Our bodies rely on the production of potent, or 'high affinity', antibodies to fight infection. The process is very complex, yet Sydney scientists have discovered that it hinges on a single molecule, a growth factor, without which it cannot function.

On June 10, 2008 the scientific journal "Vaccine" published a paper by the Massachusetts based biotech company Cure Lab, Inc., demonstrating that a protein sequence important in neurodegenerative Huntington's disease can be safely used as a new generation of vaccine adjuvants.

In an online paper in the journal Nature, Yale University researchers funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, explain how a common ingredient in many vaccines stimulates and interacts with the immune system to help provide protection against infectious diseases.

Chemists in Georgia are reporting development of a fast new method to detect fake Tamiflu, the mainstay medication for preventing and treating bird flu. Tamiflu has become a target for counterfeiters as recent outbreaks of bird flu have increased public demand for supplies of just-in-case antiviral drugs to use in case of an epidemic of the deadly disease.

News stories about an allegedly harmful link between the mumps, measles and rubella vaccine and the onset of autism had little effect on whether U.S. parents immunized their children, according to a review of immunization records and news stories. Parents’ decisions were more likely influenced by recommendations from their child’s pediatrician, the researchers said.

One of the world’s deadliest diseases, caused by the Ebola virus, may finally be preventable thanks to US and Canadian researchers, who have successfully tested several Ebola vaccines in primates and are now looking to adapt them for human use.

Manipulating a previously identified protein may be the key to developing an effective H5N1 influenza A virus vaccine say researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo. They report their findings in the March 2008 issue of the Journal of Virology.

Researchers in Colombia, South America, describe a new strategy for designing the next generation of synthetic vaccines that could lead to more effective treatments for fighting malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS and other infectious diseases.

A novel aerosol version of the most common tuberculosis (TB) vaccine, administered directly to the lungs as an oral mist, offers significantly better protection against the disease in experimental animals than a comparable dose of the traditional injected vaccine, researchers report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Hib meningitis has been virtually eliminated in young children in Uganda just five years after the country introduced Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) vaccine nationwide, according to an independent study.

Despite millions of dollars spent on food safety research over the last 10 years, ground beef recalls due to E. coli O157:H7 were higher in 2007 than in 2006, according to researchers from Kansas State University and West Texas A&M University. E. coli O157:H7 has been linked to foodborne illnesses in humans after consuming contaminated beef and produce.

A novel technique for vaccinating against a variety of infectious diseases – using an oil-based emulsion placed in the nose, rather than needles – has proved able to produce a strong immune response against smallpox and HIV in two new studies.