Protocol Preview: In Vivo Gene Therapy Using Peptide-Based Delivery
Although gene therapy has been in discussion for decades, its translation to clinical practice has been a slow and challenging process. As a solution to this translational challenge, Allen et al. have proposed a peptide-based delivery method of Cre recombinase for in vivo gene therapy, which we review in this blog post.
Protocol Preview: Creating an Artificial Human Thymus in Mice
The majority of treatments for immunodeficiencies are temporary fixes, in part due to a lack of preclinical models that can accurately predict immune responses in humans. However, a novel model recently published in Nature Methods has potential to greatly improve future immune response studies, which we review in this blog post.
Skin-on-Chip for Preclinical Herpes Disease Modeling
Organs-on-a-chip are attractive alternatives for bridging the translational gap between preclinical and clinical stages in vaccine development, particularly for herpes simplex virus (HSV). In this blog post, we review an article from Nature Communications on a skin-on-chip device for modeling HSV infection, as well as evaluating immune responses and antiviral drug efficacy (featured image © 2022 Sun et al., licensed under CC BY 4.0).
Visualizing the Intracellular Immune Response to SARS-CoV-2 with Fast, High-Content Imaging
Experts discuss how automated microscopy and image analysis can quantify critical markers of infection and describe the insight provided by microscopy in the context of SARS-CoV-2 infection and inflammation.