What’s the latest on OX40?
What is OX40?
It’s an antibody response involving T-Cells. I don’t know the substance behind the question, so I’m guessing ssal thinks it would be helpful with slowing cytokine storm?
OX40 is a member of the TNF/NGF-receptor family expressed on activated T cells…
ssal, Are you ssal-ling something? Hope not.
Mr. White:
No, I’m not selling anything. Just looking for things that could help. As I recall OX40 is described in part toward the end of the Cytokine Storm part of the Influenza Science section (I also recall reading a very encouraging newspaper article about it several months, maybe as much as a year, ago] and I’m hoping someone has found out more about it.
My own personal gut feeling/guesstimate or whatever you want to call it is that if you could block the cytokine storm, you could greatly reduce the probability of dying from H5N1 infection. I’m wondering if it there is any further information beyond the experiments reported in mice. The underlying question I have is: would this be something the research about which should be accelerated? Should the production of large amounts of OX40 be brought about even before the research is complete? (I would ask the same question about vaccines. Are there any vaccines that show enough promise that we should go ahead gamble on and produce even before all testing is complete? Even though we might lose several billion?
This whole H5N1 thing looks potentially catastrophic enough that it seems clear (to me, at least) that such questions need to be asked.
ssal – at 16:26 “My own personal gut feeling/guesstimate or whatever you want to call it is that if you could block the cytokine storm, you could greatly reduce the probability of dying from H5N1 infection.”
Thanx ssal-I too have mentioned thissame thought before. Now blocking the C-Storm wouldn’t block the infection but would (it seems to me) greatly reduce or stop how ones built-in immune systems deal with respirtory distress.
Apparently in the above I should be talking about OX40:Ig and not OX40. OX40:Ig apparently downregulates OX40. The following is a quote from an Oct, 2003 article about it:
“Using a fusion protein OX40:Ig supplied by the pharmaceutical company Xenova Research, the scientists were able to demonstrate that OX40:Ig blocks active T cells.
Results show six days after infection with flu, mice treated with OX40:Ig were indistinguishable from uninfected control mice. But infected mice that had not been treated lost 25 per cent of their body weight, appeared hunched, withdrawn and lost their appetite - all characteristic symptoms of flu.”
Interesting. Do you have the full article reference? Galt
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