Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
This is intended to be an easy introduction preventing the worst of infectious diseases that afflict is, by using our knowledge of how the body naturally defends itself against microbes.
All germs have some overcoat and “stuff in their pockets that to the human body are recognized as foreign. Such materials are generally either made up of strings of amino acids in a protein or else unique weird polymers of carbohydrates.
Our bodies have collections of cells in a defense system called immune cells which are able to make programmed production of nano-chemicals engineered time strongly attach to the foreign materials and so make them easy for other cells to inactivate and devour them.
There are two principal types of immune response. Circulating engineered nano-chemical weapons called antibodies and specialized fighting vehicle-like cells call T lymphocytes. In common, these to processes rely on
1. an ability to customize weapons against the constituent building blocks of the invading illness causing organism
2. the ability to memorize the structure of the enemy building blocks and respond rapidly with a massive armed weapon response if that foreign enemy against ever penetrates the tissues of the body in the future.
Unfortunately this brilliant defensive war mechanism takes days to dissect the building blocks of the invader and weeks to mount an effective antibody and cellular response.
In the meanwhile, the infection multiplies the pathogen and this can be released to infect many others and a whole community can be one ill or be wiped out with few survivors, in the very worst cases.
So the challenge was to use the body’s natural defense system but make it far more effective for infections that hurt us!
All germs have some overcoat and “stuff in their pockets that to the human body are recognized as foreign. Such materials are generally either made up of strings of amino acids in a protein or else unique weird polymers of carbohydrates.
Our bodies have collections of cells in a defense system called immune cells which are able to make programmed production of nano-chemicals engineered time strongly attach to the foreign materials and so make them easy for other cells to inactivate and devour them.
There are two principal types of immune response. Circulating engineered nano-chemical weapons called antibodies and specialized fighting vehicle-like cells call T lymphocytes. In common, these to processes rely on
1. an ability to customize weapons against the constituent building blocks of the invading illness causing organism
2. the ability to memorize the structure of the enemy building blocks and respond rapidly with a massive armed weapon response if that foreign enemy against ever penetrates the tissues of the body in the future.
Unfortunately this brilliant defensive war mechanism takes days to dissect the building blocks of the invader and weeks to mount an effective antibody and cellular response.
In the meanwhile, the infection multiplies the pathogen and this can be released to infect many others and a whole community can be one ill or be wiped out with few survivors, in the very worst cases.
So the challenge was to use the body’s natural defense system but make it far more effective for infections that hurt us!