Word: bugs
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...bug--good-bug strategy was championed by doctors treating allergies and infectious diseases. The idea was to expose patients to small quantities of partly disabled microbes to jump-start their immune system. But cancer researchers have taken the approach one step further, turning microbes into tiny Trojan horses that can sneak into tumor cells and destroy them from within. "There is a good probability that microbe approaches will be part of the arsenal of the future," says Kenneth Kinzler, a cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins Hospital's Kimmel Cancer Center who is working with the clostridium bacterium. "We're betting...
...Other bug-based therapies for cancer take advantage of the body's natural response to invaders. To this end, scientists at the Texas Medical Center have enlisted the aid of the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). More than 95% of the population is infected with EBV, a usually benign microbe that sequesters itself in the immune system's B cells. Like any other cellbound virus, EBV doesn't remain dormant for long, dividing furiously and emerging in runaway viral mobs. But unlike most other viruses, EBV is quickly eliminated by the vigilant immune system's killer T cells...
...need all those microbes if the bad-bug approach turns out to be as successful as early trials suggest. Like AIDS cocktails and cancer chemotherapies, microbe-based therapies may require a multidrug approach. For example, combining the modified clostridium bacterium, which attacks a tumor at its anaerobic core, with the altered measles virus, which destroys the periphery of the tumor, could be a potent new way to fight cancer. Add some radiation or chemotherapy to mop up any lingering cancer cells, and doctors could find themselves closing in on a cure...
...nearly 1 million customers. It was bad enough that America Online users, clearly identifiable by the aol.com attached to their user IDs, were making all the usual mistakes -- asking dumb questions, posting messages in the wrong place and generally behaving like boorish tourists. But because of a temporary bug in AOL's software, every message they wrote was duplicated eight times -- magnifying their errors and making the AOL folks sitting targets for locals already disposed to resent their presence...
...been depleted so significantly in this part of Malawi that crop yields reach only about a half-ton per acre, about one-third of normal. This year, because of the drought, she will get almost nothing. She reaches into her apron and pulls out a handful of semi-rotten, bug-infested millet, which will be the basis for the gruel she will prepare for the meal that evening. It will be the one meal the children have that...