Word: targetedly
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...peak. Employees like Bryant who had much of their retirement savings in company stock saw their investments wiped out. Bryant's stake dwindled from $39,000 to $4,000. (It's scant solace that WorldCom emerged from bankruptcy under the less tainted name of MCI, now a takeover target likely to fetch upwards of $8 billion from Qwest or Verizon.) WorldCom bond investors had a second reason to cheer when J.P. Morgan Chase agreed last week to pay $2 billion to settle investor claims, joining Citigroup and other Wall Street firms that had underwritten a WorldCom bond issue only about...
Like a seasoned burglar, the virus circles a human cell looking for the easiest point of entry. Within seconds, it has broken into its target, located the nucleus and deftly slipped its genetic material into the cell's DNA. Now whenever the cell divides to copy itself, it also makes copies of the interloper. Soon those multiplying viruses have hijacked not just that cell but also all its neighbors, turning them into one massive virus factory. When the cells can no longer make the proteins they need to survive, they start...
...that's exactly what Dr. Stephen Russell was hoping for. A cancer specialist at the Mayo Clinic, Russell does everything he can to aid and abet those viral bandits. He arms them with detailed instructions for finding their target cells and outfits them with specially designed protein keys to speed up entry. As far as he's concerned, those viruses are the good guys, since the cells they are attacking and destroying are cancer cells in a fast-growing tumor...
Forty years later, scientists know a lot more about genes and proteins and how to target microbes so that they home in on one particular kind of cell--a cancer of the ovary, for example, or a tumor in the throat. They have also learned to affix molecular tracking devices to a microbe to ensure that when let loose in the body, it doesn't deviate from its therapeutic mission...
...course, a virus has to reach its target to destroy it, and that means surviving the defensive armies of a formidable opponent: the immune system. "Blood is a pretty hostile environment for the viruses," notes Russell. "The name of the game is to dodge the immune defenses for a few hours and give the viruses enough time before the immune system gets in and stops them." His group is perfecting two approaches: 1) temporarily distracting the immune system with drugs that suppress it and 2) cloaking the virus in a protective protein coat that renders it invisible to immune cells...