Magic Bullet

From F. Gabor et al., Adv. Drug Delivery Rev., 56 (2004) pp459-480

At the beginning of the previous century, Paul Ehrlich attended C.M. von Weber's opera "Der Freischutz" and he was greatly impressed by the magic bullets. Max, a huntsman, fired these magic bullets in any direction an they yet reached their goal. Subsequently, Paul Ehrlich hit the idea of magic bullets as ideal drug delivery systems, which preferably recognize the affected tissue and release the drug at the intended site of action similar to guided missiles ... In the opera, the magic bullets were targeted by the devil. In reality, fortunately, the drug delivery system is decorated with biorecognitive ligands, which possess high affinity to receptors at or close to the desired site of action.

The magic bullet, the holy grail to drug discovery. Sometimes one wonders if it is just as unattainable as that mythical chalice. You see, cancer is a funny thing. Were cancer a human, Cancer would be described by it's neighbor as "quiet, kept to him/her self. Polite, you know, an average guy/gal". The police report for Cancer would be "male/female, medium height, average weight, fair coloured hair, average coloured eyes, no distinguishing features in plain view. Unassuming". Cancer would be just like any other person in all of humanity, silent, drifting quietly through the days, until such a time when Cancer awakes and goes on an axe murdering frenzy reminiscent of some of Mr. Wes Craven's finer horror films. Like some of Mr. Craven's finest, Cancer is often stopped, only for the world to realize, there is the Seed of Cancer, and the Seed is somewhere, out there, feeding like you and i, living, laughing, crying like you and i, waiting and biding for that time of activation and awakening.

True, i might just be a tad over dramatic. But i am not wrong.

So you ask, how does one find the magic bullet?Is it out there? Will it come and save us all? i certainly hope so. The more we study Cancer, the more we understand it's subtle differences from you and i. Cancer is like T-1000 (as played excellently by Robert Patrick), outwardly, it can look just like anyone of us, inwardly, there are extreme differences in various processes. The key to the magic bullet lies in discovering and uncovering of these inward differences between Cancer and us average folks. Discovering these differences will finally allow us the edge to distinguish Cancer from the background of us average folks, and allow us to isolate, nay, terminate Cancer before it's ugly awakening.

A few posts ago i rambled about my motivation for science. This is my motivation for science. This is why there is even joy in failure. Failure simply removes variables and, in its small failed kind of way, thin out the field of scientifically viable possibilities.