Targeting Drugs and Toxins to the Brain: Magic Bullets

Abstract

This chapter highlights the relevant findings in toxin and cancer research and introduces the magic bullets as antineoplastic drugs. A magic bullet is a bifunctional substance that is directed with high specificity to diseased cells and possesses a medication to overcome disease. The toxin molecule displays two of the cardinal features of a magic bullet. It has a binding domain that positions the molecule on target tissue, and it has an intracellularly acting domain that alters tissue function. In these respects, a molecule can serve as a model. All of the magic bullets that are described use an antibody as a tissue-targeting domain, if these agents employ an antibody at all. The magic bullets use an antibody as a tissue-targeting domain, if the agents employ an antibody at all and considering that, there is an alternate way to envision chimeras, and the products might prove to be a new class of drugs with broad therapeutic utility. Chimeric drugs are designed to attack neuroblastomas and pheochromocytomas. The limitations do not appear to be in the drugs, but rather in the ability of neuroscientists to adopt a new technology and exploit it fully. For most of the potent protein toxins, conventional antibody therapy is of no practical value when vulnerable cells in the patient have internalized the poison.