Vaccination today and tomorrow

The vaccines against infectious diseases in use today are, with few exceptions, prepared from the causal agents themselves, either by inactivating them with a chemical such as formaldehyde or by attenuating them so that they grow and thus evoke an immune response in the natural host but cause no disease. These empirical approaches have produced many highly successful vaccines. Increasing knowledge at the molecular level of the agents and of the immune response to protein antigent is now providing us with the opportunity to design vaccines that will elicit protective responses without the need to use the agents themselves. The critical issue is to identify the immune responses that correlate with protection.     

Diseases of civilization,today and tomorrow

Summary The term diseases of civilization that would have represented many scourges of the past, now applies to chronic conditions, still of obscure origin, which have replaced them as dominant health problems of the more industrialized countries. The reasons for their emergence include the decline of major epidemic diseases and associated social troubles, and the various consequences of economic development. Both groups of factors are increasingly relevant to the situation in many developing countries, where the expectation of life has been increasing spectacularly for many years, and where changes in the biological, physical and social environment are in progress. The incidence of cardiovascular diseases, cancer and other diseases proceeds gradually and inexorably, and may be hastened by the interaction of old and new risk factors that happen to coexist in some newer industrialized countries. These include: accumulation of environmental pollution, overcrowding in continually growing cities, increase in cigarette smoking, alcohol and fat consumption, and disintegration of the social infrastructure. The interaction of these factors may result in increased incidence, prevalence and mortality from disease of civilization in the now developing world in a few decades to come.

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Resumen El término arriba mencionado, que hubiera descrito en el pasado a muchas enfermadades epidémicas, se refiere ahora a estados crónicos, de origen todavía oscuro, que las han reemplazado como principal problema de tipo sanitario en los países más industrializados. El declive de las enfermedades epidémicas de mayor importancia, con todos los problemas sociales que estas generaban, junto con algunas consecuencias del desarrollo económico, se cuentan entre las causas de este cambio. En los países en vías de desarrollo dos factores tiene una importancia determinante en la evolución de este proceso: el espectacular aumento de la esperanza de vida y los cambios en los entornos biológico, físico y social. Como con consecuencia de todo ello la incidencia de enfermedades cardiovasculares, cáncer y otras enfermedades va incrementádose inexorablemente, acelerándose su aparición debido a la interacción entre factores de riesgo viejos con los nuevos, que coexisten en los países de in industrialización reciente, entre los que cabe incluir: la acumulación de polución ambiental, el hacinamiento en ciudades de constante crecimiento, el incremento en el consumo de cigarrillos, alcohol y grasas, y la desintegración de las estructuras sociales tradicionales. En las próximas décadas, la interacción entre todos factores, puede conducir a un aumento en la tasa de mortalidad por enfermedades de la civilización en el hasta ahora denominado mundo en vías de desarrollo.

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Résumé Le terme de maladies de civilisation, qui pouvait correspondre dans le passé à bien des fléaux; s'applique aujourd'hui à des affections chroniques d'origines encore inconnue qui ont remplacé les anciens fléaux comme problèmes dominants de la santé dans les pays les plus développés. Les raisons de leur émergence comprennent d'une part la disparition des grandes épidémies et d'autres conséquences des vicissitudes sociales, et d'autre part l'interaction de divers sousproduits du développement économique. Ces deux groupes de facteurs concernent un nombre croissant de pays en voie de développement: depuis plusieurs années, la durée de vie moyenne de leurs populations s'est allongée de façon spectaculaire et leur environnement biologique, physique et social est en cours de changement. De ce fait, les maladies cardiovasculaires, le cancer et d'autres affections progressent graduellement et inéluctablement, et cette évolution peut être hâtée par l'interaction des vieux et des nouveaux facteurs de risques qui coexistent chez certains nouveaux venus à la civilisation industrielle. Ces risques comprennent: l'accumulation de la pollution dans l'environnement, la sur-population des mégalopoles qui ne cessent de croître, la consommation accrue de tabac, d'alcool et de graisses, la désintégration de l'infrastructure sociale et bien d'autres facteurs encore. L'accumulation de ces agents agressifs peut conduire à accroître dans les prochaines décennies l'incidence et la prévalence des maladies de civilisation et leur taux de mortalité dans le monde présentemment en cours de développement.

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Invited paper presented at the VII International Conference on the Global Impacts of Applied Microbiology, Helsinki, 12–16.8.1985. Session 4     

Monolithic stationary phases: yesterday, today, and tomorrow

The history of the development of monolithic stationary phases in chromatography, the modem state of the art, and the prospects for their use are considered.     

Monolithic stationary phases: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow

The history of the development of monolithic stationary phases in chromatography, the modern state of the art, and the prospects for their use are considered.     

Mycobacterium tuberculosis: here today, and here tomorrow

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a highly successful pathogen that parasitizes the macrophages of its host. Its success can be attributed directly to its ability to manipulate the phagosome that it resides in and to prevent the normal maturation of this organelle into an acidic, hydrolytic compartment. As the macrophage is key to clearing the infection, the interplay between the pathogen and its host cell reflects a constant battle for control.     

H+-PPases: yesterday, today and tomorrow

Suggestions by Calvin about a role of inorganic pyrophosphate (PPi) in early photosynthesis and by Lipmann that PPi may have been the original energy-rich phosphate donor in biological energy conversion, were followed in the mid-1960s by experimental results with isolated chromatophore membranes from the purple photosynthetic bacterium Rhodospirillum rubrum. PPi was shown to be hydrolysed in an uncoupler stimulated reaction by a membrane-bound inorganic pyrophosphatase (PPase), to be formed at the expense of light energy in photophosphorylation and to be utilized as an energy donor for various energy-requiring reactions, as a first known alternative to ATP. This direct link between PPi and photosynthesis led to increasing attention concerning the role of PPi in both early and present biological energy transfer. In the 1970s, the PPase was shown to be a proton pump and to be present also in higher plants. In the 1990s, sequences of H(+)-PPase genes were obtained from plants, protists, bacteria and archaea and two classes of H(+)-PPases differing in K(+) sensitivity were established. Over 200 H(+)-PPase sequences have now been determined. Recent biochemical and biophysical results have led to new progress and questions regarding the H(+)-PPase family, as well as the families of soluble PPases and the inorganic polyphosphatases, which hydrolyse inorganic linear high-molecular-weight polyphosphates (HMW-polyP). Here we will focus attention on the H(+)-PPases, their evolution and putative active site motifs, response to monovalent cations, genetic regulation and some very recent results, based on new methods for obtaining large quantities of purified protein, about their tertiary and quaternary structures.