Results tagged “cancerresearch”

Comfort is a two-way street. Sometimes we need comfort. And sometimes we give it.

The Seattle Times and the P-I are both reporting on the story, which if nothing else illustrates a case of Donald Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" in action. The Times says:

The vaccine used a disabled form of a common-cold virus to carry three synthetically produced HIV genes into the body. It was hoped that those genes would spur the body to unleash an HIV-targeted immune response using so-called "killer" T cells. Neither the cold virus nor the HIV genes could reproduce, so volunteers could not catch a cold or become infected with HIV directly from the vaccine.

The immune system was just supposed to have a better chance to spot the otherwise very sneaky HIV as it responded to the known enemy, adenovirus, type 5. Yet volunteers who had been exposed to that variant of the cold virus were determined to be more vulnerable to HIV infection.

A collaborative team of international genetic researchers led by a former Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center member recently published the entire genome sequence for dogs. While this research will have a direct impact on treating diseases specifically in dogs, humans serve to benefit from our proverbial best friends as well.