Word: organism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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However incomplete, the emerging understanding of the immune system's role in Type 1 diabetes has led to an experimental treatment. In Canada and Europe, researchers have weaned diabetics from their insulin shots after giving them cyclosporine, a drug used in organ transplants to suppress the immune system. Doses of cyclosporine, which works by dampening T-cell attacks on the beta cells, have provided dramatic results: many patients have been able to discontinue their insulin shots for up to a year. Still, by undermining the entire immune system, cyclosporine leaves the diabetic more vulnerable to other diseases. And when given...
...they probe the intricate workings of the immune system, scientists are awestruck. "It is an enormous edifice, like a cathedral," says Nobel Laureate Baruj Benacerraf, president of Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The immune system is compared favorably with the most complex organ of them all, the brain. "The immune system has a phenomenal ability for dealing with information, for learning and memory, for creating and storing and using information," explains Immunologist William Paul of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Declares Dr. Stephen Sherwin, director of clinical research at Genentech: "It's an incredible system. It recognizes molecules...
Some of the immune system's biggest battles are directed not against harmful intruders but against potentially life-saving organ transplants. New hearts and kidneys in adults have become fairly commonplace, and top surgeons have even attempted the daunting feat of transplanting multiple abdominal organs into infants and toddlers. Today's organ recipients are indebted to a drug called cyclosporine, which has revolutionized transplantation technology in the past decade. Unlike immunological treatments for AIDS and cancer, cyclosporine works by temporarily suppressing the body's natural defenses, thus preventing the rejection of grafted tissue...
...scientist at Sandoz, a Swiss pharmaceutical company, the drug was nearly abandoned as worthless. Unexpectedly, however, researchers found that it was a highly selective suppressor of helper T cells. By preventing the activation of the T cells, the drug interferes with the body's instinct to attack a transplanted organ. Yet unlike other suppressants, it does not affect other parts of the immune system. Cyclosporine is thus able to dampen the rejection reaction while leaving a large part of the body's infection-fighting defenses intact...
...tremendous change in outlook in both kidneys and livers, and that enthusiasm quickly spread to the heart." Cyclosporine is highly toxic, however, and researchers have begun to look for alternatives. Ideally, they foresee a therapy that would prevent rejection but also persuade the immune system to tolerate a transplanted organ even after treatment is halted...