Publications by authors named "Rebecca Rooks"
Heterologous COVID-19 vaccine boosters have not been evaluated for patients with hematological malignancies. A Novavax booster was administered for 56 individuals with hematological malignancies who had received a primary COVID-19 series and prior boosters with mRNA vaccines only. Blood specimens were obtained at baseline (pre-vaccine), 28 days, and 168 days after vaccination with the Novavax booster.
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- The cortical cytoskeleton is a dense layer of actin filaments just below the cell membrane in animal cells, especially in insulin-secreting beta cells.
- A long-held belief was that this actin layer stops insulin from reaching the cell surface.
- New experiments show that changes to the actin layer don’t really affect insulin release, suggesting that other factors help control insulin secretion instead. *
Just under the plasma membrane of most animal cells lies a dense meshwork of actin filaments called the cortical cytoskeleton. In insulin-secreting pancreatic β cells, a longstanding model posits that the cortical actin layer primarily acts to restrict access of insulin granules to the plasma membrane. Here we test this model and find that stimulating β cells with pro-secretory stimuli (glucose and/or KCl) has little impact on the cortical actin layer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Patients with lymphoid malignancies are at risk for poor coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related outcomes and have reduced vaccine-induced immune responses. Currently, a 3-dose primary regimen of mRNA vaccines is recommended in the United States for immunocompromised hosts.
Methods: A prospective cohort study of healthy adults ( = 27) and patients with lymphoid malignancies ( = 94) was conducted, with longitudinal follow-up through completion of a 2- or 3-dose primary mRNA COVID vaccine series, respectively.