Word: approachable
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...sounds simple. But this reverse-engineering approach, finding inspiration for new vaccines by studying HIV immunity in nature, would have been impossible back in 1984 - or, indeed, until just a few years ago. Too little was known about the virus's structure or about the human immune system in general. One recent necessary breakthrough, Nussenzweig says, was finding a way to identify the blood cells that create HIV-specific antibodies. It was only after those cells could be separated from the bloodstream that scientists like Nussenzweig and Johannes Scheid, the first author on the Nature paper, could begin to study...
...vaccine has been thwarted over and over by the tricky, unexpected nature of HIV, whose behavior is only now coming to be understood. The human immune system does not appear to develop an effective response to HIV simply by being exposed to a virus surface protein or two - an approach that has worked for many other vaccines in the past. A hepatitis B shot, for example, contains rearranged, nonpathogenic bits of the virus that causes the liver disease. The body produces antibodies in response to the vaccine, conferring immunity to the live virus...
...This was the approach used by VaxGen's AIDSVax, the only AIDS vaccine candidate that has so far made it to Phase III testing, the final stage before clinical approval. That vaccine was designed to spark an immune response to a surface protein called gp120. But results of that trial showed in 2003 that the vaccine was insufficiently effective. To date, dozens of possible AIDS vaccines have been tested, and none seem especially promising...
...researchers took an individualized approach in order to ascertain what specifically was causing headaches. They looked at records of 7,054 headache patients over a 7-year period who came in to the emergency room of BIDMC and compared weather and pollution levels before and after each patient experienced severe headaches...
...Wyden and Cooper's approach also has a big following among health-care wonks, among them, noted bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel - brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel - who has been tapped to play a big role in health-care reform in the Obama Administration's Office of Management and Budget. Emanuel and Wyden teamed up in December to write an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on the limits of employer-based health coverage. And though during the election campaign Barack Obama criticized John McCain for proposing a plan that, like Wyden's, would make employer...