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CDC Now Recommends HPV Vaccine for Boys as well as Girls

The federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) last October recommended that 11- and 12-year old boys be vaccinated routinely with the quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to help prevent anal cancer and genital warts that this virus can cause. Members of ACIP, who meet under the auspices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Ga., years earlier recommended routine vaccination for girls of this age to protect them against HPV, which increases their risk of developing cervical and other cancers. In a related development, the results from a clinical trial evaluating the quadrivalent HPV vaccine, which is produced by Merck, indicate it protects against the risk of anal cancer among men who have sex with men, according to Joel Palefsky of the University of California, San Francisco and his collaborators. Details appear in the October 27, 2011 New England Journal of Medicine (365:1576).


Recent Highlights: Host-Gut Microbiota Interactions

Here are some recent highlights of host-gut microbiota interactions, a widely studied topic these days:

● An intact commensal gut flora is needed to trigger stepwise immune responses that lead to a demyelinating autoimmune disease in mice that is a model for multiple sclerosis in humans, according to Gurumoorthy Krishnamoorthy of the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried, Germany, and colleagues. Details appear in the 26 October 2011 Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature10554.

● Yogurt, which some consider a probiotic, can affect the gut microbiota of yogurt eaters in subtle but complex ways, altering metabolic pathways rather than the numbers or kinds of those bacteria-in both mice and humans, according to Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, Mo., and his collaborators. Details appear in 26 October 2011 Science Translational Medicine, DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3002701.

● The gut microbiota of fruit flies is simple, and a particular enzyme function from one of its members, Acetobacter pomorum, can replace all functions of the usual five-membered consortium under some conditions, satisfying key developmental and metabolic homeostasis needs of the host, according to Won-Jae Lee of Seoul National University in Seoul, South Korea, and collaborators there and at other universities. Details appear in the 4 November 2011 Science, 334:670.

● The gut bacteria of bumble bees can protect their host against an intestinal parasite, Crithidia bombi, according to Hauke Koch and Paul Schmid-Hempel of Eidgeno¨ ssische Technische Hochschule in Zurich in Zurich Switzerland. Details appear in the November 14, 2011 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi/ 10.1073/pnas.1110474108.


Recent Highlights: Viruses

Here are some recent advances involving research on assorted viruses:

● Two human host genes, one on chromosome 6 and the other on 10, appear to increase the susceptibility of children to dengue virus shock syndrome, according to Khor Chiea Chuen of the Genome Institute of Singapore and collaborators there and at several institutions in Vietnam. Details appear in the 16 October 2011 Nature Genetics, doi:10.1038/ng.960.

● A marine virus that causes infectious salmon anemia and more commonly is associated with Atlantic salmon was detected in a few samples of wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest, according to Richard Routledge at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, and his collaborators. "The combined impacts of this influenza-like virus and the recently identified parvovirus that can suppress the immune system could be particularly deadly," he says, calling for "an international volunteer epidemiological team" to track these viruses in Pacific salmon.

● An engineered version of the M13 bacteriophage that produces collagen can make self-assembling films with "hierarchical structure," according to Seung-Wuk Lee of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and his collaborators. Details appear in the 20 October 2011 Nature, doi: 10.1038/nature10513.

● A monoclonal antibody directed against the Hendra virus can protect animals against an otherwise lethal infection with this virus, according to Christopher Broder of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., and his collaborators. Details appear in the October 19, 2011 Science Translational Medicine, DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3002901.

● Lloviu virus, an Ebola-like virus that occurs in bats, is the first filovirus believed to be native to Europe, according to Antonio Tenorio of the National Center of Microbiology in Madrid, Spain, and his collaborators. Details appear in the October 2011 PLOS Pathogens.

iGEM Announces 2011 Competition Results

A team from the University of Washington (UW), Seattle, in November was declared the overall winner of the iGEM 2011 competition (see feature, "Living Machines: Some Assembly Required," page 13). The 2011 iGEM contest, divided into three regional tiers-Europe, the Americas, and Asia-was bigger and more complex than its predecessors, and involved 160 teams and more than 2,000 participants at the college level. The UW team constructed an Escherichia coli strain to produce alkanes, the main constituents of diesel fuel, tinkered with a protease gene to make it more adept at degrading gluten, and worked with vectors to build and incorporate a magnetosome into E. coli. Several months earlier, a team from Greenfield Central High School in Indiana was named the gold prize winner in the first jamboree for the iGEM High School Division. Part of the Greenfield team project involved constructing a yeast strain that fluoresces red when it detects cadmium in the environment.

World Intellectual Property Organization, Others Set Tropical Diseases Program

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and universities and other nonprofit organizations recently launched "WIPO Re:Search," to promote development of new drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics to treat neglected tropical diseases, malaria, and tuberculosis. Members of this consortium agreed to make selected intellectual property (IP) assets available under royalty-free licenses to researchers working on neglected tropical diseases, according to WIPO Director General Francis Gurry. "WIPO Re:Search is a ground breaking example of how a multi-stakeholder coalition can put IP to work for social benefit," he says. Adds NIH Director Francis Collins, "We want to ensure that our biological materials and patents covering treatments or vaccines for neglected tropical diseases, as with all diseases, are available as broadly as possible to speed the development of new products for people who are most burdened by these diseases, and WIPO Re:Search helps us to do this."