Dan Barouch, MD, PhD, Chief of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, has been selected as the recipient of the 2023 Paragon Award for Research Excellence from the Doris Duke Foundation at a celebration event on October 26, 2023 in New York City. The Paragon Award for Research Excellence celebrates physician scientists who have significantly advanced knowledge toward the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of human disease or who have, through their professional contributions, improved health outcomes of patients today. The award is anchored in the conviction that to impact clin ..read more

“The logistic complications certainly were not helpful, but I think that the low uptake is more than that. The low uptake reflects that most of the public is no longer concerned about Covid,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Barouch said HV.1 could be slighter better than EG.5 at spreading among people or infecting those with prior immunity to Covid — but not enough to cause alarm among scientists. “I would expect that it might be a slight increase in transmissibility or immune escape, which is wh ..read more

“These data should be considered by patients and their physicians, but there is no reason for alarm. The increased risk of stroke appears to be small and must be balanced against the known benefit of these vaccines in elderly individuals,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Read More ..read more

“We’ve always known that the elderly as well as individuals with comorbidities are disproportionately affected; also, that males are more affected than females. So this is really consistent with a lot of information that we’ve seen previously,” Barouch said of the CDCreport. “The elderly and people with comorbidities really should be encouraged to get the fall booster.” Read Full Article ..read more

HVTN 307 Phase 1, HIV This study is assessing the safety and immunogenicity of ferritin nanoparticles expressing native-like HIV-1 envelope trimers followed by an mRNA boost in adults without HIV between the ages of 18 to 55 . This study is currently enrolling participants. Name* First Last Email* Phone* Consent I would like to receive information on other Center for Virology and Vaccine Research studies. Which study are you interested in?* Select One COVID-19 T&D Repository vYF02 COV2008 Mpox Tissue and Data Repository HVTN 303 Infant Vaccine Biorepository How did you ..read more

HVTN 142 Phase 1, HIV This study is assessing the Safety, Reactogenicity and Immunogenicity of VIR-1388 (an HIV vaccine candidate) compared with Placebo in Healthy Participants without HIV between the ages of 18 to 55. This study is currently enrolling participants. Name* First Last Email* Phone* Consent I would like to receive information on other Center for Virology and Vaccine Research studies. Which study are you interested in?* Select One COVID-19 T&D Repository vYF02 COV2008 Mpox Tissue and Data Repository HVTN 303 Infant Vaccine Biorepository How did you hear about this st ..read more

“If there wasn’t so much hype about BA.2.86, that would actually be the focus of the paper,” Dan Barouch, MD, PhD, told the news outlet, referring to the FL.1.5.1 strain. Barouch is director of one of the labs that conducted the new tests, and he also directs the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Massachusetts. Read Full Arti ..read more

New data released in recent days by a number of research labs, however, have suggested that existing immune defenses might hold up just fine against BA. 2.86. An academic laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Center for Virology & Vaccine Research, headed by Dr. Dan Barouch, found stronger than expected antibody responses to the strain in tests they ran. The results have yet to be published, but were summarized on social media by one of the scientists who conducted the study. Read Full Article ..read more

“Two independent labs have basically shown that BA.2.86 essentially is not a further immune escape compared with current variants,” Dan Barouch, MD, PhD, director of the center for virology and vaccine research at Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, told the news outlet. The lab tests showed people who had been vaccinated with monovalent shots, had gotten bivalent vaccines or who had recently been infected with an XBB variant were able to neutralize the strain as well as or a bit better than other circulating variants. In both lab studies, people with the highest degree of immu ..read more

“The combination of the large number of mutations and that it seemed to have emerged in many countries around the world at the same time raised the specter that it could be a variant that causes substantial concern,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “That’s why many research groups throughout the world have been trying to generate as much info as quickly as they could about it.” In a preprint paper, a team led by Barouch reported that people’s immune ..read more