18 questions · 10 almanac · 0 findings

Targeted Cancer Therapy

Precision treatments that target specific cancer mechanisms.

Almanac One Cell's Antibody, Made Immortal
  • Why were polyclonal antibody mixtures unreliable for research and diagnostics before hybridoma technology?
  • How does fusing a spleen cell with a myeloma cell produce a hybridoma that manufactures one antibody forever?
  • Which everyday medical tools, like pregnancy tests, depend on monoclonal antibodies?
Almanac The Immune System's Double Handshake
  • What downstream medical practices, like cancer immunotherapy and vaccine design, depend on this principle of self-plus-foreign recognition?
Almanac A Pill That Outwitted One Cancer's Switch
  • How did imatinib target BCR-ABL without the broad toxicity of conventional chemotherapy?
  • How did imatinib change the survival outlook for patients with chronic myelogenous leukaemia?
  • Why is imatinib considered proof of principle for later kinase inhibitor drugs?
Almanac The Immune System Learns to Look Again
  • How do the CTLA-4 and PD-1 checkpoints let tumours suppress an immune attack?
  • What made the 2013 clinical trial results in metastatic melanoma different from prior cancer treatments?
  • Why did Science call checkpoint blockade a new category of treatment rather than just a new drug?
  • How did this 2013 breakthrough connect to the 2018 Nobel Prize awarded to Allison and Honjo?
Almanac Releasing the Brake on the Immune System
  • Why does the immune system often fail to attack tumours even after T cells infiltrate them?
  • How did checkpoint inhibitor drugs change outcomes for patients with metastatic melanoma?