Thursday, December 18, 2025

New vaccine could be first to prevent deadly emerging tropical disease

Researchers have developed the first vaccine able to successfully protect nonhuman primates from melioidosis, a long-neglected and deadly tropical disease on the rise

Tulane University

Melioidosis is a little-known tropical disease now seen as an emerging global public health threat. The disease is caused by bacteria that live in soil and groundwater, and no vaccine exists to prevent infection, which can rapidly cause life-threatening pneumonia or sepsis.

Now, researchers at Tulane University have developed the first vaccine shown to successfully protect nonhuman primates from melioidosis. The findings, published in Nature Communications, are a key step toward human clinical trials and preventing a bacterial infection that’s often resistant to treatment – and which public health experts see spreading to areas it was not previously found.

“This bacteria can cause an aggressive form of pneumonia within 72 hours that can obliterate the lung. Our study found that the animals protected by this vaccine showed no damage; their lungs were completely normal,” said corresponding author Lisa Morici, PhD, a microbiologist and immunologist at Tulane University School of Medicine. “It’s an incredible result and we hope to advance the vaccine soon to human clinical trials.”

Melioidosis is caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei, bacteria most often found in Southeast Asia and northern Australia. Although long considered absent from the United States, B. pseudomallei has been recently found in the Gulf Coast as well as in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The bacteria can enter open wounds of someone walking in a rice paddy, for example, or be ingested or inhaled.

There are an estimated 165,000 cases of melioidosis worldwide annually, though it’s believed to be highly underreported as symptoms can vary drastically. Mortality rate ranges from 20-50% as the bacteria are naturally resistant to many antibiotics, and relapse can occur even after months of intensive therapy.

“With rising temperatures, melioidosis is occurring in new places with endemic cases in the U.S., and we’re also seeing an increased risk to global travelers and people in the military,” Morici said. “This bacteria is a Tier 1 Select Agent – the same threat level as the virus that causes smallpox and the bacteria that causes anthrax – and we’re closer than ever to being able to protect people against it.”

Morici is a pioneer in developing next-generation vaccines using a new class of adjuvants or immune system triggers based on outer membrane vesicles (OMVs), which are nanoparticles shed by bacteria as they grow. Our bodies recognize OMVs secreted by live bacteria during natural infection. When used in vaccines, they can fool the body into mounting a powerful immune response.

While the vaccine has not yet gone to human clinical trial, it was tested on human immune cell samples. The resulting antibody and T cell responses “suggested that the vaccine will produce the desired immune responses for protection in humans,” Morici said.

Development of the vaccine has taken more than a decade and required global collaboration between Tulane University, Northern Arizona University, University of California Irvine and Charles Darwin University in Australia.

“Our vaccine was effective against aerosolized bacteria, the most lethal and difficult to protect against,” Morici said. “This has been a massive undertaking that we hope will be able to protect people from a very dangerous disease.”

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-025-67213-6

Article Title

An outer membrane vesicle vaccine prevents lung pathology in a macaque model of pneumonic melioidosis

Article Publication Date

9-Dec-2025

COI Statement

JBM and LAM are inventors of the OMV vaccine and have a U.S. Provisional Application No.: 63/554,522 filed. H. Yoon, C. Dao, and J. Moser are/were Sanofi employees and may hold shares and/or stock options in the company. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

Bird researchers use virtual reality to bring fieldwork experience to classroom

Penn State

VR simulation of fieldwork with birds — image:
The VR simulation includes a 360-degree video of David Toews, the Louis Martarano Career Development Professor of Biology in Penn State’s Eberly College of Science, performing real fieldwork, from setting up nets to measuring and banding a warbler.
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Credit: VRmivora

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A flutter of blue and yellow darts through a field in late May. Trees, shrubs and summer flowers fill the landscape. A blue-winged warbler is just within reach, with one swift motion it can be gently grasped, banded and studied to understand the health and evolution of one of North America’s most colorful birds.

A practice once reserved for scientists, this moment is now possible anywhere in the world thanks to a virtual reality experience developed by scientists at Penn State.

The virtual reality (VR) program, named VRmivora, was developed under a five-year U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award earned by David Toews, the Louis Martarano Career Development Professor of Biology in Penn State’s Eberly College of Science. Toews partnered with the Penn State Center for Immersive Experiences to conceptualize and advance VRmivora.

The project was first started by an undergraduate in Toews’ lab, Lisa Wang, a Schreyer Scholar who said she wanted to improve science outreach and communication to students and the public. With a passion for birds and using art in education, she said she sought a way to help others understand and even experience the fieldwork typically done in ornithology. 

“With the work that we do, part of it is field work, part of it is in the lab and part of it is computation. Most of it is either not accessible to most people or, for the computational parts, kind of abstract,” Wang explained.

She pitched the idea of a VR experience to Toews and created the original bird 3D model that was included in the NSF grant proposal and used to make the VR program, which is now available to download for free on SideQuest, a gaming and community VR platform.

“It’s a great instructional tool for anyone high school age or older, as we work with a lot of natural field systems that aren't always readily accessible,” Toews said.

The name VRmivora is a play on words from the genus of the blue-winged warbler, Vermivora cyanoptera, a colorful songbird with bluish wings and a yellow body. Toews’ research focuses on both golden-winged and blue-winged warblers and how they hybridize and cross genetically. Offspring from the crosses can have a combination of different colors and patterns, but what genes or diet factors affect this is a focus of their research.

Toews and his team investigate this question by extracting DNA from warbler fecal samples to determine their diet. However, to collect these samples, they must have access to wild warblers. Unfortunately for student researchers, the migratory birds appear in Pennsylvania in the middle of May, which is when students are either taking finals or leaving campus, so they rarely get the opportunity to go into the field.

“This is where VRmivora comes into the picture,” Toews said. “It doesn’t replace being able to go outside in the field and do this research, but it’s a close approximation. When I tell students about bird banding or using mist nets, they don’t have a visual to understand what I am talking about. It fills a gap for one part of the scientific process that isn’t always accessible for students.

By rendering an outdoor environment that has trees, grass, woods and birds, the VR experience allows students to interact with the birds and the lab on a small scale, Toews explained.

“You can make mistakes in the VR experience that you don’t want to make in real time,” Toews said. “You can also experience things that you probably wouldn’t be able to do in the field. One of my favorite parts of the experience is when you can grab a bird and bring it up and you can see all of the different parts of the bird that you may not be able to in real life.”

In the VR experience, students can approach warblers perched on low-level branches, listen to their song, and delicately hold them for closer observation and to take samples, comparing them to a virtual field guide. The simulation also includes a 360-degree video of Toews’ team performing the bird catching in real life, from setting up nets to measuring and banding a warbler. Then, students are taken to a virtual lab where they go through the steps to analyze the samples, like extracting and processing genetic material.

The Center for Immersive Experiences developed VR models for the "pure” VRmivora warblers and their hybrids, with Bart Masters, Lead Programmer for XR, and Alex Fatemi, Lead 3D Modeler, working together on the project. Wang developed aninitial bird model, drawing on her 3D animation experience from high school and “a lot of trial and error,” Wang said.

Toews includes the VR experience in his “BIOL445: Molecular Ecology” class, where students work through the simulation under Toews’ guidance, learning to study evolution through the lens of genetics. Toews said he also hopes to showcase VRmivora at DNA Day this coming spring, an event for high school students organized by the National Human Genome Research Institute to learn about DNA and genetics, contributing to science outreach.

“I think for instructors, for my colleagues, seeing what is possible with VR will hopefully spark some creative juices for others in the field of biology and ecology and evolutionary biology,” Toews said. “This is one way to bring a bit of that experience to students. While it doesn't replace that opportunity, it supplements it for a larger group of students that may not have the ability or access to the birds that we are working with.”

At Penn State, researchers are solving real problems that impact the health, safety and quality of life of people across the commonwealth, the nation and around the world.

For decades, federal support for research has fueled innovation that makes our country safer, our industries more competitive and our economy stronger. Recent federal funding cuts threaten this progress.  

Learn more about the implications of federal funding cuts to our future at Research or Regress.

UAlbany researcher wins grant to study impact of PFAs ‘forever chemicals’ on edible crops, food quality

University at Albany, SUNY

ALBANY, N.Y. (Dec. 18, 2025) — A researcher in the University at Albany’s College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering was awarded nearly $420,000 from the National Science Foundation to study how the accumulation of toxic “forever chemicals” in edible plants impacts food quality and safety.

Weilan Zhang, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental & Sustainable Engineering, has been studying perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, since he came to UAlbany as a postdoctoral associate in 2018.

The large group of synthetic chemicals developed in the 1940s for their stain- and water-resistant properties and used in products like nonstick cookware, food packaging, clothing and firefighting foam are known as “forever chemicals” because they are extremely difficult to break down and can persist in the environment for a long time.

Because of their widespread use and resistance to degradation, PFAS have been found just about everywhere — in water, soil, air and animals, including humans. Contamination is higher in some areas than others, such as near industrial facilities, military bases and airports that use firefighting foams. Exposure has been linked to negative health effects like high cholesterol, decreased immune response, liver and kidney disease, and certain types of cancer.

“There are some studies showing that if plants take up these pollutants and animals consume those plants, PFAS can go through the plants to the animals,” Zhang said. “And because the half-life of the chemicals in animals is very long — decades — they can slowly accumulate in animals, and eventually people eat those animals, or directly eat the plants, and then they accumulate in human beings.”

As part of the NSF grant, Zhang will study how PFAS are taken up by plants, how these chemicals distribute across different parts of the plant tissue, and how this accumulation affects the nutritional quality of food crops.

“Studying the uptake and distribution of PFAS in edible plants, especially in parts that strongly accumulate PFAS mass, is essential for evaluating the potential health risks associated with consuming PFAS-contaminated crops,” the project summary reads. “Understanding the dynamics of PFAS in soil-plant systems is also critical for developing regulatory standards to protect public health and the environment.”

How PFAS Get into Crops

Zhang’s prior research into PFAS remediation laid the groundwork for his latest grant. His earlier work focused on removing PFAS from water and soil using high temperature and pressure treatments, as well as phytoremediation, which uses plants to absorb environmental contaminants into their biomass, which is then treated to a thermal degradation process.

“This gave us a lot of preliminary data showing that plants are capable of taking up PFAS from the water and soil into their biomass,” he said. “We have been using grass and wetland species to do this phytoremediation process, but my previous studies inspired me to go into more agricultural settings and see how crops take up PFAS and how that affects the agriculture system.”

Food crops may be particularly prone to PFAS contamination. The chemicals are prevalent in biosolids, or sewage sludge, which can be applied as fertilizer, as well as in pesticides that are sprayed directly onto crops and the water used to irrigate them. Once in the soil, they can be absorbed by crops and livestock, leading to the presence of PFAS in produce, milk and other food supplies.

Where PFAS Accumulate in Plants

PFAS do not distribute uniformly across all plants and can pose different risks based on which part of the plant someone consumes, Zhang noted. Long-chain PFAS are more likely to be found in the roots of certain plants, while short-chain PFAS may be more present in the leaves and seeds. Zhang’s study will elucidate which proteins act as carriers helping to transport PFAS across these tissues.

Three crop species were selected for the study — radish for its edible root, lettuce for its edible leaves, and soybean for its edible seeds.

“This represents the whole growth cycle of the plants,” he said.

Zhang is growing the plants from seed using clean soil collected from a local farm, which will then be spiked with controlled levels of PFAS. As the plants grow, he will use a high-resolution mass spectrometer to visualize the PFAS distribution across different parts of the plant. Zhang introduced an innovative approach for visualizing and mapping PFAS in plants in a paper co-authored earlier this year in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Letters.

“When PFAS concentration is low, we have previously not observed negative effects on plant growth,” he said. “But when it’s high, we do see negative effects. In radishes, we see a smaller bulb. In lettuce, we see the leaves go yellow. And in soybean seeds, we may not see the seeds at the end of the growth cycle.”

The mechanism of how PFAS affect plant nutrient uptake and biosynthesis will also be evaluated through the analysis of gene expression and changes in nutrient content, he said.

“We hope this helps other researchers and farmers understand how PFAS affects the growth and nutritional quality of plants, and provides the general public information about the potential health risks associated with consuming those PFAS-containing products,” he said.

With the help of graduate students, Professor Weilan Zhang is investigating how the absorption of PFAS by plants impacts food quality.

In Assistant Professor Weilan Zhang’s laboratory, plants are grown hydroponically from seed and spiked with controlled levels of PFAS as part of an ongoing study to determine the impact of these toxic chemicals on food safety and quality.
From left to right: PhD students Madhav Kharel, Amit Lama and Professor Weilan Zhang.
Credit
Patrick Dodson/UAlbany

Social media feeding ‘shadow pandemic’ of disordered eating in teens, SFU study finds

Social media use and exposure to influencers is driving an increase of disordered eating among B.C., Canada teens, warns a recently published study from Simon Fraser University.

Simon Fraser University

Social media use and exposure to influencers is driving an increase of disordered eating among B.C. teens, warns a recently published study from Simon Fraser University.

A recent study found one in four teens in British Columbia reported disordered eating or significant anxiety about eating and body image; rates were even higher among transgender and sexual minority teens. These overall risks were associated with social media use and exposure to influencer-driven misinformation, researchers say.

Key findings:

23% of youth report disordered eating behaviors.
Higher prevalence among marginalized groups: up to 40% for transgender youth.
Strong association between social media use and disordered eating.
Just one to two hours of social media use per day increased odds of disordered eating for cis-sexual minority girls and transgender and gender-expansive youth.
Positive childhood experiences act as a protective factor.

“Social media can amplify existing insecurities and intensify image-based comparisons for all teens, and transgender and gender-expansive youth in particular might use caloric restrictions as a way to avoid developing sexual characteristics,” says Hasina Samji, health sciences professor, and senior author of the study.

“Without counterbalancing voices in these spaces, harmful messages about body image and eating habits can spread unchecked and perhaps help fuel this shadow pandemic of disordered eating that some physicians in B.C. are noticing.”

The cross-sectional study, published in The Journal of Adolescent Health, used 2022–2024 data from an annual youth well-being survey conducted in B.C schools, primarily Grade 11 students.

The survey found disordered eating was highest among girls identifying as lesbian, bisexual, or queer (43 per cent) and transgender and gender-expansive youth (40 per cent). More than 32 per cent of cis-hetero girls and nine per cent of cis-hetero boys also reported disordered eating.

Cis-sexual minority girls and transgender and gender-expansive youth had increased odds of exhibiting disordered eating with only one to two hours of social media use per day.

“The challenges and pressures of parenting are immense, but not every child is developmentally ready for access to social media at age 13, 14, 15, or even 16,” says Samji, a senior scientist in Population Mental Wellbeing at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control.

“It depends on each teen’s level of digital literacy, and how well they regulate when they're having challenges with friends as they use social media together, or phones to connect with each other,” she adds.

The study found positive childhood experiences – like strong family bonds, supportive adults, and peer and community belonging – buffered the risk of disordered eating, as did reduced time on social media.

Not a problem parents or teens can solve alone

Managing teens’ access to and time on social media platforms "requires co-ordinated action from schools and public health authorities, as well as holding tech companies accountable for their algorithms," says Andrés Delgado-Ron, public health researcher and lead author of the study.

While Australia has opted for an outright ban on social media for teens under 16, Samji suggests “we’d be better off working alongside youth to co-develop healthy approaches to screentime and social media usage, which they will ultimately eventually be exposed to anyway.”

She says tailored interventions could address the specific needs of those at greater risk while preserving the benefits and social connection that teens may get from social media platforms.

The study calls for more digital literacy education, around intentional social media use, more community spaces for in-person connections among youth, and public health guidelines and school policies to reduce reliance on social media for essential communication.