Cutting-Edge Research for Global Health
At Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), microbiologists, virologists, and other scientists focus on the increasing incidence of emerging infectious diseases. Many of these pathogens pose the threat of causing large scale epidemics or global pandemics. The goal of the NEIDL is to predict their appearance, detect, study, and respond to them in a timely manner. Because of the NEIDL’s extraordinary biocontainment capabilities, researchers have been able to work safely with a variety of live pathogens including COVID-19, HIV/AIDS, Ebola/Marburg, Zika, Yellow Fever, among others. Understanding basic molecular aspects of a pathogen, the interplay of the pathogen with its host, transmission dynamics, and clinical manifestations are all essential for the development of better diagnostics and safe, effective therapeutics and vaccines for us to treat, or even better, be able to prevent these diseases.
In the News
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After 30 years of decline, tuberculosis is rising in the U.S. again. How did we get here?
After declining for three decades, tuberculosis (TB) rates in the U.S. have been increasing steadily since 2020.
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Is COVID-19 Still a Pandemic?
The Brink asked three Boston University researchers—a virologist, an epidemiologist, and an emergency room physician—to explain the shifting status of COVID, how to decide when a virus has gone from a pandemic to endemic, how much people should protect themselves and others, and why language matters.
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Novel compound protects against infection by virus that causes COVID-19, preliminary studies show.
Compounds that obstruct the “landing gear” of a range of harmful viruses can successfully protect against infection by the virus that causes COVID-19 finds a new study from NEIDL researchers and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.