the IRA

the first research job i enjoyed was as a clinical research assistant in cardiology at johns hopkins. i was in way over my head, reading all kinds of articles that i couldn't understand at all, but i enjoyed the hospital setting and just hanging out with doctors. my project involved compiling a database of patient info--in retrospect it was a shit job, but i thought i was doing something important and challenging at the time. specifically, i was concerned with a particular type of drug that patients were perhaps given during their balloon angioplasties. these drugs were of the GPIIb/IIIa inhibitor class, and there are three such drugs currently on the market--integrilin, reopro, and aggrastat. their scientific names are eptifibatide, abciximab, and tirofiban, respectively.

now i know what they do, and so i thought i would amend my previous post by pointing out that glycoprotein IIb/IIIa receptors are not the mediators per se of platelet aggregation. instead, they are the binding sites for fibrinogen, the precursor to fibrin, i.e. the glue that keeps clots together. incidentally, although drugs blocking these receptors are indicated for the prevention of unwanted clots, the congenital deficiency of these receptors is called Glanzmann's thrombasthenia, a rare but serious bleeding disorder.

sadly though, the love of my life is nowhere to be seen today. maybe tomorrow.