Harvard Medical School researchers have discovered one way that a hardy disease-causing bacteria could be surviving in the lungs of chronically infected cystic fibrosis (CF) patients.

New insights into how a subpopulation of helper T-cells provides immunity and promotes survival following infection with an AIDS-like virus offer a new means of predicting an AIDS vaccine's effectiveness, a discovery that could help scientists as they test these vaccines in clinical trials.

Scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have observed for the first time that gene expression can occur in the form of discrete "pulses" of gene activity. The researchers used pioneering microscopy techniques, developed by Dr. Robert Singer and colleagues at Einstein, that for the first time allow scientists to directly watch the behavior of a single gene in real time. Their findings appeared in the current issue of Current Biology.

UCSF's Habit Abatement Clinic is testing a vaccine that enlists help from the immune system to keep nicotine away from the brain. The vaccine is designed to help smokers quit and to limit the urge to start smoking again.