Whether shuttling between their lab’s two locations, in Boston’s Longwood Medical Area and Cambridgeport, or visiting the offices of Tome, their gene-editing startup, Gootenberg and Abudayyeh have become as well known in science circles for their friendship as their research and business ventures. “Science is difficult, and it’s great to have someone to do it with,” said Gootenberg. “You got to work with people you enjoy hanging out with.” Read Full Article  ..read more

“The reason why it hasn’t been eliminated is because there’s an animal reservoir. The bacteria can infect animals, and because we can’t treat all animals in the wild, it persists in nature and thus occasionally causes a limited number of human cases,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who is not involved in the Oregon case. Barouch thinks it is “very unlikely” that the plague will spread beyond the person in Oregon. “As long as the person and their immediate contacts are treated — which did oc ..read more

13th Annual Barouch Lab Retreat, January 2024 ..read more

Dr. Dan Barouch, who runs the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which helped develop a COVID vaccine for Johnson & Johnson, said that coronavirus vaccines were among the most lucrative pharmaceutical products ever. But, he said, “that will not likely be replicated unless we have another global pandemic, which, of course, we hope we won’t.” Read Full Article ..read more

“We are not going to be able to completely stop transmission, and we’re not going to be able to get rid of this virus in the human population,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “Then, the decision of how to bring something into policy is really a summation of the medical risks as well as the risks to society as a whole.” Read Full Article ..read more

It also appears that HV.1 could also be slightly better at escaping prior immunity to COVID-19, but not enough to cause alarm, Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, told NBC News. Read Full Article ..read more

“Whenever a new variant dominates, then by definition it has an advantage,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, the head of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Read Full Article ..read more

Vaccination rates have bottomed out just as some experts predict a COVID surge over the holidays. The JN.1 variant, which has triggered steep increases in waste water levels across Europe and is now becoming dominant in the United States, has developed mutations that make it more transmissible or better able to evade defenses, said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Since more people will be infected, COVID-19 related deaths will inevitably rise. Yet the new boosters are a good match for the variant, mak ..read more

Dozens of mucosal COVID-19 vaccines are in development (see ‘High hopes’) and several have been approved in countries including China and India. But according to an 8 December report by the London-based data and analytics firm Airfinity, the efficacy of existing mucosal COVID-19 vaccines has been disappointing and the available data suggest that “they do not offer a meaningful increase in protection against infection”. Source: Airfinity However, the latest studies in monkeys and other laboratory animals offer hints on how these vaccines might be improved. A team led by Dan Barouch, a vaccin ..read more

At this point, it’s clear from all the infections that the vaccine isn’t living up to early hopes. “The initial impression that these vaccines were 95% effective against symptomatic infection and 100% effective against severe disease are no longer accurate,” said Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a professor at Harvard Medical School. That’s because our antibodies wane over time and the virus mutated much faster and more radically than scientists had expected. Barouch thinks a better booster is possible. In a stud ..read more