Word: biotechs
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XENA No, not the Warrior Princess, but still perhaps a superhero in her own right. Xena is a female piglet cloned from fetal-pig skin cells, and she may prove to be more than the latest addition to the biotech clone farm. Because of similarities between porcine and human organs, the techniques that made Xena may eventually create a supply of genetically modified pig livers that would be acceptable to the human immune system...
...probably the most promising new class of anti-HIV drugs under review. Bolognesi's company, Trimeris, based in Durham, N.C., collaborates with Hoffman-LaRoche and is already in the final stages of human testing with one compound and in the earliest phases of testing with a second. Other biotech firms, including Progenics Pharmaceuticals in Tarrytown, N.Y., are right behind it. Progenics currently has two compounds in human trials. Together, these drug candidates represent a sophisticated new generation of antiviral compound--drugs born of a better understanding of how HIV works, at the molecular level, inside the body...
That story, in fact, has inspired trials of nearly two dozen new biotech medicines. IDEC Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, for example, has zeroed in on the interactions between CD4 T cells and APCS to make antibody drugs against lupus and RA. The company's anti-RA antibody selectively switches off T cells involved in autoimmune responses by binding the CD4 molecule on their surfaces. Amgen, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., has a drug that blocks Interleukin-1, another molecule that promotes inflammation...
...meeting on cancer genetics when a wild idea popped into his head. What if you could make a virus that would infect--and kill--cancer cells but leave healthy cells intact? The next day, McCormick excitedly explained his notion to colleagues at Onyx Pharmaceuticals in Richmond, Calif., a biotech company he had founded earlier that year. Some of them were as enthusiastic as he was. Others told him he was crazy; such a treatment couldn't possibly work...
...reseller of genetic information, Gene Logic offers as its main product the GeneExpress reference database, which shows which genes are over- or under-expressed in various diseases ranging from heart failure to cancer. Gene Logic gathers and packages the data and sells it to biotech and pharmaceutical companies...