Fresh Science

Hepatitis C, which infects 10,000 Australians each year and is the country’s leading cause of liver transplantation, may have finally met its match as Melbourne scientists develop a vaccine. Dr Patricia Vietheer and her collaborators at the Burnet Institute and biotherapy company CSL have found a way to remove the camouflage that hides the virus…

HIV can hide out in the brain, protected from the immune system and antiviral drugs, Dr Lachlan Gray and his colleagues at Monash University and the Burnet Institute have found.

Researchers at the CSIRO’s Australian Animal Health Laboratory have developed a new test for foot-and-mouth disease that involves no infectious viral material and can differentiate between infected and vaccinated animals. This ‘DIVA’ test could transform how foot-and-mouth disease is controlled in future, because it’s so inexpensive and does not require infectious virus to produce the…

How mini-earthquakes and tornados could one day be saving lives Monash University engineer Leslie Yeo is using tiny earthquakes and tornados to assist the detection of biohazards and germ warfare. He and collaborator James Friend at the Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory hope to integrate their technology into an inexpensive, credit-card-sized sensor within five to ten years.