Word: virologist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Using an electron microscope, a team of researchers at the University of California at Davis isolated the virus from the blood of monkeys infected with simian AIDS. In the current issue of Science, Virologist Preston Marx and his colleagues report that when the virus was injected into healthy monkeys, the animals developed the disease. The virus belongs to a family known as retroviruses, which are prime suspects as the cause of human AIDS. Said Marx of the discovery: "It gives us a marvelous opportunity to understand how a specific virus can attack the immune system and destroy...
...techniques that are transforming modern medicine. Using the sophisticated new cut-and-paste methods of manipulating genes, the researchers were able to transform ordinary smallpox vaccine into vaccines that may be able to prevent the other three diseases. So far the results have been tested in animals only, but Virologist Enzo Paoletti, a senior scientist on the project, is confident that they will work in humans as well. What is more, Paoletti's Albany-based team has already begun work on a version for malaria, the No. 1 infectious health threat in the world. Says Paoletti...
What Paoletti and his colleague, Virologist Dennis Panicali, set out to do was to alter the genetic material, or DNA, of cowpox virus by inserting a gene from another virus-herpes, hepatitis B or influenza (see diagram). The goal of these microscopic manipulations is to develop a vaccine that will fool the immune system and make it swing into action. A smallpox preventive that expresses a herpes trait, for instance, will provoke the body into creating antibodies against herpes. The person is then protectively armed against an actual attack of the disease...
...report itself took longer, and the setting in the university's Rickham auditorium was elaborate. Under the klieg lights set up for TV and newsreel cameras, surrounded by microphones and 150 reporters, sat the unquestioned hero of the occasion: Dr. Jonas Edward Salk, 40, the determined, youthful-looking virologist who for five years had battled in his University of Pittsburgh laboratory to lick polio. Next to him sat the University of Michigan's Dr. Thomas Francis Jr., 54, one of the U.S.'s most eminent epidemiologists, who had been chosen by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis...
...least four herpes vaccines are under development. Last week ground was broken for a new facility at Porton Down in England that will produce a newly developed vaccine for large-scale, controlled testing. The vaccine, created by a team at the University of Birmingham under Scottish Virologist Gordon Skinner, has already passed preliminary trials with impressive results. It was tested over a period ranging from four months to three years on 300 people who were frequently exposed to herpes because their sexual partners had the disease; only two developed the infection...