While cosmic rays hit the earth, we look inside the actions of viruses, how they infect cells by injecting the cell with itself and changing the cell’s DNA. But meantime the body has been able to fight viruses by attaching immune cells to the protein well of the virus, and thus being injected with it, attracting special virual cell deconstruction factories that tear the virus cell to pieces. The goings on at the cellular level follow very severe war policies, take no prisoners, in fact, evaporate them!
So research is going on for anti-virals that work in a similar fashion.
“The discovery, which is reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could pave the way for a new generation of antiviral drugs that fight infections by supercharging the body’s own defences.
“Future treatments based on James’s work are only expected to work against a class of viruses that do not shed their protein coats when they invade healthy cells. Those that do would leave the attached antibodies outside the cells, and so not trigger the cell’s own immune attack.”
The idea of a virus that sheds its protein coat and thus defeat the virus defences sounds like a virus that would cause a cell to mutate, and as cells become virus factories, effectively grow – a hybrid semi foreign version of the cell. If antivirals can defeat this type of virus, it seems quite possible that there may be hope of attacking the many cancers will may be caused in this way.
