Making Sense of Medical Science (MSMS)

A medical scientist explains medical news for lay people

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Steve Clark, PhD is a retired university professor with a PhD in immunology and a past Special Fellow of the Leukemia Society of America. Clark has published dozens of papers based on his research and holds two drug patents. He taught medical and graduate students about cancer biology and genetics, and about research ethics. He also directed an NIH-funded PhD Graduate Program and chaired several executive-level faculty committees. Clark served on the University Chancellor’s Speaker’s Bureau. While retired, Clark has been blogging on the COVID pandemic, which is the subject of his next book.

Category: mucosal immunity

  • NIH Launches First Trial Of Nasal COVID Vaccine

    Wouldn’t it be nice if a vaccine could be developed to nip the infection in the bud at the site of entry so it could not set up shop at all? That is an idea behind a mucosal vaccine that I described earlier. This summer, NIH launched the initial Phase 1 trial to begin testing…

  • Vaccine Disinformation Moves To Congress

    This was not a meeting called by a regular committee but an ad hoc gathering of some anti-vaccine rogues. It was held in a tiny back room in the Capitol and was poorly attended, poorly staffed, and poorly equipped. It was described as a meeting of the “shadow Congress;” accurately named as it dabbled in…

  • While SARS-CoV-2 And Our Immune Systems Do A Dance, We Get Re-Infected

    The natural immune response, like the vaccine immune response, is robust and effective, yet both are only directed against a very small portion of a big pathogen, and both are very leaky in that one can still get infected again! What gives?