Cancer and AIDS: A Symbiotic Relationship

AIDS has commandeered media headlines, instigated public awareness, and garnered funding in more profound ways than any other disease in history. Bolstered by a tenacious activist community, HIV/AIDS research has blazed trails empirically, politically, and even philosophically. Since this disease took hold some 15 years ago, new insights and understanding in immunology, cytokine biology, antiviral research, vaccine development, and gene therapy have emerged from HIV/AIDS research laboratories a

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AIDS has commandeered media headlines, instigated public awareness, and garnered funding in more profound ways than any other disease in history. Bolstered by a tenacious activist community, HIV/AIDS research has blazed trails empirically, politically, and even philosophically. Since this disease took hold some 15 years ago, new insights and understanding in immunology, cytokine biology, antiviral research, vaccine development, and gene therapy have emerged from HIV/AIDS research laboratories and crossed over to cancer research.

The relationship between AIDS and cancer is, of course, symbiotic. While HIV/AIDS research is now benefiting cancer research in numerous ways, the AIDS-cancer story has actually come full circle. It was the virus-cancer program conducted back in the 1970s and early 1980s that paved the way to better understanding of HIV/AIDS. "The development of our sophistication in virology and immunology, and the relationship between genetics, virology, and cancer, all came out of this infusion of money in ...

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