SOFOSBUVIR · A Cure, Not a Control — Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

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

Piece

SOFOSBUVIR · A Cure, Not a Control Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

$ 2,345.00

Description

Sofosbuvir, from 2013, does not control hepatitis C: it cures it in weeks, and its launch price opened the argument about how much a cure may cost. Printed here is the molecule against the NS5B polymerase.

A Author

Sofosbuvir

B Subject

Virology

C Aesthetic

Diagram · Typographic

Exploration

The hepatitis C virus copies its genome with a polymerase of its own, NS5B. Sofosbuvir imitates one of the bases that enzyme chains together, but carries one methyl too many at a position that prevents the next one being added.

The chain ends there. And since the viral enzyme copies without proofreading, it cannot withdraw the faulty piece or go back.

It reaches the liver as an inactive precursor, protected by two groups the hepatocyte itself removes. It is activated in the organ where the virus lives and almost nowhere else.

In twelve weeks of pills it cures more than ninety-five per cent. It does not control the disease: it eliminates it, and the patient stops being a patient.

It came out at eighty-four thousand dollars a treatment, a thousand a tablet. It was the first time a health system had to argue over whether it could afford to cure everyone it had.

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