Tested: A Reboot for the Immune System
The ability to reprogram the immune system is one of the most sought-after goals in medicine. Now researchers are closer than ever to pulling it off in patients with Type 1 diabetes, one of whom happens to be our correspondent A sign rests on the windowsill in the office of Jeffrey Bluestone, director of the Immune Tolerance Network and the Diabetes Center at the University of California at San Francisco. Measuring nearly three feet across, it reads "Club Bluestone" in pink and blue neon. It's the sort of artifact you'd expect to find in a bar. But Bluestone is a world-renowned immunobiologist; his father-in-law had the sign made for him in the late 1980s when Bluestone was working long hours in his lab at the University of Chicago. As the night wore on and their energy faded, he and his colleagues would turn out the lights, turn on the sign and,...