CISPLATIN · It Came Out of an Experiment About Something Else

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

Piece

CISPLATIN · It Came Out of an Experiment About Something Else Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

$ 2,345.00

Description

Cisplatin turned up in an experiment on electric fields in bacteria and was approved in 1978. Printed here are its eleven atoms: it picks no target, it stitches the two strands of DNA and the cell can no longer copy itself.

A Author

Cisplatino

B Subject

Oncology

C Aesthetic

Diagram · Typographic

Exploration

Eleven atoms. In the blood, with a great deal of chloride around, the molecule is blocked and does not react. Inside the cell chloride is scarce, water takes the place of two of its arms and it is left charged and reactive.

There it finds the DNA and binds to two guanines in a row, bending the double helix. The cell tries to repair, cannot manage the kink, and switches on its own death.

There is no target and no selectivity. It kills what divides fast, and that is why hair, marrow and the lining of the gut fall too.

It turned up in an experiment on the effect of electric fields on bacterial growth. What was holding the bacteria back was not the current: it was the platinum coming off the electrodes.

With it, testicular cancer went from killing most of them to being cured in more than nine cases out of ten.

Details