News

Infection prevention and control (IP&C), as a discipline grounded in implementation science, must simultaneously incorporate research, innovation and experience from academia, industry, and clinical practice to best serve the needs of the patient. As the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) gathers for its 40th Annual Conference this month, it seems an opportune time to reflect on the interdependence of the main players in working toward the vision of healthcare without infection and the role that industry plays in advancing the work of our members.

Infection preventionists are helping to determine which practices make it to the bedside, a critical component of this diffusion of evidence is called implementation science. A recent study revealed that there is general agreement among hospital-based IPs in regard to which interventions have weak or strong evidence supporting their use to prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAIs).

Researchers have determined the precise chemical structure of the HIV capsid, a protein shell that protects the virus's genetic material and is a key to its ability to infect and debilitate the human body's defense mechanism. Detailed simulations were achieved with the use of a supercomputer on a 64 million atom sample. The capsid has become an attractive target for the development of new antiretroviral drugs that suppress the HIV virus and stop the progression of AIDS. The research paper describing these results is the cover story of this week's journal Nature (May 30, 2013).

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal, Africas Malaria Battle: Fake Drug Pipeline Undercuts Progress," outlines a counterfeit pharmaceutical problem that is top of mind at Saint Marys College in Notre Dame, Ind. Chemistry professor Toni Barstis and her undergraduate students at this Catholic, womens, liberal arts college have researched and developed Paper Analytical Devices (PADs) that can screen whether an antimalarial drug is real. What they have developed, along with researchers at the University of Notre Dame, are inexpensive PADs, the size of a business card, that are simple to use and provide almost immediate results. There are two patents pending for the research.

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania have developed a new gene therapy to thwart a potential influenza pandemic. Specifically, investigators in the Gene Therapy Program, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, directed by James M. Wilson, MD, PhD, demonstrated that a single dose of an adeno-associated virus (AAV) expressing a broadly neutralizing flu antibody into the nasal passages of mice and ferrets gives them complete protection and substantial reductions in flu replication when exposed to lethal strains of H5N1 and H1N1 flu virus. These strains were isolated from samples associated from historic human pandemics one from the infamous 1918 flu pandemic and another from 2009.