ANTIBODIES turn out to have a talent for destruction they’ve managed to keep
well hidden till now. They may play a much more active role in
preventing—and causing—disease than previously thought.
Antibodies have always been seen as scouts rather than soldiers.
Immunologists believe they latch onto foreign cells, viruses or
proteins, but rely on other parts of the immune system such as white blood cells
to finish them off.
But while Paul Wentworth, Kim Janda and their colleagues at the Scripps
Research Institute in La Jolla, California, were studying an antibody, they
found that it could produce hydrogen…
