TWiV reviews a seminal paper showing that chemically modified bases in RNAs suppress recognition by Toll-like receptors, a finding that that was essential for the development of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
Dear Dr. Griffin: My wife & I are two Pharm.D.’s in San Francisco & we’ve been glued to TWiV & your Clinical Updates since the beginning. (I’m also a DDS, but I’ve found my Pharm.D….
John Mascola joins TWiV to discuss the history and mission of the NIH Vaccine Research Center, how it prepared for devising pandemic vaccines, and development of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Paula writes: Coyote and deer Oh yes they will prey quite easily on even mature whitetail bucks although they can’t take them down as quickly as a pack of wolves of course (but there are…
Jon Yewdell returns to TWiV to discuss how antibodies are made, vaccination against SARS-CoV-2, antigenic variation of the virus, booster shots, and more.
Bronwen writes: Hi Twiv team, Greetings from Sydney Australia where it is damp 24 degrees C with possible storms. I just listened to the 2021 wrap up and shared your sense that 2020 and 2021…
Gladys writes: I have a question for my daughter who is seven weeks pregnant due for a booster and just caught COVID last week and was quite sick. My question is should she still get…
Alessandro Sette returns to TWiV to discuss the observation that SARS-CoV-2 vaccination induces T cells that are able to cross-recognize variants Alpha to Omicron.
Peter writes: Hi Twivsters, Maybe you can answer a pretty basic question that my limited research skills could not find an answer for: what is the ace2 receptor doing there in the first place? What…
TWiV reviews findings that increased fitness of the Omicron variant is due to immune evasion, not an increase in intrinsic transmissibility, and determination of infectious viral load in patients infected with wild type, Delta and Omicron viruses reveals lack of correlation with RNA loads determined by RT-PCR, similar levels of shedding among Delta and Omicron, and greatly reduced shedding in vaccinated people.
The Hosts of TWiV
Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D.
Brianne Barker, Ph.D.
Rich Condit, Ph.D.
Alan Dove, Ph.D.
Daniel Griffin, M.D.,
Ph.D., CTropMed CTH
Angela Mingarelli, DVM
Jolene Ramsey, Ph.D.
Kathy Spindler, Ph.D.