Free Republic

Viruses use bacteria’s chemical language to time their destruction; this might lead to new ways to fight infections In the early experiments it looked like the virus called VP882 was doing something that should be impossible for a thing that is not a bacterium, and not technically even alive: intercepting molecular messages exchanged by its host bacteria, and reading them to determine the best time to annihilate the whole bacterial colony. “As scientists, this is just unimaginable to us,” says Bonnie Bassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University. “We were delighted and skeptical at the same time. It was almost...

New wonder drug matches and kills all kinds of cancer — human testing starts 2014 By MICHAEL BLAUSTEIN Last Updated: 2:03 PM, July 11, 2013 Posted: 12:55 PM, July 11, 2013 Stanford researchers are on track to begin human trials of a potentially potent new weapon against cancer, and would-be participants are flooding in following the Post’s initial report on the discovery. The progress comes just two months after the groundbreaking study by Dr Irv Weissman, who developed an antibody that breaks down a cancer's defense mechanisms in the body. A protein called CD47 tells the body not to "eat"...

Viruses that target bacteria could help give antibiotics a boost. An engineered phage renders E. coli more susceptible to DNA-damaging drugs.MedicalRF.com / Science Photo Library Biologists have engineered viruses to weaken the bacteria they infect, leaving the bugs more vulnerable to antibiotics. With more bacteria becoming resistant to the most commonly used antibiotics, the viral approach could extend the useful lifetime of these drugs.The notion of fighting infection by harnessing the viruses that infect and kill bacteria dates back nearly a century. Doctors in the former Soviet Union routinely prescribed a cocktail of such viruses — called 'bacteriophages' or just...