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Alexander Fleming. Back In 1895 Hericourt and Richet described the first
trials in which cancer cells were injected into animals ...
... discoveries in the 20th century. One of them was the discovery of penicillin
by Sir Alexander Fleming. The discovery and development of ...
... encouraged research that lead to the discovery of many other antibiotics.(Johnson,
1991) The improbable chain of events that led Alexander Fleming to discover ...
... penicillin. In 1928, Scottish research scientist Alexander Fleming made
a huge discovery in the world of medicine. Before leaving ...
... Outside the bullring Ventas, a statue in honor of Alexander Fleming is erected.
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, and since ...
Submitted by ashby on November 12, 2007
Category: American History
Words: 511 | Pages: 3
Views: 118
Popularity Rank: 91,433
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Back In 1895 Hericourt and Richet described the first trials in which cancer cells were injected into animals to raise an antiserum for treating the
patient. None of them were cured, but they showed significant improvements in their symptoms. During the early 1900's many workers repeated these trials, but found nothing, leading to the conclusion in 1929 that nothing will work. It was discovered that an antiserum contains a mixture of many different antibodies, each one directed against a different antigen on the cancer cells. Many of these antigens are also present on normal tissue cells and so the antibodies against them could be harmful. In 1975 Kohler and Milstein found what first envisaged 80 years earlier. Since then a prodigious number of different monoclonal
antibodies have been made and they have been exploited in almost every
branch of biomedical research. Several have been found which recognise human
cancers and some of these have been tested in clinical trials. The first studies relied on the intrinsic ability of the antibody molecules to recruit the bodys own defence mechanisms to kill tumour cells. When these natural mechanisms were found to be insufficient, various artificial warheads were proposed including conventional chemical drugs, and plant toxins. Now there are so many potential combinations of guidance system and warhead that we can test only a small fraction. However, we have learned some important lessons. Therapy with antibodies is limited by the ability of the patients immune system to detect the new substance and neutralise it. This means there is only a short time when antibody therapy can be used before it becomes ineffective. More fundamentally, the sheer numbers of tumor cells in patients with terminal disease overwhelm the therapy. Some cells express too little antigen to be targeted and cells in a large mass may escape attention altogether. Antibody therapy is most likely to be useful in the...
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