Cambridge experts in topics ranging from evolutionary arms races to the nature of scientific truth are taking the stage this week at the 2002 BA Festival of Science in Leicester to talk about their work.
Cambridge experts in topics ranging from evolutionary arms races to the nature of scientific truth are taking the stage this week at the 2002 BA Festival of Science in Leicester to talk about their work.
The Festival, which runs from 9-13 September at the University of Leicester, is the largest of its kind in Europe and will see thousands of visitors coming to hear more than 400 scientists speaking and debating.
The theme for this year is 'Science and the Quality of Life'. The topics covered range from the welfare of farm animals and healthy foods, to computer access for the blind and using psychology to improve design. Tough questions are being addressed, such as the health of our aging population and the potential dangers of antibiotic resistance.
One presentation that has been widely reported described the work of a team led by Dr Andrew Lever of the Department of Medicine which is developing a harmless version of HIV to help prevent the rejection of transplanted hearts.
The virus, which causes Aids, is dangerous because it can integrate its own genetic material into that of ordinary non-dividing cells. Dr Lever's team discovered how this is done some years ago, and now they are using this technique to prime donated organs with genes that will instruct the body's immune system not to attack it.
If this is successful it could greatly improve the survival rates of transplant patients.
"I'd much rather HIV didn't exist but it has given us a unique property which is the capability of delivering genes into particular cells," Dr Andrew Lever said.
"We've tagged the little signal that gets RNA into a virus particle on to useful genes and then we can use the virus as an envelope to deliver the genes to new cells."
"We inject genes into the heart tissue that will secrete a molecule that suppresses the immune system in the local vicinity. The idea is that the heart transplant area would act as an immunologically privileged site and would be protected against rejection - and hopefully the organ would last longer."
Dr Lever emphasised that the therapy is totally safe:
"We modify the virus hugely so that it's not capable of regenerating into a wild type virus. If you tame an animal you tame it. If you domesticate it you try to make it useful," he said.
"I really look forward to the day when we've conquered HIV in its wild form and are using its useful characteristics to treat diseases - using methods we haven't got at the moment."
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