ZIDOVUDINE · A Failed Drug from 1964 — Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

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

Piece

ZIDOVUDINE · A Failed Drug from 1964 Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

$ 2,345.00

Description

Zidovudine had been synthesised in 1964 as an antitumour agent and did not work; in 1987 it was the first drug approved against AIDS. Printed here is the base without the oxygen the chain ought to continue by: that is where reverse transcriptase stops.

A Author

Zidovudina

B Subject

Virology

C Aesthetic

Diagram · Typographic

Exploration

The virus copies its RNA to DNA with a reverse transcriptase that chains bases one after another. Each new base hooks on by the oxygen the previous one has at position 3.

Zidovudine is a base that has had that oxygen removed and a triple nitrogen put in its place. The enzyme incorporates it without noticing and the chain stops there: there is nowhere to continue.

The human polymerase rejects it better than the viral one, but not entirely, and the one that gets it wrong most often is the mitochondrion's. Hence the anaemia and the muscle damage of the doses of that time.

It had been synthesised in 1964 as an antitumour agent, did not work and sat filed away for twenty years.

It was approved in 1987 after the fastest trial the agency had ever run. In monotherapy the virus escaped it within months.

Details