies that this species resists the common signs of aging.

She found that, at rest, the heart of the naked mole rat beats very slowly (250 beats per minute). The rodent should have a heart rate twice as high for its body size. How much blood the heart pumps, how hard it contracts to pump the blood, and blood pressure in naked mole rats also are very low. “However, if they need to, for example during exercise, naked mole rats can ramp up their cardiac function with ease,” Grimes said. “Their entire cardiovascular system seems to be optimized.”

These data are from two papers recently published by Grimes and Dr. Buffenstein as part of a study supported by the American Heart Association. Dr. Buffenstein emphasized that the naked mole rat is unlike any other cardiovascular aging model studied.

“It looks like the naked mole rat maintains heart function at youthful levels at least till age 90,” Dr. Buffenstein said. “Clearly these animals hold the secret to healthy hearts in aging humans.”

Why do humans, rats, mice, monkeys, dogs and other animals show declines, but not the naked mole rat? Grimes is studying molecular mechanisms that might be protecting the naked mole rats’ cardiovascular structure and function. These protective mechanisms are likely closely linked to their natural subterranean environment and exceptional stress resistance.

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The above story is based on materials provided by University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio . The original article was written by Will Sansom. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Pigs’ hearts transplanted into baboon hosts remain viable more than a year

Investigators from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have successfully transplanted hearts from genetically engineered piglets into baboons’ abdomens and had the hearts survive for more than one year, twice as long as previously reported. This was achieved by using genetically engineered porcine donors and a more focused immunosuppression regimen in the baboon recipients, according to a study published in The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, an official publication of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery.

Cardiac transplantation is the treatment of choice for end stage heart failure. According to the NHLBI, approximately 3,000 people in the US are on the waiting list for a heart transplant, while only 2,000 donor hearts become available each year. For cardiac patients currently waiting for organs, mechanical assist devices are the only options available. These devices, however, are imperfect and experience issues with power supplies, infection, and problems with blood clots and bleeding.

Transplantation using an animal organ, or xenotransplantation, has been proposed as a valid option to save human lives. “Until we learn to grow organs via tissue engineering, which is unlikely in the near future, xenotransplantation seems to be a valid approach to supplement human organ availability. Despite many setbacks over the years, recent genetic and immunologic advancements have helped revitalized progress in the xenotransplantation field,” comments lead investigator Muhammad M. Mohiuddin, MD, of the Cardiothoracic Surgery Research Program at the NHLBI.

Dr. Mohiuddin’s group and other investigators have developed techniques on two fronts to overcome some of the roadblocks that previously hindered successful xenotransplantation. The first advance was the ability to produce genetically engineered pigs as a source of donor organs by NHLBI’s collaborator, Revivicor, Inc. The pigs had the genes that cause adverse immunologic reactions in humans “knocked out” and human genes that make the organ more compatible with human physiology were inserted. The second advance was the use of target-specific immunosuppression, which limits rejection of the transplanted organ rather than the usual generalized immunosuppression, which is more toxic.

Pigs were chosen because their anatomy is compatible with that of humans and they have a rapid breeding cycle, among other reasons. They are also widely available as a source of organs.

In this study, researchers compared the survival of hearts from genetically engineered piglets that were organized into different experimental groups based on the genetic modifications introduced. The gene that synthesizes the enzyme alpha 1-3 galactosidase transferase was “knocked out” in all piglets, thus eliminating one immunologic rejection target. The pig hearts also expressed one or two human transgenes to prevent blood from clotting. The transplanted hearts were attached to the circulatory systems of the host baboons, but placed in the baboons’ abdomens. The baboons’ own hearts, which were left in place, maintained circulatory function, and allowed the baboons to live despite the risk of organ rejection.

The researchers found that in one group (with a human gene), the average transplant survival was more than 200 days, dramatically surpassing the survival times of the other three groups (average survival 70 days, 21 days, and 80 days, respectively). Two of the five grafts in the long-surviving group stopped contracting on postoperative days 146 and 150, but the other three grafts were still contracting at more than 200 to 500 days at the time of the study’s submission for publication.

Prolonged survival was attributed to several modifications. This longest-surviving group was the only one that had the human thrombomodulin gene added to the pigs’ genome. Dr. Mohiuddin explains that thrombomodulin expression helps avoid some of the microvascular clotting problems that were previously associated with organ transplantation.

Another difference was the type, strength, and duration of antibody used for costimulation blockade to suppress T and B cell immune response in the hosts. In several groups, longer survival of transplants was observed with the use of anti-CD40 monoclonal antibodies but the longest-surviving group was treated specifically with a high dose of recombinant mouse-rhesus chimeric antibody (clone 2C10R4). In contrast, use of an anti-CD40 monoclonal antibody generated in a mouse (clone 3A8) did not extend survival. Anti-CD40 monoclonal antibodies also allow for faster recovery, says Dr. Mohiuddin.

No complications, including infections, were seen in the longest-survival group. The researchers used surveillance video and telemetric monitoring to identify any symptoms of complications in all groups, such as abdominal bleeding, gastrointestinal bleeding, aspiration pneumonia, seizures, or blood disorders.

The goal of the current study was to evaluate the viability of the transplants. The researchers’ next step is to use hearts from the genetically-engineered pigs with the most effective immunosuppression in the current experiments to test whether the pig hearts can sustain full life support when replacing the original baboon hearts.

“Xenotransplantation could help to compensate for the shortage of human organs available for transplant. Our study has demonstrated that by using hearts from genetically engineered pigs in combination with target-specific immunosuppression of recipient baboons, organ survival can be significantly prolonged. Based on the data from long-term surviving grafts, we are hopeful that we will be able to repeat our results in the life-supporting model. This has potential for paving the way for the use of animal organs for transplantation into humans,” concludes Dr. Mohiuddin.

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Antibodies together with viral ‘inducers’ found to control HIV in mice

Although HIV can now be effectively suppressed using anti-retroviral drugs, it still comes surging back the moment the flow of drugs is stopped. Latent reservoirs of HIV-infected cells, invisible to the body’s immune system and unreachable by pharmaceuticals, ensure that the infection will rebound after therapy is terminated.

But a new strategy devised by researchers at Rockefeller University harnesses the power of broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV, along with a combination of compounds that induce viral transcription, in order to attack these latent reservoirs of cells in an approach termed “shock and kill.” In tests on mice, 57 percent of animals treated in this way did not have the expected resurgence of virus in their blood after their treatment ended.

“This is the first time that any combination of agents has been found to prevent viral rebound in any animal model,” says Michel C. Nussenzweig, who oversaw the research.

Three Rockefeller labs collaborated on the study: Nussenzweig’s Laboratory of Molecular Immunology; Alexander Tarakhovsky’s Laboratory of Immune Cell Epigenetics and Signaling; and Jeffrey V. Ravetch’s Leonard Wagner Laboratory of Molecular Genetics and Immunology. The findings are published August 14 in Cell.

The problematic latent reservoirs of HIV-infected cells are established very early in the infections, possibly even before tests can detect the presence of the virus, and current drug therapies are unable to kill the latent cells.

“The latent reservoir remains the major barrier to curing HIV-1 infection,” says Nussenzweig, who is the Zanvil A. Cohn and Ralph M. Steinman Professor and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. “Our finding suggests that antibodies could play a significant role in disrupting the establishment and maintenance of the latent reservoir, which is believed to be a necessary step to curing patients of HIV-1.”

The Nussenzweig lab has worked for several years on broadly neutralizing antibodies, a recently discovered subset of antibodies with an unusually high ability to recognize HIV consistently despite the virus’s ability to rapidly mutate. Broadly neutralizing antibodies have shown great promise for treating HIV infection in mouse and monkey models of HIV. But by themselves they suffered the same problem that plagued other therapies: when you stop administering them, the virus rebounds.

Counterintuitively, the key to success in this instance was combining broadly neutralizing antibodies with viral inducers, compounds that prompt latent viruses to become active by promoting the transcription of their DNA. The idea is to eliminate the invisibility of the latent reservoir while simultaneously attacking the virus. More than half of the mice that received broadly neutralizing antibodies along with a cocktail of three viral inducers had no viral rebound at all, even three-and-a-half months after their last injection. (Broadly neutralizing antibodies alone, or even in combination with a single viral inducer, did not have this effect, nor did combinations of anti-retroviral drugs and viral inducers that have been attempted in the past.)

The researchers say that one reason broadly neutralizing antibodies may have succeeded where traditional drugs have failed is their ability to directly harness the power of the body’s own immune system using Fc receptors, which occur on a wide variety of immune system attack cells and help them precisely target the infection.

“A big surprise in this study was the important role the Fc part of the antibody played in amplifying the potency of broadly neutralizing antibodies,” says Ravetch, who is Theresa and Eugene M. Lang Professor. “Their effect in neutralizing latent reservoirs of HIV-1 was largely driven by Fc-receptor binding.”

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Koko The Gorilla Mourns Robin Williams

According to a Foundation spokesperson, when the calls regarding Williams’ death began to come into the facility, Koko approached Foundation co-founder Dr. Penny Patterson “with an inquiring look on her face.”

Dr. Patterson told Koko that “we have lost a dear friend, Robin Williams,” a spokesperson said. Later in the day, after hearing another person break down in tears, Koko signed “CRY LIP,” withdrew, and “became very somber, with her head bowed and her lip quivering,” as seen in the photo below.

Full story here .

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Wikipedia Refuses To Delete Photo As ‘Monkey Owns It’

Wikimedia, the organisation behind Wikipedia, has refused a photographer’s repeated requests to remove one of his images which is used online without his permission, claiming that because a monkey pressed the shutter button it owns the copyright.

British nature photographer David Slater was in Indonesia in 2011 attempting to get the perfect image of a crested black macaque when one of the animals came up to investigate his equipment, hijacked a camera and took hundreds of selfies.

Many of them were blurry and some were pointed at the jungle floor, but among them were a handful of fantastic images – including a selfie taken by a grinning macaque which made headlines around the world and brought Mr Slater his 15 minutes of fame.

“They were quite mischievous jumping all over my equipment, and it looked like they were already posing for the camera when one hit the button,” he said at the time. “The sound got his attention and he kept pressing it. At first it scared the rest of them away but they soon came back – it was amazing to watch.

“He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus. He obviously hadn’t worked that out yet.”

But after appearing on websites, newspapers, magazines and television shows around the world, Mr Slater is now facing a legal battle with Wikimedia after the organisation added the image to its collection of royalty-free images online. The Wikimedia Commons is a collection of 22,302,592 images and videos that are free to use by anyone online, and editors have included Mr Slater’s image among its database.

The Gloucestershire-based photographer now claims that the decision is jeopardising his income as anyone can take the image and publish it for free, without having to pay him a royalty. He complained To Wikimedia that he owned the copyright of the image, but a recent transparency report from the group, which details all the removal requests it has received, reveals that editors decided that the monkey itself actually owned the copyright because it was the one that pressed the shutter button.

Full story here .

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Supportive moms and sisters boost female baboon’s rank

A study of dominance in female baboons suggests that the route to a higher rank is to maintain close ties with mom, and to have lots of supportive sisters.

A female baboon’s social status is dictated not by size or strength, but by the rank of her mother — the higher the mother is ranked, the higher-ranked her daughter will be. For this reason, dominance rank in female baboons is thought to be determined at birth. Females born to high-ranking mothers are guaranteed a good spot in the pecking order, whereas females born to low-ranking mothers are usually stuck with their lot.

“Daughters of high-ranking females generally mature more quickly, produce more offspring, and have better access to food and mates. It’s like being born with a silver spoon in your mouth,” said Duke University biology professor Susan Alberts.

But her group’s study in the August 2014 issue of Animal Behaviour suggests there may be more social mobility in baboon society than previously thought.

Alberts and graduate student Amanda Lea of Duke and colleagues studied data from a population of wild yellow baboons that has been under close observation since 1971 near Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya.

The researchers determined dominance rank for the animals by analyzing pairwise interaction data collected for nine social groups over 33 years (from 1977 to 2010), and noting how the animals behaved. Females who are higher on the social ladder harass those lower in the ranks as a reminder of their right to first dibs on food or favored resting spots. A high-ranking female may assert her dominance by baring her teeth, lunging or slapping the ground, while a subordinate cowers, grimaces in fear, averts her gaze or slinks away.

By comparing each female’s rank at sexual maturity — measured as the age at her first period — with her position when she first became a mother, the researchers were able to track social mobility across early adulthood.

Nearly 25 percent of females either climbed up or slipped down the baboon social ladder, rising higher or lower than expected by the time they became mothers.

Downwardly mobile females had mothers who spent less time with them while they were growing up — either because mothers and daughters were separated during a splitting of the group or because the mothers died before their daughters reached adulthood. Such was the case with a young female named Abby, whose mother died when she was two and who never managed to achieve her expected rank.

It’s no surprise that having mom around is a good thing. Mothers intervene on behalf of their daughters in ‘playground spats’ over food or mates, and thus help ensure their daughters’ place in the pecking order, Alberts said.

But having the support of sisters proved to be a big help, too. The researchers found that females with more sisters were more likely to reach the rank transmitted from their mother.

Sisters give each other a boost by ganging up on unrelated rivals. But sisterly love has its limits: Older sisters help their younger sisters out when it comes to rising above females from other families, but when it comes to rising in rank within the family, older sisters aren’t much help. The researchers found that the more sisters a young female had, the less likely those sisters were to cede their own position to the younger sister.

Fathers and brothers had surprisingly little influence on the social status of their female kin, possibly because they tend to mate with multiple female partners, making their allegiances murkier than they are for females.

“One of his daughters may be fighting with another daughter from another mom, for example, or with another female that he wants to mate with,” Alberts explained, so he can’t or won’t intercede.

The study is part of a larger field of research on the benefits for our animal cousins of maintaining strong social ties with relatives.

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The above story is based on materials provided by Duke University . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Soy may help women’s hearts if they start early

A diet rich in soy may help feminine hearts, but timing matters, finds a new study published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society.

Lifelong soy consumption, similar to the diet of women in Asia, produces the least atherosclerosis. Switching to a Western diet after menopause, similar to Asian migrants to North America, leads to just as much atherosclerosis as a lifelong Western diet, and switching to soy from a Western diet after menopause helps only if there isn’t much atherosclerosis already.

Researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC, reached those conclusions based on their feeding study of cynomolgus monkeys before and after surgical menopause. They fed premenopausal monkeys a diet with protein derived mainly from animal sources or a diet with protein from high-isoflavone soybeans. After having their ovaries removed, mimicking human menopause, one group of monkeys continued to eat a soy diet, another switched from animal protein to soy, a third group stuck with animal protein, and a fourth switched from animal protein to soy.

After 34 months, cholesterol levels were good in the monkeys who ate soy before and after menopause. And for those that switched to a soy protein diet after menopause, similar to some North American women concerned about their heart health, cholesterol levels did improve significantly (with lower total, LDL, and VLDL and higher HDL). But when it came to how much plaque progressed in the arteries, there weren’t any statistically significant differences, despite trends favoring a lifelong soy diet and the switch to soy after menopause.

As far as the total amount of atherosclerosis was concerned, monkeys eating a lifelong soy diet showed a much lower proportion of complicated plaque in the arteries than the other monkeys.

There was a big advantage to a postmenopausal switch to soy for some of the monkeys, however. For those that had small plaques in the arteries at the time of menopause, the switch to soy after menopause markedly reduced the progression of plaque in the arteries.

These findings add to the similar ones from the Women’s Isoflavone Soy Health (WISH) clinical trial on atherosclerosis in women after menopause, but this animal study was able to model what the effects of a soy diet or soy supplements may be, based on women’s diets and heart health before menopause or very early after menopause, when artery plaques may still be small.

“This study underscores how important it is for women to get into the best cardiovascular shape they can before menopause. The healthy habits they start then will carry them through the years to come,” says NAMS Executive Director Margery Gass, MD.

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The above story is based on materials provided by The North American Menopause Society (NAMS) . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

How and where to find cheap monkeys for sale

India Hires Men In Ape Suits To Drive Away Parliament’s Monkeys

The Indian government is hiring men to pose as menacing langur monkeys to scare off the hundreds of macaques terrorising MPs and staff around its parliament and central government buildings.

M Venkiah Naidu, the urban development minister, told MPs on Thursday that 40 young people had been hired to disguise themselves as langurs – India’s bigger, predatory monkeys – to frighten away the macaques.

If the ape-men failed to rid the capital’s administrative centre of the monkey menace then marksmen armed with rubber bullets could be deployed.

The announcement reflects growing frustration at the continuing presence of macaque monkeys in the city centre and the terror and damage they cause.

The roam freely over the vast open lawns of India Gate, and assail government buildings where they chew through internet and telephone cables, attack staff for food, and occasionally jump in through the windows and pace the corridors of power.

Full story here .

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