News & Announcements
Read the latest news from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine’s Department of Microbiology-Immunology. The links below take you to articles where you can learn more about our faculty’s latest achievements, awards and honors.
11.19.2021Respiratory syncytial virus infection during infancy results in metabolic reprogramming in epithelial cells lining the airway, according to a recent study.
11.01.2021Northwestern Medicine investigators have discovered that a microtubule regulatory protein inhibits early HIV type 1 (HIV-1) infection.
09.21.2021A Q&A with Hank Seifert, PhD, the John Edward Porter Professor of Biomedical Research and professor of Microbiology-Immunology.
08.18.2021In a new Northwestern Medicine study in mice, researchers took one of the current vaccines, which is based on the novel coronavirus’ infamous spike protein, and added a different antigen, the nucleocapsid protein, to form a new, potentially improved version of the COVID vaccine. The nucleocapsid protein, which is an internal RNA-binding protein, may help kick the immune system into high gear much more quickly than the spike protein is capable of since it is among the most rapidly and highly expressed proteins in coronaviruses.
“At this point, we’re just trying to figure out ‘What should the 2.0 vaccines be?’” said senior and corresponding study author Pablo Penaloza-MacMaster, PhD, assistant professor of microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “It seems like adding nucleocapsid to the vaccine renders it more protective, relative to having only the spike.”
08.10.2021Inefficient cardiac repair after heart attacks is partially driven by a maladapted response to a low oxygen environment by immune cells, according to a study published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
06.24.2021Inhibiting a specific protein complex in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may be a promising therapeutic target for treating the disease, according to a Northwestern Medicine study.
06.17.2021Karla Satchell, PhD, professor of Microbiology-Immunology, joins John Williams on WGN Radio 720.
06.16.2021"There is great need for new approaches to drug discovery to combat the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic and infections from future coronaviruses," said Karla Satchell, professor of Microbiology-Immunology at Feinberg, who leads an international team of scientists to analyze the important structures of the virus.
05.12.2021Researchers at Northwestern University said they found evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe for moms and their unborn babies.
05.10.2021"If we have more people that decide not to get vaccinated then there's gonna be more opportunities for the virus to mutate and evolve and come up with different variants," said Pablo Penaloza-MacMaster, a vaccine researcher at Northwestern Medicine.
04.12.2021Stephen Miller, PhD, received the 2021 Technology Innovation and Development Award from the Society For Biomaterials for work on a nanoparticle that induces gluten tolerance in celiac disease.
03.29.2021Prolonging a cellular defense response to inflammation could help regenerate the protective coating of axons that is degraded in diseases such as multiple sclerosis, according to a recent study.
03.22.2021The AXL immune cell receptor has been linked to cardiac allograft vasculopathy, a thickening of vessel walls in transplanted hearts years after implantation, according to a recent study.
03.16.2021An age-related accumulation of a signaling molecule may be one culprit behind older adults’ vulnerability to viral pneumonias, according to a recent study.