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How to make an antibody - Works in Progress Magazine

worksinprogress.co · 3,965 words · saved by 1 readers

Antibody therapies make up four of the world’s ten best selling drugs. If they were cheaper, they could prevent millions of deaths from rabies, malaria, and dengue.

Diphtheria , the strangling angel, was one of the great killers of children in the 19th century. The infection owes its lethality to a potent toxin released by the bacteria Corynebacterium diphtheriae . Diphtheria toxin destroys the heart, lungs, and liver. In the late stages of disease, the infected are suffocated by a buildup of dead, grey, tissue in their throats. Most victims were children under five; before modern treatments, as many as half of infected babies and toddlers died. There was little parents and doctors could do against the scourge, until biotechnology provided the first answe

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