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Biology B6 - Coggle Diagram
Biology B6
Developing drugs
Drugs go through several phases and trials to test their efficacy, safety, side effects and ideal dosage
Initially, thousands to potential new drugs are sent through pre-clinical trials, which test on animals/live tissue to predict their efficacy and/or potential toxicity. Many fail
Some drugs succeed and then go into first phase of clinical trials, which use small amounts of healthy subjects to test for side effects.
Second phases involve small amounts of patients with targeted disease to test efficacy. Finally third phase is on a large scale with lots of patients to find optimum dose
Double blind trials are when neither doctors nor patient know if the drug administered is a placebo, this eliminate bias in results.
Vaccination
A vaccine does not directly combat a pathogen. Instead, it exposes the body to dead or weakened pathogen cells, which triggers an immune response, the body then produces antibodies to attach that specific antigen. As a result, the body quickly recognises when the pathogen actually enters the body, and the response is much greater and effective.
Mass vaccination can lead to herd immunity, which is where a large enough proportion of a population is vaccinated/immune, so the virus cannot spread and is eradicated
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Monoclonal antibodies
Monoclonal antibodies are produced from a single clone of one cell. Each type is specific to a certain binding site on a protein. They can target specific cells, proteins or chemicals
Monoclonal antibodies are produced by stimulating a mouse's lymphocytes to produce complimentary antibodies. These are the rapidly reproduced by electrically fusing them with tumour cells to form a hybridoma.
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Discovering drugs
Traditionally, many medicinal drugs were extracted from plants or microorganisms. Such as aspirin from willow trees or penicillin from types of mould
Penecillin, the first antibiotic, was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1929
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