BLINATUMOMAB · A Bridge Between Two Cells — Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-

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

Piece

BLINATUMOMAB · A Bridge Between Two Cells Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

$ 2,345.00

Description

Blinatumomab, from 2014, blocks nothing: it has a hand at each end and forces two cells that had never met into contact. Printed here are its seven thousand three hundred atoms forming that bridge.

A Author

Blinatumomab

B Subject

Oncology

C Aesthetic

Diagram · Typographic

Exploration

A normal antibody has two identical hands and grabs one single thing. Everything else was stripped from blinatumomab and it was left with two different hands joined by a short cord.

One sticks to the CD19 mark on the tumour lymphocyte and the other to CD3, which is the piece the T lymphocyte recognises its targets with. The cord is exactly long enough for the two cells to end up stuck together.

The T lymphocyte has recognised nothing: the target has been put in its face and it discharges. The synapse forms by forced proximity, not by identification.

The price is that the discharge is simultaneous in many places. The cytokine storm it produces is foreseeable and is handled with another antibody that cuts the signal.

Having lost the part that stabilises it, it lasts little more than two hours in the blood and has to be given by continuous infusion for weeks, with a pump.

Details