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Defensins are antimicrobial peptides produced by immune cells in response to bacterial infection. In his Perspective, Ganz now reveals several new activities for these peptides including the blocking of human host cell invasion by HIV (Zhanget al.) and the induction of cell-mediated immune responses against tumors in mice (Biragynet al.).
The author is in the Department of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. E-mail: tganz{at}mednet.ucla.edu
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Linqi Zhang, Wenjie Yu, Tian He, Jian Yu, Rebecca E. Caffrey, Enrique A. Dalmasso, Siyu Fu, Thang Pham, Jianfeng Mei, Jaclyn J. Ho, Wenyong Zhang, Peter Lopez, and David D. Ho (1 November 2002) Science298 (5595), 995.
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