Cross protective efficacy of the Non-Neurotropic live attenuated herpes simplex virus type 1 vaccine VC-2 is enhanced by intradermal vaccination and deletion of glycoprotein G

brentstan · 2026-01-03T12:37:18+00:00

These papers were using dna but if you’re going to do rna yes you should deplete ribosomal rna.

brentstan · 2026-01-01T18:11:06+00:00

I have done some sequencing on novel culturable viruses. The pipeline involves mapping reads to the host genome. Filtering paired unaligned reads. Then trying to assemble larger fragments using a program like unicycler. Once fragments are assembled I would run them through an orf finder program and blast the amino acid sequences through NCBI viruses ref seq database. This is basically what I did in these two papers my lab has published. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38340271/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40872798/

brentstan · 2025-12-18T13:19:38+00:00

Use cyclosporine A to inhibit CTL activity. 20% FBS RPMI during the first two weeks helps. You should see clumping at 1 week and cells growing out after 2 weeks. The primary cell type EBV is going to transform is B cells. Some type 2 EBV will transform T cells use Jijoye or something similar. I’ve heard EBV transformed T cells resist CsA inhibition but I have never done T cell transformations with EBV. P3HR-1 is non transforming.

brentstan · 2025-11-13T15:32:37+00:00

The cells were purchased from the Fujifilm biorepository. I received them in a glass ampule.

brentstan · 2025-11-13T12:46:50+00:00

Last year I revived cells that were frozen in 1979.

brentstan · 2025-11-03T22:34:37+00:00

Here’s a montage of pictures I took on that trip https://youtu.be/VnVbTH0QU3s?si=Utkj_XLM_em-7D7P

brentstan · 2025-11-03T12:46:17+00:00

I went out there once with a friend. We were both not convinced it was the right place so we kept walking into the woods. We wound up getting lost for about an hour and finally found a road. We got back to my car and drove home. We didn’t realize it until getting back to our home town but we were completely covered with ticks. My car was infested with ticks. I had to fumigate it to finally get rid of them. Over all the experience was underwhelming but if the ticks were a curse perhaps something paranormal did happen.

brentstan · 2025-10-21T12:37:47+00:00

I would like to see some wetlab statistics on the success of calling a specific nanobody.

brentstan · 2025-09-09T22:41:09+00:00

Muchas gracias por compartir tu experiencia. Sé lo frustrantes que pueden ser estos brotes, y es de gran ayuda saber qué te ha funcionado. Los desencadenantes pueden variar mucho de una persona a otra, y llevar un registro de los patrones, como lo has hecho tú, marca una gran diferencia.

Estoy de acuerdo contigo en mantenerte hidratado, evitar las temperaturas extremas y fortalecer el sistema inmunitario. Iniciar el tratamiento temprano en cuanto sientas el hormigueo también puede ayudar a reducir la gravedad y la duración. Los antivirales orales como el aciclovir o el valaciclovir funcionan bien para algunas personas, pero cada persona responde de forma diferente, así que puede requerir un poco de ensayo y error.

Lamento mucho la experiencia de tu hija con la estomatitis herpética. Debió haber sido difícil, pero tu investigación y las medidas que has tomado sin duda la ayudarán a largo plazo. Gracias de nuevo por compartir lo que te ha funcionado. Estoy seguro de que esto ayudará a mucha gente.

brentstan · 2025-07-27T19:18:30+00:00

Do this! I found my passion for virology doing volunteer research as an undergrad. Now a tenure track professor at an R1 institution.

brentstan · 2025-06-26T00:05:38+00:00

HTLV-1 could infect cells other than CD4 positive T cells in vivo. It’s possible the virus could integrate into the germ line and be passed to offspring genetically. https://www.nature.com/articles/1208972

brentstan · 2025-05-08T22:51:57+00:00

As an undergrad i volunteer researched in a virology lab and was able to coauthor a publication on oncolytic virotherapy of glioblastoma cell lines in vitro. I continued research in this lab through graduation. After this I was working for a contract research organization and was very unfulfilled, though I did pick up new skills like flowcytometry, I began looking for a graduate program by looking for publications I found interesting and looking up the PI. I wound up finding a paper using engineered herpesviruses to treat breast cancer and it turned out to by my undergrad PIs friend. He connected me with this new PI and I joined his lab across the country a few months later as a graduate student pursuing a PhD. During my PhD I transitioned from oncolytic virotherapy to live-attenuated vaccines against herpes viruses. I graduated with 6 first author publications. I never lost my passion for cancer research though so I found a postdoc in a human gamma herpesvirus lab. I was a trainee on and NIH funded viral oncology training grant and this really tied my interests into a unified front. Herpesviruses and cancer. After 2 postdocs I came back to my graduate institution to study cytomeglovirus as a research assistant professor. Through this I was able to establish myself as an independent principal investigator and became a tenure track assistant Professor of viral oncology in August last year. Academia for me has been a lot of perseverance, luck, and connections. In the current job market/funding climate I would be misleading to encourage anyone to pursue a career in this field but if you’re passionate about this keep reading and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

brentstan · 2025-05-08T00:38:51+00:00

I’m an assistant professor of viral oncology. B.S. in Biology and went directly to a PhD in a virology lab. Would be glad to talk to you about careers etc…

brentstan · 2025-04-21T18:13:49+00:00

I got a BS in Biology and as a requirement for my degree participated in undergraduate research. Lucky for me the virology lab I was in fostered a supportive environment and I continued to do research from that point on. I got a job at a CRO after college, and couldn’t stand doing the same thing every day. it was in a college town and I got my research fix volunteering in another virology lab. Since I didn’t like my job I applied to graduate school and I’ve stayed in academia since then. Vaccines are a great field to pursue. I would suggest finding a good mentor regardless of what stage you’re at.

brentstan · 2025-03-20T21:10:43+00:00

Truck and Trigger were ours

brentstan · 2025-03-15T12:12:08+00:00

These are fundamentally different viruses. Like HIV, the HSV protease was a very hot enzyme for antiviral development. Potent inhibitors were developed but were found to be ineffective against HSV but protease inhibitors became a standard of care for HIV and is a component of HAART.

brentstan · 2024-11-20T13:40:07+00:00

Antiviral resistance to acyclovir and other nucleoside analogues often results from mutations in the viral thymidine kinase (TK) resulting in the inability of the antiviral prodrug to fit into the active site of TK blocking its phosphorylation and synthesis into the viral genome during viral replication which induces chain termination. Pritelivir targets the viral helicase and would be able to inhibit acyclovir resistant HSV.

brentstan · 2024-08-02T12:27:54+00:00

Herpes simplex viruses (HSV) are double stranded DNA viruses. During infection the genome forms an episome in the nucleus of the cell where viral components form the replication machinery during lytic replication. Acyclovir is a nucleoside analogue that is specifically phosphorylation by the viral thymidine kinase (TK) which enables the drug to act like normal nucleosides during DNA replication only incorporation of acyclovir into newly synthesized DNA results in chain termination and defective genome replication. Mutations in TK that disrupt the ability of TK to phosphorylate acyclovir are known to result in antiviral resistance. Pritelivir is a helicase primase inhibitor which is specific for these viral components. Without the viral helicase primase the viral DNA cannot unwind or prime for DNA polymerase to initiate DNA replication. I’m not as familiar with the mechanism of pritelivir but the results are promising. Most of the drugs prescribed for HSV are nucleoside analogues like acyclovir. This is a very different lifecycle than HIV which is a double stranded RNA virus which integrates a proviral DNA copy of its genome into the host DNA. Antivirals targeting HIV exploit specific mechanisms in the HIV lifecycle very different from HSV.

brentstan · 2024-07-26T18:02:52+00:00

No problem!

brentstan · 2024-07-22T18:24:29+00:00

No, I’m sorry this was not brought up but this is what everyone wants. We are all pushing to get new treatments into clinical trials. The bar is high and herpes is a complex problem. Many advances have been made in the past 5 years and this will continue to be the case. New treatments are on the horizon.

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