Mariëlle C. Haks

TL;DR: Analysis in zebrafish and human macrophage models of mycobacterial infection reveals that the DNA damage-regulated autophagy modulator DRAM1 functions downstream of pathogen recognition by the Toll-like receptor (TLR)/interleukin-1 receptor (IL1R)-MYD88-NF-κB innate immune sensing pathway to activate selective Autophagy.

TL;DR: To identify/monitor multi-component host biomarker signatures at the transcriptomic level in large human cohort studies, a dual-color reverse-transcriptase multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (dcRT–MLPA) method is developed and validated, permitting rapid and accurate expression profiling of as many as 60–80 transcripts in a single reaction.

TL;DR: These results identify a novel human T-cell subset with an unorthodox, multifunctional Th2 like phenotype and cytolytic or regulatory capacities, involved in the human immune response to mycobacteria and demonstrable in active TB patients’ blood.

TL;DR: Investigation of the longitudinal host response of a leprosy patient, who was affected by a type 1 reaction (T1R) after MDT-treatment, shows that increased inflammation, vasculoneogenesis and cytotoxicity, perturbed T-cell regulation as well as IFN-induced genes play an important role in T1R and provide potential T1r-specific host biomarkers.

TL;DR: Assessment of antibody persistence at 1 and 2 years in volunteers who received single-dose rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine found neutralising antibodies seem to be less durable, with seropositivity dropping from 64-71% at 28 days to 27-31% at 6 months in participants from the Geneva study.