by Gertrud U. Rey In 1998, a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield published a paper in the British journal The Lancet. In this paper, Wakefield implied that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine may cause developmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The paper received wide publicity, and subsequently, MMR vaccination rates began …
by Gertrud U. Rey Timothy Ray Brown, also known as the Berlin patient (reviewed in a previous post), was the only person ever to be cured of HIV/AIDS. Until last week.
by Gertrud Rey Although cancer therapies have improved dramatically in recent years, the main options for treating cancer still consist of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. This limitation is a problem for aggressive cancers like glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), brain cancers which are typically resistant to traditional therapies.
by Gertrud U. Rey Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) include a variety of fatal neurodegenerative diseases caused by infectious proteins called prions. Although prions are not viruses, their ability to self-propagate without a nucleic acid intermediate has always fascinated virologists, causing them to adopt prions into their repertoire of pathogenic agents. Common TSEs comprise scrapie in …
By Gertrud U. Rey Quorum sensing is a form of cell to cell communication in bacteria in which individual cells coordinate their behavior based on population density. In human terms, the word “quorum” means “the minimum number of people required to conduct business.”
By Gertrud U. Rey Post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) is an RNA regulation pathway in eukaryotes that depends on the presence of double stranded RNA (dsRNA) in the cytoplasm of cells. As stated by Nels Elde in TWiEVO 8, dsRNA in the cytoplasm has an effect synonymous to “blood in the water” for the innate immune …
