News | 2021.02.02
Cancer is the leading cause of mortality in France. In the last 40 years, survival rates have increased for several types of cancer, such as breast or prostate cancer. However, brain cancer is still an incurable disease, as it usually becomes resistant to therapy and relapses in a relatively short time. The outcome is almost inexorably the patient death. Researchers headed by Chiara Zurzolo at...
Document de presse | 2021.01.25
Since early 2020, the Institut Pasteur has been engaged in research in several of its areas of scientific expertise, including virology, diagnostics, pathophysiology, epidemiology, modeling, therapeutic research and vaccine research. A number of research programs to find a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 epidemic, are under way. In light of the intermediate results...
Fiche maladie | 2015.10.06
West Nile virus is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes. It causes sudden fever, sometimes associated with neurological complications that can be severe in many animal species. Since it was first identified in East Africa, the virus has been observed on every continent. It is currently endemic in the Mediterranean Basin, Central Europe and North America, where it is responsible for fatal human...
Fiche maladie | 2015.10.06
Leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease that causes severely debilitating cutaneous or visceral lesions, which can be fatal if left untreated. The plural form "leishmaniases" is sometimes used, as the disease is actually a group of diseases caused by different parasites of the genus Leishmania, transmitted by the bites of sandflies. These parasitic diseases are considered emerging neglected diseases...
News | 2021.01.26
Candida albicans is a yeast that naturally resides in the human intestinal tract, but which can prove to be a formidable pathogen in the event of a drop in the host's immune defences, responsible for superficial or generalised ailments, sometimes fatal. A research group including researchers from the Institut Pasteur has studied the morphological mechanisms facilitating infection by C. albicans....
News | 2021.02.01
PCR tests are currently the gold standard for detecting SARS-CoV-2. These tests are reliable, but their complexity makes them difficult to use for point-of-care testing (POCT), in other words testing outside the laboratory. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur and ESPCI Paris-PSL have developed COVIDISC, a new portable device for this purpose. Since 2014, Institut Pasteur scientists have...
News | 2021.02.05
According to the WHO recommendations, a multi-centre surveillance study has been implemented among healthcare workers in five African countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Niger, Central African Republic and Madagascar. Coordinated by Institut Pasteur, this cohort study aims to identify the contamination risk factors and better understand the transmission/spread of the virus. The revue “...
News | 2021.02.08
Membrane vesicles (also known as extracellular vesicles) are produced by all kinds of organisms. They are small lipid bags that come off a donor cell and get internalized by a recipient cell. Their role is to carry biological information and they are described as key intercellular communication players. However, their role in the microbial world is still very much unknown. Researchers from the...
Fiche maladie | 2023.09.15
Legionellosis is a collective term for diseases caused by Legionella bacteria, including the potentially fatal Legionnaires' disease. The most common species, Legionella pneumophila, causes a severe lung infection. The recent emergence of the disease can be explained by the affinity of Legionella bacteria for modern water supply systems. Although there is no vaccine for Legionnaires' disease, it...
Document de presse | 2021.02.12
What if more inclusive urban planning for poor populations was key to fighting dengue fever? This is what researchers from the CNRS, the Institut Pasteur and the Indian Council of Medical Research1 have demonstrated using a geographical approach applied to the greater city of Delhi (India). Their study is published in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Disease on 11 February 2021. Dengue is a...