Publisher's Synopsis
This section of the "Soviet Medical Reviews" series publishes review articles covering significant developments in Soviet fundamental and applied immunology research as well as plans for future experiments. It is intended to make accounts of recent advances in the USSR available to the Western scientist who does not read Russian.;This volume is divided into two sections. The first describes the synthesis and structure-function relationship between glucosaminylmuramyl peptides. The biological activity of the glucosaminylmuramyl peptide progenitor (GMDP) was studied in vitro and in vivo and the biological effects of GMDP and N-acetylmuramyl-alanyl-D-isoglutamine (MDP) was compared. The applicability of GDMP as an adjuvant for vaccines, particularly new-generation vaccines, is discussed.;The second section reviews the properties of thymus- and bone marrow-derived immunoregulatory peptides and some of the drugs that have been designed on the basis of them. Studies are in progress designed isolate individual myelopeptides from pig bone marrow cell supernatants and further developments may lead to decyphering the structure and molecular action mechanisms of these peptides, opening the way to the design of new drugs.
