In article <87uieq$31m$1 at news.panix.com>, Ian A. York
<URL:mailto:iayork at panix.com> wrote:
> In article <87ugaa$9qd$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
> Jamie Cunliffe <cunlij at my-deja.com> wrote:
> >
> >hunting system can be interpreted as a mess (other-than-healthy-self)
> >seeking system. You might say this is just semantics BUT it does stop
>> One major goal of gene therapy is to minimize damage; vectors are designed
> to cause as little tissue damage as possible, whether using
> replication-incompetent vectors or DNA itself.
>> One major obstacle to gene therapy remains the immune response to the
> vectors or to the therapeutic protein itself. This suggests that the
> immune response does not require particularly serious damage to induce a
> response.
>> Similarly, DNA vaccines can be injected intravenously, using
> tissue-specific promoters, and induce a response at a site distal to the
> injection, so that even the injection trauma is presumably not essential
> for the response.
>> As I've said ad nauseum, trying to summarize the immune system into a
> 25-word-or-less advertising jingle is foolish, and complaining that one
> advertising jingle or another doesn't accurately explain the immune system
> is angels-on-pinheads time.
>> Ian
>
Your last paragraph is absolutely right Ian. The trouble is that if you try
to force immune recognition to fit a neat 25 word or less summary your
bound to get it wrong. Any immune system that declared to the environment
how it worked in very simple and easy to follow unwavering rules is doomed.
A degree of unpredictability in immune response is almost certainly an
asset to survival of a species.
What bugs me is just how slavishly some people will adhere to simple ideas
even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence!
My earlier example about immune responses to 'self' immunoglobulin
responses is prompted by the recent spate of articles, many of them written
or at least sanctioned by business managers and accountants rather than
scientists, who claim that human derived or humanised antibodies will by
definition be less immunogenic because they are more 'self'!
They conveniently forget that you can tolerise a mouse with human IgG in
deaggrated form but if you aggregate it or put it into adjuvant the same
protein sequence becomes highly immunogenic. The mouses immune system is
not 'responding' to the sequence difference of the human IgG but to other
properties of the administered preparation.
Mike <URL:http://www.path.cam.ac.uk/~mrc7/>
--
o/ \\ // || ,_ o M.R. Clark, PhD. Division of Immunology
<\__,\\ // __o || / /\, Cambridge University, Dept. Pathology
"> || _`\<,_ // \\ \> | Tennis Court Rd., Cambridge CB2 1QP
` || (_)/ (_) // \\ \_ Tel.+44 1223 333705 Fax.+44 1223 333875
