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Word: decoys (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
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Your article about the tests of a new decoy drug that relieves the common cold [MEDICINE, Oct. 13] was intriguing. If some future geneticist could produce a creature in his own likeness in the laboratory, wouldn't that scientist want to come up with a way to protect it against all the diseases of the earth? How could that be achieved...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Letters: Nov. 10, 1997 | 11/10/1997 | See Source »

...turns out that almost all the rhinoviruses use the same molecular doorway on the surface of the cell, a protein called ICAM-1, to gain entry to the upper-respiratory tract. Doctors have suspected since the late 1980s that if they could somehow flood the nose with decoy ICAM-1 molecules, they might be able to keep the rhinoviruses from attaching to the real thing...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FOOL A COLD | 10/13/1997 | See Source »

...wasn't until the development of genetic engineering, however, that researchers were able to build synthetic ICAM-1 convincing enough to act as a decoy. With that in hand, Dr. Turner and his team recruited 177 volunteers who were willing to catch a cold for science. Half the volunteers (the experimental group) were sprayed with the BIRR 4 solution. The others (the control group) were given a simple saline spray. All the volunteers were deliberately infected by placing droplets of active rhinoviruses in their nasal passages...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FOOL A COLD | 10/13/1997 | See Source »

...thirds of the control group and half the experimental group got sick. The volunteers who received the BIRR 4 spray seven hours before they were exposed fared pretty well, often reporting only a mild case of the sniffles. Even those who waited 12 hours after exposure before taking the decoy compound experienced the same protective benefits...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FOOL A COLD | 10/13/1997 | See Source »

Still, there may well be a market for a good cold-decoy drug. Parents, for example, could take a whiff of BIRR 4 whenever their children come home from school with a cold. So could patients with severe asthma or emphysema, for whom colds can sometimes trigger a life-threatening battle for air. "It's a huge challenge to find a way to prevent colds," says Dr. Robert Couch, professor of microbiology at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. But think of the glory--and the prizes--for the scientist who finally does...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FOOL A COLD | 10/13/1997 | See Source »

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