This gap may be explained in part by the current paucity of scientific advances in genomics that have practical applications to infectious disease management.
Despite significant scientific advances, current HIV therapy regimens do not completely eliminate the negative impact of HIV on the immune system; and the economic impact of treating all people infected with HIV globally, for the duration of their lifetimes, presents significant challenges.
In parallel, scientific advances in current mechanistic studies have revealed novel antimicrobial modes of actions that nicely illustrate their complex role in host protection.
"This is one of many instances in which original Exploratorium exhibits have not only represented current science, but actually contributed to the field as scientific advances of their own," Dr. Brown said.
Another key question is whether the current methods for process scale-up incorporate the relevant scientific advances to ensure 'green technologies', or are they just extensions of previous largely empirical approaches having limited utility and reliability?
Classic gene-targeting delivery systems (microinjection, electroporation, or calcium phosphate transfection) have led to major scientific advances, but are too inefficient in their current state to be used for some applications, including gene therapy.
And a prosecutor may not want to "embrace scientific advances that could risk undermining past convictions and current prosecutions," the authors write.
Many scientific advances are required to meet these challenges, and their likelihood is explored based on current and future capabilities.
Thus, in order to improve the current situation, the authors propose to go ahead in each of the LCA stages as far as scientific advances allow.
