This Brief describes the concept and realization of gene therapy for HIV from the unique historic perspective and insight of two pioneers of the clinical applications of stem cell gene therapy for HIV.Gerhard Bauer applied ribozyme-anti-HIV and other vectors to manufacture clinical grade, HIV-resistant hematopoietic stem cells for the first patients that received stem cell gene therapy for HIV, including the first child in the world and the first fully marrow-ablated HIV infected p...

Before the arrival of penicillin in the 1940s, phage therapy was one of the few weapons doctors had against bacterial infections. It saved the life of Hollywood legend Tom Mix before being abandoned by Western science. Now, researchers and physicians are rediscovering the treatment, which pits phage viruses against their natural bacterial hosts, as a potential weapon against antibiotic-resistant infections.The Forgotten Cure traces the story of phages from Paris, where the...

Immunology, Volume 1: Immunotoxicology, Immunopathology, and Immunotherapy discusses the investment of time, effort and finance that go into making progress in preventing and/or curing serious diseases by using standard treatments (chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, and hormone therapy). The use of these treatments is accompanied by unavoidable, devastating side effects. At the cost of being repetitious, it has to be emphasized that an improved understanding of the immune system, avoidan...

This book provides a detailed account of the physico-chemical properties and biological functions of the outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) of different pathogenic and non-pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria. It also includes an authentic record of the first systematic study that discovered the mechanism of OMV formation by a pathogen, Vibrio cholerae, and proposed that the process represented a novel secretory activity of bacteria. Furthermore, the authors present clinical and laborato...

It has been a challenge for us to edit this volume of Endocrinology and Metabo lism: Progress in Research and Clinical Practice. The topic of the pathogenesis of insulin-dependent, type I diabetes mellitus is particularly appropriate for this series, since advances in this area have been made, to a large extent, by applying state-of-the-art laboratory techniques to clinical samples. Over the last several years, a number of lines of evidence have been gathered, suggesting that classic type ...

A sense of belonging is basic to the human experience. But in this, humans are not unique. Essentially all life, from bacteria to humans, have ways by which it determines which members belong and which do not. This is a basic cooperative nature of life I call group membership which is examined in this book. However, cooperation of living things is not easily accounted for by current theory of evolutionary biology and yet even viruses display group membership. That viruses have this feature...

Muscle disease represents an important health threat to the general population. There is essentially no cure. Gene therapy holds great promise to correct the genetic defects and eventually achieve full recovery in these diseases. Significant progresses have been made in the field of muscle gene therapy over the last few years. The development of novel gene delivery vectors has substantially enhanced specificity and efficiency of muscle gene delivery. The new knowledge on the immune respons...

Tumor-Induced Immune Suppression - Prospects and Progress in Mechanisms and Therapeutic Reversalpresents a comprehensive overview of large number of different mechanisms of immune dysfunction in cancer and therapeutic approaches to their correction. This includes the number of novel mechanisms that has never before been discussed in previous monographs.The last decades were characterized by substantial progress in the understanding of the role of the immune system in tumor...

Androgens are critical regulators of prostate differentiation and function, as well as prostate cancer growth and survival. Therefore, androgen ablation is the preferred systemic treatment for disseminated prostate cancer. Androgen action is exerted in target tissues via binding the androgen receptor (AR), a nuclear receptor transcription factor.Historically, the gene expression program mediated by the AR has been poorly understood. However, recent gene expression profiling and mor...

Gene therapy was conceived during the early and mid part of the 20th century. At first, it was considered a revolutionary biomedical procedure, which could potentially cure any disease for which the molecular bases were understood. Since then, gene therapy has gone through many stages and has evolved from a nearly unrealistic perspective to a real life application. Clinical efficacy in humans was demonstrated at the beginning of this century after its successful application in small-scale ...