H.C. Ørsted Lecture, spring 2011
Professor Stanley N. Cohen, Stanford University School of Medicine:
"Drug resistant microbes: new approaches to and old problem"
The discovery and clinical use of antibacterial drugs in the mid- twentieth century were heralded as the beginning of end of infectious disease. But microbes have been "smarter" than drug developers and they continue to genetically evade antimicrobial agents. Studies aimed at understanding how DNA circles called plasmids can promote antibiotic resistance in bacteria led to the discovery of methods to genetically engineer living cells, but the resistance problem remains. Mutations that render viruses insensitive to therapeutic drugs and preventive vaccines create a continuing threat from viral disease also. A recently developed strategy aimed at identifying and therapeutically attacking host genes exploited by pathogens and toxins to enter, reproduce in, or exit from cells offers an alternative or adjunctive approach that has the potential to circumvent the resistance problem. They have also prodfuced a tool for understanding the effects of individual genetic variation on pathogenic effects of infectious agents. Studies of such CGEPs (i.e. Cellular Genes Exploited by Pathogens) will be presented.
Негізгі бет Ғылым және технология Stanley N. Cohen: "Drug resistant microbes: new approaches to and old problem"
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