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Biotech / Medical : GUMM - Eliminate the Common Cold -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: WallStBum who wrote (141)	2/1/1999 11:05:00 AM
From: out_of_the_loop	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5582

Dax: That is a nice general article about using ICAM-1 as a decoy for viruses to attach to in the nasal pathways so that the drug-supplied ICAM-1 bind more viruses that the target human host. Here is a quote from that link: "Both teams hit on the same strategy. They produced a form of ICAM-1 that was not rooted in the cell walls but was soluble--free to float in a solution. They could squirt it into noses in the hope that the rhinovirus would snatch up the free-floating ICAM-1 and never get around to grabbing the ICAM-1 receptors that let it into the cells. The strategy is a "decoy effect," says Marlin. "It's a numbers game. If there are ten copies of soluble ICAM around for every one copy of the cellular ICAM, the odds are ten to one the virus will bind to the decoy." The ZICAM model actually blocks the receptors in the nasal passageway, according to its creators. There will be, should the other drugs come out, interesting parallels drawn. At this point, should ZICAM prove effective, the others may not be needed or the situation may be analogous to web browsers (whoever gets there first and satisfies the customers will keep the customers). Thanks for the good background reading about the common cold. Adhesion molecules are just being understood and there is a lot more to discover. Much of the research has overlap with cancer treatment, although ZICAM will not (IMO).