Do you know something that I’ve been brooding over? Design in other aspects of our lives, specially design that you cannot see. Design that has an absolute great impact on our lives, wellness, and health but also design that most of us don’t really know about. Thoughts?

Now mainly due to the fact that I’m getting older, but we’re taking a detour here, but I’ve now had way too many conversations about cancer than I ever care to. In fact I could go the rest of my life without speaking about that word or that disease and be happy as a clam. In fact, in case anyone is listening, I would like to do so please and thank you. However, that is probably not the case, so here’s what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about design within medicine, specifically antibody labeling or monoclonal antibodies. Why? Because of cancer. Also Fuck cancer.

For both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes antibody labeling is used in regards to cancer. Things like Immunohistochemistry (I cannot even pretend to pronounce it) or Immuno-PET imaging. But one thing that I thought was pretty cool? You can use antibody labeling in real-time surgical situations. Because you can use fluorescently labeled antibodies to identify the boundaries of tumors in your body while someone is cutting into you. Again, ask me how I know.

So picture this, you have bee recently diagnosed with a malignant tumor in some part of your body. In addition to chemo, monoclonal antibody treatment, the doctor recommends surgery to remove it. Now, do you remember that tumors are made up of cells? And now do you remember that you cannot see people’s cells with the naked eye?  Did you know that they are only a few micrometers in diameter? So how in the world can a surgeon be able to cut all the dangerous cells our of your body? Antibody labeling.

These antibodies are designed to specifically bind to antigens (markers on cancer cells. Then they inject them into your blood stream (ouch!) and the antibodies circulate and accumulate at the tumor site. THEN during surgery a special camera detects the fluorescence that is emitted by these antibodies, thus illuminating the tumor and it’s boundaries within your body, so that the surgeon can cut it all our in real time. How absolutely incredible. Again, ask me how I know.

It is really incredible how creative our species is. Yes, design is important. But how much more important is design within medicine, or science? Design that impacts thousands of lives in a really impactful way, prolonging life against malignant tumors? Incredible.