Travel demand appears to be holding up, but at the same time, investor appetite for travel tech startups has cooled. Even a wave of startups promising to improve travel with AI hasn't managed to reverse the funding slowdown, a review of Crunchbase data shows. Whether uncertainty over how AI will reshape travel planning and booking is contributing to that pullback remains an open question. Startups in the travel tech space have raised $2.2 billion this year through the third quarter, according to Crunchbase data. The largest funding recipients span a wide range of categories including hotel management software, travel booking platforms, alternative accommodations and corporate events. The mix also includes electric aviation, travel finance and insurance, and consumer hospitality businesses, reflecting a broad definition of travel tech. The broad trend: Investors are making far fewer bets on travel startups than immediately before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, Crunchbase data shows. This year could be the lowest since at least 2018 when it comes to dollars raised and deal count....

The backbone of the vaccine is a modified, harmless bacteriophage called M13, which forms a nanofiber that can be coated with cancer antigens. By precisely controlling the density of those cancer proteins, the researchers found that they could create a vaccine that prevents the development of colon tumors in mice. 'The great thing about this is that it's modular and we could switch out different antigens on demand, so you could design it to be patient-specific and target a known antigen for a particular kind of cancer,' says Angela Belcher, the James Mason Crafts Professor of Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering and a member of the Koch Institute. Belcher is the senior author of the study, which appears today in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials. Shengnan Huang, research scientist at the Koch Institute, is the paper's lead author. Jack Rudrum, Huaiyao Peng, and Hao Nghi Luu, graduate students at the Koch Institute, are also authors of the paper. For more than 20 years, Belcher's lab has been deploying the M13 bacteriophage in a variety of applications. This virus, which is harmless to humans, consists of a single strand of DNA coated in a protein shell, or capsid....

This is obviously a difficult thing to do. Seasonal flu vaccines are designed to protect against a virus that constantly mutates and recombines in animals. The efficacy of these seasonal vaccines are quite low; ranging from about 15 to 60 percent. Instead of making vaccines that protect against only a few circulating strains of the virus, Centivax is trying to teach the immune system to recognize parts of the virus that many strains share and that resist mutation. The hope is that antibodies targeting these regions could protect even against strains we haven't encountered yet, without scientists having to reformulate the vaccine every year. And things seem to be going well: the company has tested the vaccine in about 180 people so far and is preparing for a Phase 2 trial. This is probably the most ambitious technical interview I've ever done. We cover some extremely deep immunology, but Jake patiently explained the ideas, and I left feeling like I finally understood how vaccines actually work and how scientists make them. I also came away much more convinced that a universal flu vaccine could work in theory. Enjoy....

Dengue is spread when someone is bitten by an infected female Aedes mosquito. The viral disease kills around 40,000 people every year, with up to 400 million infected annually. Bangladesh and Kenya are among the countries battling a deadly outbreak. Although most adults survive their first brush with the disease, people who are exposed to a second, different strain of dengue virus often develop more severe symptoms. This unusual quirk has complicated dengue vaccine development. Now, a human challenge trial that exposed 45 people to a modified mild strain of dengue virus is beginning to reveal the immunological underpinnings of dengue's second wind, according to a study published in Science Translational Medicine on 28 October1. Understanding the biology behind dengue's infection pattern could help researchers to develop better vaccines, says study co-author Leah Katzelnick, an epidemiologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. Part of the problem with existing dengue vaccines is that even the immunizations can trigger secondary infections. This issue caused concern in the Philippines when some children contracted severe dengue infections after a major public vaccination effort started there in 2016....