PLoS medicine
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Recent importation of Lassa fever into Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States by travelers on commercial airlines from Africa underscores the public health challenge of emerging viruses. Currently, there are no licensed vaccines for Lassa fever, and no experimental vaccine has completely protected nonhuman primates against a lethal challenge. ⋯ Our data suggest that the Lassa vaccine candidate based on recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus is safe and highly efficacious in a relevant animal model that faithfully reproduces human disease.
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David Wilson of Médecins Sans Frontières, Thailand, discusses how the tsunami excacerbated the health status of Burmese migrants.
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Historical Article
Treating critical illness: the importance of first doing no harm.
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Human embryonic stem cells provide access to the earliest stages of human development and may serve as a source of specialized cells for regenerative medicine. Thus, it becomes crucial to develop protocols for the directed differentiation of embryonic stem cells into tissue-restricted precursors. ⋯ Our findings will help to elucidate the mechanism of mesoderm specification during embryonic stem cell differentiation and provide a platform to efficiently generate specialized human mesenchymal cell types for future clinical applications.