David Tscharke

Canberra too!

Molecular basis of autoimmune disease protection by MDA5 variants Loss-of-function MDA5 variants increase the risk of chronic inflammation but protect against autoimmune disease. Singh et al. show that autoimmune-protective variants impair MDA5 signaling via differe...

Good fun to contribute to this super paper from Yorgo Modis' lab where we looked at the impact of disease-associated MDA5 mutations on its structure, biochemistry and antiviral functions #immunosky www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Great people doing outstanding science!

A great story showcasing the brilliant Yi Ning Fu, who I had the privilege of supervising last year as a student with the equally fantastic @agrowlipowli.bsky.social. It's a huge pleasure scienceing with them.

Cool science to save cute devils: Honours student targets contagious cancer Scientists from all over the world have been racing to understand the fundamentals of Devil Facial Tumour Disease and find a way to stop it. One of them is Yi Ning (Sabrina) Fu, a recent Honours gradu...

“Tasmanian devils are the world's largest remaining marsupial carnivore and have a very important ecological niche,” says Yi Ning (Sabrina) Fu, @jcsmr.bsky.social. “And they are cute and adorable—we need to save them.”

That's where cutting-edge virology comes in. science.anu.edu.au/news-events/...

Bovine H5N1 binds poorly to human-type sialic acid receptors - Nature Nature - Bovine H5N1 binds poorly to human-type sialic acid receptors

After 8 months of peer review, our manuscript was published today @nature.com showing that bovine H5N1 viruses bind poorly to human-type sialic acid receptors. We now know that the virus is only 1 HA substitution away from efficiently binding human receptors.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My first post on BlueSky, I could not access the same handle as my X (someone hacked into that one):

So it's @peterhotez for X and @peterhotezmdphd for BlueSky

I'm a pediatric-vaccine scientist based in Houston TX at our Texas Medical Center

A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia - Nature Using a natural experiment that avoids common bias concerns, this study finds that the live-attenuated shingles vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis within a follow-up period of...

The vaccine against Shingles helps protect against dementia, results of a natural experiment, adding to prior evidence
"implications are profound"
New @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy to be added

Endogenous antigen processing promotes mRNA vaccine CD4+ T cell responses Lipid nanoparticle (LNP)-encapsulated nucleoside-modified mRNA vaccines elicit robust CD4+ T cell responses, which are essential for antiviral immunity. While peptides presented to CD4+ T cells via ma...

Huh. Well this is neat- endogenous antigen presentation on MHC II is a feature of mRNA vaccines.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Doesn’t matter what The Age says; the fact is it’s taken money to publish hate speech

Big news

What if We Can't Rely on PubMed? - Absolutely Maybe PubMed is incredibly reliable. And a lot depends on it. It’s an ecosystem built around MEDLINE, the steady feed of new publications…

Hate that it has come to this, but it's time to consider PubMed vulnerable to enshittification. My latest post @plos.org discusses the lines we need to fight to hold – and alternatives we can rely on internationally:

absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2025/02/14/w...

#medlibs

the evolution of mpox Clade Ib in DRC. Great collaborative study with support from @EDCTP3 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here’s a reason why the incoming NIH Director, health economist Jay Bhattacharya, should know cutting indirect costs at NIH is self-defeating and stupid.

Every $1 invested in NIH returns $2.5.

So $4B “savings” is actually $10B we lost.

Molecular determinants of cross-strain influenza A virus recognition by αβ T cell receptors TCR-peptide-HLA ternary structures define molecular mechanisms of TCR cross-reactivity toward natural influenza variants.

Timely study by Katherine Kedzierska and Jamie Rossjohn and colleagues defining key structural features of #Tcell binding to circulating #influenza strains from 1918 to ~present #ImmunoSky www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A call for editors of biomedical journals to resist the banning of terms for political reasons www.cmi-comms.com/article/S295...

Elon doesn't give a shit about bioweapons research and would probably fund it if it were advantageous to him.

The US doesn't do or fund any bioweapons research. Elon is lying that they do because he wants the tax dollars to subsidize him instead of the legitimate public health research we paid for.

Intelligence community report, June 2023:

“… no indication that the WIV’s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor…”

Facts matter.

@charlesgaba.com is a hero and downloaded CDC’s entire website. A small group of us has come together to preserve this critical resource and make it accessible to the scientific community.

More to come. These data are public and they are ours. Deletion disobedience is one way to fight back.

In which I provide links to archived versions of every CDC.gov page available pre-purge (Part 1 of 15) As horrific as it is that the Trump/Musk Administration is purging data from federal websites, it's good to know that the Internet Archive has been archiving much of it. However, in addition to the Ar...

📣 UPDATE: OK, still working with some others to figure out the best way to present it all, but in the meantime here's the first batch of links to the most-recent archived versions of every page at the CDC prior to the Trump/Musk Purge:

acasignups.net/25/02/02/whi...

Is 2024 Australia's worst year yet for violence against women?
-it's not "an epidemic". It's ENDEMIC to Australia, and that's the problem. Stop making this seem like a surprise.
Every.
Single.
Time.
The surprise is the lack of political anger at it. From anywhere.
www.sbs.com.au/news/article...

CDC says H5N1 bird flu sample shows mutations that may help the virus bind to cells in the upper airways of people The CDC said Thursday that the mutations, detected in a sample taken from a Louisiana patient, may help bind the virus to the upper airways in people.

The #H5N1 #birdflu virus from a severe case in Louisiana shows it was developing mutations that could help it attach to cells in human respiratory tracts, including a mutation seen in a recent severe case in British Columbia, Canada, the #CDC reported today. www.statnews.com/2024/12/26/c...

Coupling antigens from multiple subtypes of influenza can broaden antibody and T cell responses The seasonal influenza vaccine contains strains of viruses from distinct subtypes that are grown independently and then combined. However, most individuals exhibit a more robust response to one of the...

There's a really interesting new paper out in Science for people who care about immunity to flu (which should be everyone because flu is a VERY big problem):
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Here's my thread explaining this work🧵

Tracking the origin and fate of osteomorphs

Excited to offer 2 fully funded PhD projects with Peter Croucher @garvaninstitute.bsky.social using intravital microscopy to track osteoclast/osteomorphs dynamics using novel mitochondrial reporters. Domestic & int'l students from diverse bkg welcome! Please share!

www.unsw.edu.au/research/hdr...

Science’s 2024 Breakthrough of the Year: Opening the door to a new era of HIV prevention A drug with a novel mechanism protects people against the AIDS virus for 6 months. It could speed the end of the epidemic—if those who need it most get access

Amazing enough for the potential impact on HIV, but this line caught my eye "other viruses have their own capsid proteins... ...this drug's triumph raises the exciting prospect that similar capsid inhibitors could fight other viral diseases." www.science.org/content/arti...

This is the result of the continuous development and improvement of our methods by @agrowlipowli.bsky.social and Stewart Smith. Key applications are vaccines and virolytic cancer therapies. Hit us up if you can't see past the paywall - we're happy to help with methods and tips.

This doctor raised the alarm about a deadly mpox outbreak that went global Placide Mbala is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2024.

"Early this year, cases of mpox erupted across Central Africa, killing hundreds...Mbala led a team of researchers who sounded the alarm...and urged health officials both in the DRC and in neighbouring countries to devise plans to contain the monkeypox virus’s spread." 🧪⚕️

Why hasn’t the bird flu pandemic started? Some scientists examining mutations found in H5N1 viruses fear major outbreak is imminent but others says pathogen remains unpredictable

If an #H5N1 pandemic starts tomorrow or in three months, there will be little mystery as to how it happened. The conditions are all there. They have been for a while.
So in some ways the more interesting question to me at the moment is: Why aren’t we in a pandemic yet?
Story here, 🧵 to come:
🧪#IDSky

Happy to be included