This past few weeks in 20.020, I've come to a startling realization:
I love viruses!
Note: that should not be read as "I love experiencing viruses." A clear distinction must be made here. Regardless, recently my job in Team Human Health/Cancer/Turtle has been to look into viral vectors and their human implications, and I am finding that I actually really enjoy it. I have been able to research many different kinds of viruses that are widely used in clinical applications and what makes them unique and effective. The virus we decided on is the EBV/PAC viral vector, which has been widely used in medicine and can hold an insane amount of genetic material. It was recently used to construct a human genomic library. In other words, it can pack a lot of information into a small space. Most people have already had EBV, so they are immune to the wild-type virus. This means that clinical trials have been pretty successful and low on side-effects.
Because of the fact that most people have already had EBV, one concern of ours was that the immune system would recognize and target the host virus and destroy it using existing antibodies. However, further research showed that the immune response to the virus is dependent on the presence of helper viruses found in the wild-type infection. Without these viruses (which are not present in the manufactured vector), EBV can successfully inundate its target cell.
The research on viruses is pretty much complete at this point, so I'll be moving on to helping the team with other aspects of the system; but the EBV vector will always have a special place in my heart (another thing I never thought I would say). I'm excited to see what other interesting things come up as we move on with the project!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for commenting. This is a moderated site and so all posts are reviewed before they are visible. We appreciate your patience while this review is underway.