Word: antigenically
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...world. Of 24 samples examined, only one from an aborigine caused the test-tube reaction he was looking for. Blumberg found the cause to be an ultramicroscopic viruslike particle. He and Dr. Harvey J. Alter, of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), dubbed the particle "the Australia antigen...
...recent issues of both the A.M.A. Journal and the British journal Lancet, teams from NIH and Columbia University have reported that, contrary to prevailing medical opinion, both infectious and serum hepatitis are probably caused by a single virus. That virus appears to be identical with the Australia antigen...
Worse, the antigens come in many different shapes and compositions even among individuals of the same species. Result: the chance that any two people (except identical twins) will have the same "antigenic constitution" is virtually nil. Transplanters have tried to get around that by matching donor organs with recipients whose antigen patterns seem fairly similar, but these resemblances are not close enough to exclude the rejection mechanism...
Detested Strep. Before this can be circumvented completely, the transplant antigens must be better understood both chemically and biologically. Then perhaps they can be manipulated so that a recipient will get an injection to switch off his rejection mechanism before he gets his transplant. The most encouraging news of progress toward this goal came from British investigators, who reported that some mouse antigens appear remarkably similar to man's and might therefore serve as a source of raw material. More surprisingly, New York University's Dr. Felix T. Rapaport reported that a similar antigen can be extracted from...
Rapaport would only say that his experimental results indicated a line for further research. But the implication for future treatment was clear, although the method by which the antigen would be treated or administered to protect a graft was not. If it happens that the detested streptococci are eventually "farmed" as a wholesale source of raw material for a transplant vaccine, that will be no more surprising than the transplant successes already achieved...