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South Africa is in the throes of an AIDS epidemic compounded by tuberculosis. Nevertheless, responses to the recent launch of a colorful book promoting adolescent knowledge of HIV immunopathogenesis provide grounds for cautious optimism that education can induce a form of “social vaccination” in South Africa and elsewhere.
Signaling through antigen receptors was in the limelight from 4–8 May 2002 at the third EMBO workshop on “Lymphocyte antigen receptor and coreceptor signaling”. Key findings, new questions and emerging trends from the workshop are summarized here.
Although tetramer technology has been wildly successful for examination of MHC class I–recognizing T cells, the same hasn't been true for MHC class II reagents. A recent workshop at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was convened to address this.
Historical insight: The clonal selection theory of antibody formation has recently been subjected to challenge from many quarters. A review of its history and that of scientific theories in general points to the importance of distinguishing between the central hypotheses of a theory and its subsidiary implications.
A May 2002 workshop in Virginia, USA, focused on dendritic cells. Kelsall and colleagues summarize here some of the outstanding questions raised at the conference.
Higher eukaryotes can mount antiviral immune responses induced by dsRNA. This process, called RNA interference, is sequence specific and can therefore be used to target gene expression.
In memoriam: César Milstein, who with the late Georges Köhler invented monoclonal antibodies, died on 24 March 2002. Their invention sprang from basic research on antibody diversity and specificity, and spawned revolutionary advances in biology, medicine and industry.
Immunologists gather at Asilomar each January in a pleasant and informal setting to discuss recent findings on the development and regulation of immune responses.
The potential of hematopoietic stem cells to generate tissue-specific lineages varies with the criteria used to isolate such cells. New discoveries continue to refine our definition of what a hematopoietic stem cell is and what it can do.
Multiple sources of HSCs exist. Here, Verfaillie discusses the long-term engraftment capabilities of each source and the search for ex vivo expansion conditions to allow bulk culture for therapeutic HSC transplantation.
Transfer of genes into HSCs could be used to treat a variety of diseases from AIDS to cancer. Here Bordignon and Roncarolo discuss the logistics and progress of HSC gene transfer technology for the treatment of different diseases.
One of the major goals of the WHO is elimination of polio, but the nature of rapidly evolving enteroviruses makes this task more complex than it initially appears.
We asked Jack Strominger, a long-time collaborator and friend of Don Wiley's, to share with us the excitement of working out the structures of the major histocompatibility antigens.
For over 75 years, only humoral antibodies were known to mediate immunological specificity. The apparent absence of these in delayed-type hypersensitivity reactions was perplexing, and the dominant dogma of antibodies led to some curious hypotheses.
Natural killer cells have been arbitrarily defined using a number of different phenotypic and functional criteria. We asked Lorenzo Moretta if we have truly discovered the core identity of this critical player in eliciting immune responses.