Word: immunologist
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...immune system. These extraordinary proteins have a bewildering array of names and functions. There are, for instance, three types of interferon -- alpha, beta and gamma. Alpha alone comes in more than a dozen varieties. Interleukins are similarly prolific. "We are already up to interleukin-7 and interleukin-8," says Immunologist Lloyd Old, of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, "and one can expect that we will go on from there." Scientists have so far discovered at least five different colony-stimulating factors, which cause cells in the bone marrow to mature and differentiate into red and white blood...
That may be an understatement. Immunologist Leroy Hood of the California Institute of Technology is certain that the lymphokines discovered so far are "just the tip of the iceberg" and that more subcategories of T cells will be found. He emphasizes that scientists do not yet fully understand, among other things, how B and T cells differentiate, and how the immune system's genes are turned on and off at different times. "In the truest sense," he says, "immunology is just in its youth." Still, says Sherwin, "there's an enormous amount we know now that we didn't know...
...Baruj Benacerraf, president of Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The immune system is compared favorably with the most complex organ of them all, the brain. "The immune system has a phenomenal ability for dealing with information, for learning and memory, for creating and storing and using information," explains Immunologist William Paul of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Declares Dr. Stephen Sherwin, director of clinical research at Genentech: "It's an incredible system. It recognizes molecules that have never been in the body before. It can differentiate between what belongs there and what doesn...
...that the pace of discovery began to quicken, boosted by such achievements as the deciphering of the genetic code and recombinant DNA technology. But no early advances can match those of recent years, which have enabled doctors to devise ingenious new treatments for a host of disorders. Says Immunologist John Kappler, of the National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine in Denver: "The field is progressing so rapidly that the journals are out of date by the time they are published...
Actually the personal risk to Zagury was probably quite small. The vaccine he used, based on the work of NIH Immunologist Bernard Moss, contained only a tiny portion of genetic material from the AIDS virus. This material was inserted into the genes of a larger, harmless virus, which served as a carrier. (The larger virus was vaccinia, once commonly used to prevent smallpox.) When tested in baboons and a chimp for one year, this hybrid stimulated the animals to produce antibodies not only to vaccinia but to the AIDS virus, with no apparent side effects...