Sep 24, 2020
Paul Offit has been working in
vaccine research for about forty years and listeners are lucky to
hear a sampling of his knowledge of
infectious viruses in this podcast. He offers another unique
perspective of virus interactions from his vaccine research
history.
With humor and clarity, he discusses
Author, researcher, and
pediatrician Paul Offit is the director of The Vaccine Education
Center and an attending physician with the Division of
Infectious Diseases at Children's hospital of Philadelphia.
Most recently, he authored
Overkill: When Modern Medicine Goes
Too Far.
He's currently working on a biography of vaccinology specialist
Maurice Hilleman and an article on the process for COVID-19 vaccine
pros and cons and the prospects for a path to a safe vaccination.
He offers answers to Richard's questions on virology from a
different vantage point, often emphasizing the role the immune
response process plays in determining virus behavior. Yet he still
is intrigued by virus activity, noting the fascination he has with
bacteriophages and their therapeutic potential.
His take on latency in different
viruses is especially enlightening, and he discusses how herpes
simplex is latent until some sort of stress weakens the immune
system. He comments that its latent phase is fascinating as it has
the ability to express some but not all proteins during the latent
phase. He adds that it comes out of latency because of the host's
immunological surveillance condition: the immune system keeps it
from activating until the host's immunity decreases or is weak and
the virus is able to cause symptom expression.
He also explains virus behavior by articulating how the
immunodeficiency virus evolved, mutating enough in the first
infection to transmit to someone else and so on, all the while
learning how to bind to that certain receptor and suppress the
immune system and evade it by constantly changing the code protein,
Therefore, HIV infection can mimic infection by a several different
viruses at once, and in some ways exhibits the "perfect virus"
process for survival.
He also shares great insights into vaccination research, viral
entry methods, and virulence factors in virus evolution. Listen in
for an entertaining description of how our immune system handles
viruses.
For more about Dr. Offit, see
his website: paul-offit.com.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK