Science Questions

Why do some drugs work against more than one disease?

CamPath, the antibody you were talking about earlier, was given to my daughter in the 1990s for Wegener's granulomatosis but why are some drugs effective against more than one disease? Cheryl, Hopton on Sea

We put this to Professor Adrian Newland:

Adrian - In diseases such as Wegener’s which is an autoimmune disease it’s the immune system, the lymphocytes that actually cause immune damage. CamPath just removes those whatever the disease and will deal with that.

Chris - It’ll take away the cell that is causing the disease so the disease gets better.

November 2008