Latest Francisella tularensis Stories

By Richard Harth, The Biodesign Institute A powerful new class of therapeutics, known as recombinant attenuated Salmonella vaccines (RASV), holds great potential in the fight against fatal diseases including hepatitis B, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, AIDS and pneumonia.Now, Qingke Kong and his colleagues at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, have developed a technique to make such vaccines safer and more effective. The group, under the direction of Dr. Roy Curtiss,...

Finding may offer future alternative to antibioticsA team of scientists from government, academia and private industry has developed a novel treatment that protects mice from infection with the bacterium that causes tularemia, a highly infectious disease of rodents, sometimes transmitted to people, and also known as rabbit fever. In additional experiments with human immune cells, the treatment also demonstrated protection against three other types of disease-causing bacteria that, like the...

Immunologists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and the have found a unique quirk in the way the immune system fends off bacteria called Francisella tularensis, which could lead to vaccines that are better able to prevent tularemia infection of the lungs. Their findings were published today in the early, online version of Immunity.F. tularensis is an intracellular pathogen that infects cells in the lungs called macrophages,...

- Company Presents Data on Cethromycin Showing In Vivo Efficacy against Tularemia - CHICAGO, March 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Advanced Life Sciences Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADLS), a biopharmaceutical company developing cethromycin, a novel once-a-day antibiotic, to treat respiratory tract infections and to combat bioterror threats, announced today that it received notice from the Department of Defense (DoD) that it has exercised its option to award the Company $2.0 million under the...

U.S. researchers said on Thursday they have developed an antibiotic that works by blocking the communication signals of serious stomach bugs like salmonella, keeping them from releasing toxins that make people sick. Dr. Vanessa Sperandio of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center said the sensors in bacteria are waiting for the right signal to initiate the expression of virulent genes.Sperandio and colleagues found a compound named LED209, that disarms the bacteria instead killing...

Scientists hope a vaccine is on the horizon for tularemia, a fatal disease caused by the pathogen Francisella tularensis, an organism of concern as a potential biological warfare agent. Until recently we knew very little about this bacterium. However, according to the August issue of the Journal of Medical Microbiology, research on the bacterium has been reinvigorated and rapid progress has been made in understanding how it causes disease.Infection with F. tularensis can result in a variety...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Small amounts of a bacteria that causes "rabbit fever" were found on Washington's National Mall last weekend as thousands of protesters marched against the Iraq War, U.S. health authorities said on Saturday. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said several government environmental air monitors in the Mall area detected low levels of Francisella tularensis bacteria that cause Tularemia, commonly known as rabbit fever, on September 24-25. Public...