Killing Cancer with a Smile

This cartoon got me reminiscing about my time as a cancer researcher.

Why did I quit? In short, it didn't make sense for me to save thousands of lives if the one I was leading wasn't worth living. I hate lab work and I wasn't making any money ... so I said "forget it". I wouldn't have gotten credit for anything, anyway.

But there were a few ideas I had for cancer treatments that I never expressed. Unfortunately, I've forgotten all my key words, so this is going to sound a little odd to anyone in the field.

First, we know that we can make antibodies for just about anything. You put a foreign protein in some lab bunnies and shake them, and viola, you have antibodies that stick to the foreign protein. So you do that with your cancer cells, then screen for antibodies that stick to the cancer cells but not the healthy cells. This should work for both common types of cancer and one-offs.

Now, you might get away with just injecting this crap right into the patient. The affinity of the antibody for the malignant cells might be enough to trigger the hosts' immune system.

If not, you can either: add a carbon chain and at the end use one of your "killer blocks". You know, one of those chemical clusters that kills just about anything. The antibody will attach to the cancer cell, then the killer crap will do its work.

Not satisfied? Use the antibody as the attachment vector for a virus. You know how HIV only attacks white blood cells. Do a little swap and replace the "white blood cell attachment do-hickeys" with your antibody ... do-hickeys.

Best of luck. Remember to get out of the lab occasionally.