ADALIMUMAB · The World's Highest-Grossing Drug — Oversized Drop-Should

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TEE-MED-DI-ADL-01-M-BK T-Shirt

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ADALIMUMAB · The World's Highest-Grossing Drug Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

$ 2,345.00

Description

Approved in 2002, adalimumab was the first entirely human antibody: no mouse is left anywhere in the molecule. It became the highest-grossing drug in the world, protected by a hundred or so applications around a single patent. Printed here are its twenty thousand atoms.

A Author

Adalimumab

B Subject

Immunology

C Aesthetic

Diagram · Typographic

Exploration

TNF is a signal an inflamed cell throws out to recruit the others. Adalimumab captures it in transit, before it reaches any receptor.

It repairs nothing. It keeps one alarm switched off for as long as it is given, and on stopping, the signal circulates again.

It was the first made without any mouse sequence, obtained by selection in bacteriophages instead of by immunising an animal. That reduced rejection, although the body ends up making antibodies against it in a proportion of patients.

It grossed more than any other drug in history. Around the main patent, more than a hundred further applications were filed on dose, formulation and device.

That thicket delayed competition in the United States years after the product was already generic in Europe. The molecule expired; the perimeter built around it did not.

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