B6 Preventing & treating disease

Created by

Shivani

Cards (13)

Vaccination involves introducing small quantities of dead or inactive pathogens into the body to stimulate white blood cells to produce antibodies.
The heart drug digitalis originates from foxgloves
the painkiller aspirin originates from willow
penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming
New drugs are extensively tested for toxicity (hot harmful it is) , efficacy (how well the drug works) and dosage (how much of the drug)
Preclinical testing is done in a laboratory using cells, tissues and live animals
Stage 1 : (preclinical)
test on human cells & tissues
Advantage : cheaply test a lot of substances
disadvantage : doesn’t tell us how it effects whole organism
Stage 2 : (preclinical)
testing in living animals
Stage 3 : (clinical)
Very low doses of the drug are given to healthy volunteers
In double blind trials some patients are given a placebo
Monoclonal antibodies are antibodies produced from a single clone of cells and are specific to one type of antigen
Monoclonal antibodies are produced by stimulating mouse lymphocytes to make a particular antibody
then combined with a particular kind of tumour cell to make a hybridoma cell
single hybridoma cells are cloned to produce many identical cells that all produce the same antibody
A large amount of antibody can be collected and purified
In pregnancy testing monoclonal antibodies are used to detect a specific hormone which is produced by the placenta of the developing fetus (released in urine)
Monoclonal antibodies are used to measure levels of hormones in the blood or to detect pathogens
Monoclonal antibodies are used to locate or identify specific molecules in a cell or tissue by binding to them with fluorescent dye
For cancer the monoclonal antibodies can be bound to a radioactive substance, a toxic drug or a chemical which stops cells growing and dividing, delivering the substance to the cancer cells without harming other cells in the body however produce very harmful side effects