Yet another very cool way to unalive cancer hooray!!! #Science #biology #medicine #cancer #fyp

So cancer sucks and there are whole fields within fields of biology that are devoted to figuring out how it works and how we can stop it. And I want to tell you about one of the coolest weapons we have come up with so far. Let's talk about it. The biggest challenge of coming up with a cancer treatment is not how do we kill the cancer, it's how do we avoid killing everything that isn't cancer. Like chemotherapy is very good at destroying cancer cells. The problem is it also destroys a bunch of other stuff that you actually need. The cancer researchers spend a lot of time thinking about targeting. And there are these things in your body that your immune system naturally makes that are very very good at targeting. They are called antibodies. So when your immune system catches an invader, it doesn't just attack it, it comes up with a way to remember it. So that if it ever shows up again, it can get recognized and dealt with quickly and efficiently. And that's amazing enough on its own, but antibodies aren't just for germs. We can also make them for cancer. Cancer cells tend to have specific molecules that stick out of their surfaces. It's to be clear, like most cells have molecules poking out, but cancerous cells tend to have different ones from their non-cancerous siblings. And these ones are called markers. So for example, in Hodgkin Lymphoma, tumor cells tend to be covered in this molecule called CD30. So an antibody to CD30 will specifically target Hodgkin Lymphoma tumor cells and leave other cells alone. And you can attach cancer-killing drugs directly to these antibodies. It's called an antibody drug conjugate, and it's like you're handing the antibody a weapon. And the chemistry between the antibody and the drug is super important. That bond needs to be strong enough that the drug isn't just going to fly off and start killing other cells at random. Then you're just back to brute force chemo. But an antibody is a pretty big molecule and being handcuffed to one can inhibit certain drug's ability to do their jobs. So scientists have come up with some clever tricks to make sure that the antibody lets go of the drug at the precise moment to cause maximum damage. So in the case of that CD30 antibody that I talked about earlier, here's how it works. The ADC gets sucked into the cell and shuttled into a part of the cell called the lysosome. The lysosome is kind of like the cells chop shock. So if something gets in and it's not useful in its current form, it'll get sent to the lysosome to be stripped down for parts to be reused. One of the ways that chop stuff up is with a tool called Cthepsin B. And it just so happens that the CD30 antibody and the drug are hooked up to each other using an attachment that is very specifically vulnerable to Cthepsin B. So the antibody clings tightly to the drug while it's floating around in the body. And then once it's inside the target cell, that cell's own machinery will chew off the drug and free it up to destroy that cell from the inside. That's so cool. This CD30 conjugate is a real drug that is used by real people to treat their real cancer. And it's actually old as hell. It's been used for over 25 years now and we've made all kinds of advancements in the field since then. Some of the newer ADCs don't even require full antibodies, just little pieces of them. And some of them are made using amino acids that don't actually exist in nature. We're just making up brand new amino acids so that we have more control over conjugation chemistry. This stuff is wild. And I love it.