Superbugs : The Race to Stop an Epidemic (9780735217522) by McCarthy Matt

Author:McCarthy, Matt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA
Published: 2019-05-21T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 23

Breakthrough

AFTER THE IMPROMPTU MEETING in the hallway, I returned to my office and tumbled down the lysin rabbit hole. How had I missed this? I also tracked down the man responsible for developing it, an immunologist named Vincent Fischetti, who has been doing research at Rockefeller University for nearly fifty years. He invited me to discuss the work at his laboratory, where I could see his experiments for myself.

A few days later, on a brisk, foggy morning, I walked down York Avenue, past the Rockefeller tennis courts and the Philosopher’s Garden fountains, imagining the campus as it had been a century earlier, before skyscrapers and iPhones and Uber—before the richest man in America first set foot on it: cows grazing on a treeless pasture, barges floating up and down the East River, the Queensborough Bridge being built off in the distance. Steam—steam rising everywhere, from the river and the slaughterhouses and the soot-stained chimneys surrounding the muddy farmland. A time before antibiotics, when the average life expectancy for a guy like me was forty-seven. I was nearly there.

The entrance to Fischetti’s laboratory building displays a large poster featuring black-and-white photographs of elderly white men, titled Nobel Laureates of Bronk Laboratory: Gerald M. Edelman, Ralph M. Steinman, George Palade, Günter Blobel, Fritz Lipmann, and Christian de Duve. Fischetti works on the eighth floor of Bronk, at the end of a long hallway overstuffed with expensive equipment and hirsute graduate students. His office is slightly removed from their laboratory benches, across the hall from all the lysin work.

When I knocked on his door, he sprang up. The professor is in his seventies, but he appears much younger. Fischetti has a perpetual tan, powder-white hair, even whiter teeth. “Thank you for meeting me,” I said as I removed my white coat and took a seat next to a framed picture of exploding bacteria. I explained my role as a physician-researcher at Cornell and mentioned that I might be an investigator on his upcoming lysin trial.

He pointed at the image I was looking at and smiled. “That’s lysin in action. Incredible, right?” Like Tom Walsh, Vince Fischetti has the ardor and enthusiasm of a man half his age.

I nodded at the mini-explosion and pulled out a notepad. “I’m going to be consenting patients,” I said. “So I figured I should know how this stuff works. I’ve read some of your papers. Wild stuff.”

I discovered that Fischetti has spent decades trying to understand the changes that take place when bacteria interact with human cells. His Rockefeller team tries to identify and interfere with these microscopic events, using enzymes derived from bacteria-killing viruses (known as bacteriophages) to prevent and treat infections. “It sounds risky,” I said. I scanned his office and silenced my phone. “Injecting people with bacteria-killing viruses? I’m worried that our IRB will never approve it. I’m not sure I’d want it.”

He shook his head. “That’s not quite right,” he said. “We’ve removed the virus and purified the protein. Let’s back up.” Fischetti started from the beginning.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.