HPV16/18 L1 VLP vaccine induces cross-neutralizing antibodies that may mediate cross-protection

View of the cliffs, looking south, showing the town of Thira along the cliff's edge; Santorini is a small, circular group of volcanic islands located in the Aegean Sea, about 200 km south-east from the mainland of Greece. It is also known by the name of the largest island in the archipelago, Thera (or Thira). It is the southernmost member of the Cyclades group of islands, with an area of approximately 73 sq km (28 sq mi), and in 2001 had an estimated population of 13,600. A giant central lagoon, more or less rectangular and measuring about 12 km by 7 km (8 mi by 4 mi), is surrounded by 300 m (984 ft) high sheer cliffs on three sides. The island slopes downward from the cliffs to the surrounding Mediterranean sea. On the fourth side, the lagoon is separated from the Mediterranean by another much smaller island called Therasia, also with cliffs. The lagoon is joined to the sea in two places, in the northwest and southwest. The water in the centre of the lagoon is nearly 400 m (1,300 ft) deep, so it is an ideal safe harbour for even the biggest ships. The island's ports are all in the lagoon and there are no ports on the outside of the island. The towns of Santorini cling to the top of the cliff looking down on the lagoon. It is the most active volcanic centre in the Aegean Arc, though what remains today is largely a water-filled caldera. The name Santorini was given to it by the Latin empire in the thirteenth century and is a reference to Saint Irene. Before then it was called Kallistē ("the most beautiful one"), Strongylē ("the circular one"), or Thera. The island was the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions of the last several thousand years when it erupted cataclysmically about 3,500 years ago. The eruption left a large caldera surrounded by volcanic ash deposits hundreds of feet deep, and its effects may have indirectly led to the collapse of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, 110 km (70 mi) to the south. One popular theory holds that the Thera eruption is the source of the legend of Atlantis. Source: Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (accessed 7/16/2008

Unexplored therapeutic opportunities in the human genome

A large proportion of biomedical research and the development of therapeutics is focused on a small fraction of the human genome. In a strategic effort to map the knowledge gaps around proteins encoded by the human genome and to promote the exploration of currently understudied, but potentially druggable, proteins, the US National Institutes of Health launched the Illuminating the Druggable Genome (IDG) initiative in 2014. In this article, we discuss how the systematic collection and processing of a wide array of genomic, proteomic, chemical and disease-related resource data by the IDG Knowledge Management Center have enabled the development of evidence-based criteria for tracking the target development level (TDL) of human proteins, which indicates a substantial knowledge deficit for approximately one out of three proteins in the human proteome. We then present spotlights on the TDL categories as well as key drug target classes, including G protein-coupled receptors, protein kinases and ion channels, which illustrate the nature of the unexplored opportunities for biomedical research and therapeutic development