3/06/2008

Believe viral defence in lab

A team of Canadian scientists of the University McGill has discovered in a lab the way to potentialize the natural defense system of an organism against the viruses, making potentially to the immune cells to the flu and other attacks humans.

In spite of the good apparent notice, the scientists assure that for the moment this process cannot be carried out in human cells, but in spite of this, they assure that the technique could help to the development of antiviral new therapies.

The key of the process is the stimulation of the protein interferon that are in the battle front that you have each cell against the virus attack. To boost your production, the investigators were able to delete two key genes in mice that allowed a bigger interferon production, that that in turn blocked the virus playback, especially those responsible for the flu.

This fed the expectations about the possibility of combatting a variety of strains responsible for the lives of millions of people, the famous pandemics, as the one that currently threatens us, the famous flu to prepare.

Now, the following step is to achieve it with human, maybe with another technique but with the same results. Also, abnormalities or side effects were not detected so in the lab mice the scientists they are already hands to the work to design a drug that can behave in the same way in the gene human.

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