Plague

Wake Forest scientists find new combination vaccine effective against plague

Plague, a bacterium that ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages and is today one of the most feared potential agents of bio-terrorism, may have met its match, according to Wake Forest University School of Medicine scientists. Steven B. Mizel, Ph.D., principal investigator, told the American Gastroenterological Association meeting in Chicago that when mice immunized with a new combination vaccin...

Studies reveal how plague disables immune system, and how to exploit the process to make a vaccine

Two studies by researchers at the University of Chicago show how the bacteria that cause the plague manage to outsmart the immune system and how, by slightly altering one of the microbe's tools, the researchers produced what may be the first safe and effective vaccine. Both papers -- one published online July 28 in Science Express and one in the August issue of Infection and Immunity -- fo...

Novel plague virulence factor identified

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have identified a previously unknown family of virulence factors that make the bacterium responsible for the plague especially efficient at killing its host. In the process, the team not only demonstrated that the use of the common roundworm is a valid model for studying the virulence of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. They a...

Plant-derived vaccines safeguard against deadly plague

Through an innovative feat of plant biotechnology and vaccine design, researchers in the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University have successfully turned tobacco plants into vaccine production factories to combat the deadliest form of plague. The vaccine elicits a protective immune response in guinea pigs. The results are considered to be a milestone in the future development of a new vac...

A wolf in sheep's clothing: Plague bacteria reveal one of their virulence tricks

The bacterium that causes the plague belongs to a virulent family of bacteria called Yersinia, a group that also includes a pathogen responsible for food poisoning. These bacteria insert into their host cells proteins and other virulence factors, which kill by -- among other things -- disrupting the cells' normal structure. One of these proteins, called YpkA, attacks a cell's internal skeleton. N...

Plague proteome reveals proteins linked to infection

Recreating growth conditions in flea carriers and mammal hosts, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists have uncovered 176 proteins and likely proteins in the plague-bacterium Yersinia pestis whose numbers rise and fall according to the disease’s virulence. The team, led by the Department of Energy laboratory staff scientists Mary Lipton and Kim Hixson, identified the proteins as...

Study illuminates how the plague bacteria causes disease

The bacteria responsible for the plague and some forms of food poisoning "paralyze" the immune system of their hosts in an unexpected way, according to a new study in the September 8, 2006 issue of the journal Cell, published by Cell Press. The researchers found that these bacteria, which belong to the genus Yersinia, harbor a protein that mimics an apparently unrelated mammalian enzyme. T...

Will the plague pathogen become resistant to antibiotics?

A small piece of DNA that helps bacteria commonly found in US meat and poultry resist several antibiotics has also been found in the plague bacillus Yersinia pestis, gene sequence researchers report. The ability to resist many of the antibiotics used against plague has been found so far in only a single case of the disease in Madagascar. But because the same ability is present in other k...

How plague-causing bacteria disarm host defense

Now, researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have identified a novel molecular target for an effector protein calle...