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March 13, 2002

 “Searching for a Supervaccine”

San Francisco Chronicle (www.sfgate.com) (03/11/02) P. A4; Guttman, Leslie R.

The threat of bioterrorism has led a small number of scientists to concentrate on creating “universal drugs” that reportedly would work better than vaccines in fighting diseases.  Such universal, or broad-spectrum, drugs would work by stimulating a person’s immune system to combat a wide range of diseases. According to the scientists, there are an enormous number of diseases that a terrorist could use to manufacture biological weapons, including tularemia, Ebola, botulism, plague, smallpox, and anthrax; however, it would be impossible to vaccinate everyone in the United States against all these diseases. Broad-spectrum drugs, on the other hand, boost a person’s “innate” immune system to combat a range of pathogens.  The innate system is a primitive class of cells that is person’s first line of defense against diseases.  The innate system—which includes a person’s skin; cells called macrophages, which swallow and destroy pathogens; and “natural killer” cells, which poison pathogens—kick into action almost immediately after detecting an invader.

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