To catch up with rivals in creating drugs that hit a target called hsp90 (heat shock protein 90), Pfizer bought an outfit called Serenex.
Infinity's antibiotic compound blocks the activity of a family of so-called heat-shock proteins that repair damaged proteins.
Adams had first pitched the idea for a heat-shock blocker at Millennium in 2003 but got turned down.
Heat-shock proteins have been known to repair damaged proteins and escort those beyond repair to the bodys junkyards.
He has found, for example, that taken in combination with exercise, a spice called curcumin boosts the production of heat-shock proteins several-fold.
Infinity is playing catch-up to two other biotech firms, Conforma Therapeutics and Kosan Biosciences, in the race to develop the first heat-shock blockers.
The vaccine works -- he hopes -- by targeting something called a heat-shock protein, which is produced in high quantity by tumor cells.
At the mention of heat-shock proteins, "Julian lit up, " he adds.
Like Antigenics' other cancer therapies, the vaccine programs the immune system to recognize a particular molecule present in many kinds of cancer, called a heat-shock protein.
In the early 1990s a scientist at the National Cancer Institute had discovered that an already-existing molecule clings to a receptor on heat-shock proteins, preventing the survival of cancer cells.
Many of the health benefits of exercise are thought to be due to the synthesis of damage-controlling molecules called heat-shock proteins, and Dr Rattan's group has been experimenting with other ways of triggering these proteins.
Antigenics focuses on a class of chaperones known as heat-shock proteins (HSP), first studied in this regard by Pramod Srivastava, a cofounder of Antigenics and a cancer specialist at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, in Farmington.
"We saw the hostages, who seemed to be composed, but in a state of shock and fatigue from the grueling heat, especially Michel Louis, who said he had suffered a minor diabetic attack and avoids eating much, " the official said before the hostages' release.
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