Word: cd4
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...things may be looking up, thanks to advances in molecular immunology that have spurred the creation of new generation of drugs. It is becoming clear that a cell called CD4+, or helper T cell, is a central player in both the healthy and the pathological immune response. "The activation of the T cell-like the branches of government-is controlled by a series of checks and balances," explains Dr. C. Garrison Fathman, a clinical immunologist at Stanford University...
...helper T cell and "presents" it with the target molecule, instructing the T cell to prepare its troops for war. This activation is tightly controlled. It cannot occur without the lock-step interaction of a several proteins on the surface of both cells-one of which is known as CD4...
When patients were treated with Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART) at the onset of the virus, the study found that the treatment helped protect CD4 cells. These CD4 cells signal the growth of CTL cells, which can, in turn, kill HIV-infected cells...
Similarly, AIDS researchers knew that HIV penetrates healthy immune cells by latching onto two different "locks" on the cells' surface, the so-called chemokine and CD4 receptors, using a protein "key" called gp120. But what those locks looked like and how the HIV key opened them were a mystery...
...vulnerable--structures are either located at the bottom of crevices, where the relatively bulky antibodies of the immune system can't reach them, or obscured by great forests of sugar molecules. One particularly attractive target comes out of hiding only in that brief moment after gp120 latches onto the CD4 receptor and before it attaches to the chemokine receptor--much too briefly for the immune system to react...