First pill for dengue shows promise in human challenge trial

First pill for dengue shows promise in human challenge trial

The positive early data supports ongoing Phase II trials of the pill to prevent the four different types of dengue in a real world-setting.

“It is the first ever to show antiviral activity against dengue,” Marnix Van Loock, who oversees emerging pathogens research for J&J’s Janssen division, said of the drug.

In human challenge trials, researchers intentionally expose healthy volunteers to a pathogen to test a vaccine or treatment, or better understand the disease they cause.

Dengue fever, while often asymptomatic, is also known as “break bone fever” for the severity of the joint pain and spasms that some patients experience. It has long been a scourge across much of Asia and Latin America, causing millions of infections each year and tens of thousands of deaths, and is likely to spread further as climate change makes more areas hospitable for the mosquitoes that spread it, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist Jeremy Farrar said earlier this month.

In the trial done with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 10 volunteers were given a high dose of the J&J pill five days before being injected with a type of dengue. They continued to take the pill for 21 days afterwards.

Six of the 10 showed no detectable dengue virus in their blood after being exposed to the pathogen, as well as no signs that their immune system had responded to infection by the virus over 85 days of monitoring.

The five people in a placebo group, who were also injected with dengue, all showed detectable virus when tested. Trial participants received standard care from medical professionals where necessary, and the virus used was a weakened version to minimise symptoms.

Scientists create human embryo in lab without eggs, sperm

Scientists create human embryo in the lab without eggs, sperm

The models accurately emulated embryonic development in its earliest stages - a process still poorly understood due to ethical constraints on real embryo research.

A stem cell–derived human embryo model at a developmental stage equivalent to that of a day 14 embryo.

In a scientific first, researchers at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science have successfully created synthetic models of 14-day-old human embryos derived entirely from stem cells grown in a lab.

The breakthrough, reported in the journal Nature, provides an unprecedented glimpse into the mysterious earliest stages of human development and could open up new avenues of research into infertility, birth defects, and organ growth.

Led by molecular biologist Professor Jacob Hanna, the Weizmann team started with two types of stem cells - those reprogrammed from adult skin cells and others derived from established lab-grown stem cell lines.

Using a specialised technique developed by Hanna in 2013, they reverted the cells to an earlier, more flexible “naive” state resembling a 7-day-old embryo ready for implantation.