Word: essex
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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While molecular biologists like Dr. William Haseltine and Dr. Myron E. Essex (See profile below) have probed the HTLV-III virus to discover its fundamental building blocks, others in the Harvard Medical Area like Hirsch at Massachusetts General and Dr. Jerome E. Groopman at New England Deaconess Hospital are hunting for immediate ways to stop the disease...
...Myron E. Essex directs an effort at the School of Public Health studying the proteins in the virus and the antibodies produced in reaction to the proteins. His group has discovered several viruses related to HTLV-III which may be useful for developing a vaccine...
...Essex, who is a professor of microbiology at the School of Public Health postulates, "It is extremely likely that we'll know within a year whether a vaccine is feasible...
...Essex studies the proteins which make up the virus and tries to determine which "structural parts of the virus are biologically significant." From his studies of HTLV-III relatives, "We hope to find a weakened form of the virus. The analogy is to smallpox and cowpox. Cowpox is harmless, but [exposure to it] is protective against smallpox," Essex says...
Earlier this spring, Essex and some researchers in Senegal, Africa, discovered that a large portion of the human population had been infected with a close relative of the AIDS virus. HTLV-IV, as the researchers dubbed the new virus, infects some human white blood cells, just like the AIDS virus, but with one crucial difference--the AIDS virus kills the white blood cells and HTLV-IV does not. Essex says he hopes to "use molecules from HTLV-IV to create a protective response" from the human immune system...