2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Interview about 2011 Nobel Prizein Physiology or Medicine

H:Welcome back, Dr.Fauci. So, before we get into the details, in general terms, this is about how the body fights disease?
D:Indeed. What the laureates established and discovered was the pricise mechanisms whereby the two components of the immune system are activated. The very primitive, innate immune system, which was what Beutler and Hoffmann discovered, and then the connection between that innate immune system and what we call the adaptive immune system, which is a much more sophisticated part of our immune system, which is what Ralph Steinman was able to delineate by discovering this very specialized cell. So really it’s very worthy discoveries of the Nobel Prize.

H: All right, so, how do these breakthroughs translate into treatments or the therapies or vaccines?
D:Well, they’re going to be very, very important, for example, in determining the molecular mechanisms of how you activate the immune system, which would immediately allow you to control it, either by boosting it with what we call adjuvants or suppressing it when it gets out of line. Particularly the dendritic cells are very interesting, in that the front line of the future type of vaccines are using dendriticc cells that you actually pulse with a particular protein that you want the body to make an immune response to. And then you infuse it back into the body, so that it now very, very specifically induces an immune response. So it has implications for everything from cancer, to vaccination, to adjuvants, and to protecting us against infections.

H:And you said it’s going to be. Has it no vaccines yet? I mean, where do things stand?
D:No, there’s no product on the shelf, as it were, that is the result of this. But the science is so elegant in this, that there’s no question that these are going to be breaking through and really providing some vary important countermeasures in the future, be they vaccines or therapies against cancer.

laureates 获奖者 innate 与生俱来的 delineate 勾画 adjuvants 佐剂 dendritic 树枝状的 protein 蛋白质 countermeasures 对策
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