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Preventing and treating disease (Making and using monoclonal antibodies…
Preventing and treating disease
Vaccination and herd immunity
Some pathogens can make you ill quickly. Immunisation involves giving a vaccine made of dead or inactive form of a disease causing microorganism. It stimulates the body's natural immune response to invading pathogens.
If a large portion of a population can gain immunity from a disease, then there is a probability for herd immunity to take place. This is the process where people are not vaccinated against the disease, but seen as though others are, there is no way of catching the disease. They are immune because the rest of the people (herd) are immune.
Antibiotics and painkillers
When a person has an infectious disease, you generally take medicine that contain useful drugs. Often, the medicine doesn't affect the pathogen that is causing the problem, it just eases the symptoms to make the person feel better. They likely have no affect on the actual virus, just the symptoms. These can be known as PAINKILLERS
Antibiotics are drugs that attack the pathogen making the person ill, and cure them from the disease. They work by killing the bacteria causing the disease whilst they are inside the body. They damage bacterial cells without harming your own cells.
However, antibiotics cannot kill viral pathogens, and the strains of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics are evolving. This means that antibiotics which are used to kill a particular type of bacteria no longer have an affect.
Discovering drugs
There are a number of drugs used today that are based on traditional medicines extracted from plants.
In the early 20th century, scientists were looking for chemicals that might kill bacteria, and the cure was found through microorganisms in the form of penicillin.
The drive to find new medicines is continuing but difficult. It is difficult to find chemicals that kill bacteria without damaging human cells. Scientists are also collecting soil samples globally and searching for microorganisms to produce a new antibiotic against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Developing drugs
New medicines are being developed all the time, as scientists and doctors try to find ways to cure disease. A good medicine is
Effective, Safe, Stable
and
Successfull
It can take scientists up to 12 years to bring a new medicine into use. This is due to testing and ensuring all conditions are met. Chemicals have to undergo pre-clinical testing, followed by clinical trials where the drug is tested by healthy patients. If the medicine passes all legal tests, it is licenced is your doctor can prescribe it.
A double blind trial can sometimes be used. This is where a group of patients are split into two sub-groups. One group will receive a placebo, something that does not contain the drug. The other group will be given the actual drug. Neither the doctors nor the patients will know who has what. This way, the trials will be completely fair, and researchers can see whether or not the drug is effective.
Making and using monoclonal antibodies
Monoclonal antibodies are a form of medical treatment reliant on the immune system. They are proteins that are produced to target particular cells in the body. Some WBC are known as lymphocytes. They make antibodies but cannot divide. All mammals produce lymphocytes.
Scientists combine lymphocytes from mice with a type of tumour cell to make a cell called a hybridoma. Single hybridoma cells divide to make a large number of identical cells that all produce the same antibodies. These antibodies are collected and purified. These are monoclonal antibodies.
Antigens are protein molecules often found on the surface of cells, although free protein molecules can also act as antigens. The monoclonal antibodies produced from a single clone of cells are specific to one binding site on one specific antigen.
Due to monoclonal antibodies only targeting a specific type of cell, scientists look at ways to use them in specific diseased. For example, they are trying to develop M.A's to target cancer.
Advantages.
:memo: They only bind to the specific diseased or damaged cells. Healthy cells are not affected at all
:memo: Can be used to treat a wide variety of disease.
Disadvantage
:memo: They initially created more side-effects than expected
:memo: Producing the right MA and attaching them to drugs and other compounds proved more difficult than expected
:memo: Currently expensive to develop
