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Professor Ziad Mallat and his team have been shortlisted for a £30 million grant from the British Heart Foundation. If successful, atherosclerosis – hardening of the arteries – could become a thing of the past.

Scientists have been able to track how a multi-drug resistant organism is able to evolve and spread widely among cystic fibrosis patients – showing that it can evolve rapidly within an individual during chronic infection.

A UK-wide study is being launched to reduce the number of people who die in the months following a stay in hospital with COVID-19.

Professor Sharon Peacock explains the story behind the UK's world-leading SARS-CoV-2 genomics capability.

Systematic review finds that machine learning models for detecting and diagnosing COVID-19 from medical images have major flaws and biases, making them unsuitable for use in patients. However, researchers have suggested ways to remedy the problem.

Diphtheria – a relatively easily-preventable infection – is evolving to become resistant to a number of classes of antibiotics and in future could lead to vaccine escape, warn researchers from the UK and India.

Genomic surveillance – using information about genetic differences between virus samples – can help identify how SARS-CoV-2 spreads in care home settings, whose residents are at particular risk, according to new research published today.

New data from Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge suggests that a single dose of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine can reduce by 75% the number of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections. This implies that the vaccine could significantly reduce the risk of transmission of the virus from people who are asymptomatic, as well as protecting others from getting ill.

̽»¨Ö±²¥UK is a world leader in sequencing SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Of all the coronavirus genomes that have been sequenced in the world, nearly half have been sequenced by COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium (Cog-UK). ̽»¨Ö±²¥consortium began life on 4 March 2020 when Sharon Peacock, a professor of public health and microbiology at the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Cambridge, emailed a handful of scientists and asked for their help.

SARS-CoV-2 mutations similar to those in the B1.1.7 UK variant could arise in cases of chronic infection, where treatment over an extended period can provide the virus multiple opportunities to evolve, say scientists.