Word: viruses
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most exciting feature of the new virus is that it appears to be harmless. In the lab, says Essex, it behaves much like the AIDS virus, infecting the same immunological cells (helper T cells) but without the "dramatic killing action" of its lethal cousin. None of more than 50 people infected with the virus have developed any symptoms of AIDS. Thirty have been followed for more than a year and have remained healthy, but, says one of Essex's collaborators, Francis Barin of the virology laboratory of Bretonneau Hospital in Tours, "we must wait for more time to pass...
Shortly before Essex revealed his discovery, a group of French and Portuguese researchers announced a related finding. At a conference in Lisbon, Dr. Luc Montagnier of Paris' Pasteur Institute disclosed that his team too had found a missing-link virus, apparently closer to the simian virus than it is to the human AIDS strain. As in Essex's study, the new virus was found in the blood of West Africans -- in this case, two men from Guinea-Bissau, which borders Senegal. Both men, however, were suffering from the symptoms of AIDS. "It seems to be the same disease; there...
...close timing of the two announcements was no accident. A heated rivalry has raged between French and American researchers for two years; Montagnier and Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute each claims to have been the first to discover the AIDS virus. Bickering aside, both new findings help confirm the theory that the AIDS virus evolved from a microbe that commonly infects African green monkeys, apparently causing them no harm. Essex's team identified the monkey virus last year and speculated that it had first spread to humans who ate monkey meat or were bitten by the animals...
...news of an apparently harmless relative of the AIDS virus was greeted with enthusiasm by other scientists. "The best thing about Max's virus," says Gallo, "is that we can learn why one is pathogenic and the other isn't." By identifying which component of the AIDS virus is responsible for its deadly effects, researchers may be able to develop new drugs that specifically inhibit it. They may also be able to alter the virus genetically to remove its harmful traits, leaving a benign version that could serve as a vaccine...
Late last week research teams in both Gallo's and Haseltine's laboratories revealed that they had already succeeded in tinkering with the AIDS virus and rendering it inactive. They did so by snipping out a gene that enables the virus to replicate with remarkable speed. Without the gene, the viruses "don't kill T cells and don't reproduce anymore," says Haseltine. The "dead-ended" virus, he notes, could serve as a prototype for a vaccine...