By the way. That "rouge" approach is what would I have go through as a sysadmin if this was an computer related problem. I think you deserve to be a case study in immunology and be very very successful.

Sometimes thinking out of the box and letting go of established ways will lead to results.

Edit: Also in computer sciences we use differentiating between two known states to find out how to change on state to the other one perfectly. In immunology do you use similar approaches?