It is our hope that we can rapidly apply this discovery to the development of new treatments for several serious immune deficiency diseases. We also hope that this discovery will help to overcome the barriers to the creation of successful vaccines for serious infectious disease problems, such as AIDS and Malaria. We believe that many important new drugs will result from the systematic study of genes and proteins that control cell to cell communication. I am very pleased that our human gene discovery efforts, coupled with our high-throughput systems, resulted in the discovery of this missing component of the immune system. I view this success as validation of a new and fundamentally different approach to the discovery of medical uses of human genes.
B lymphocytes are white blood cells that travel throughout the body.
Without them, the immune system cannot function properly. Their primary function is to secrete soluble substances called antibodies in response to recognizing foreign cells or organisms. Anything that triggers this immune response is called an antigen. An antigen can be a germ, such as a virus or bacteria, or part of a virus. Tissues or cells from another person act as antigens, which is why transplanted tissues are rejected.