Discovery of a new antibiotic compound from a Nigerian environment is good news for researchers in this field.
SARS-CoV-2 turns on a cellular switch to build the tubes in this photo – called filopodia – that might help viral particles – the little spheres – spread more easily.
Dr Elizabeth Fischer, NIAID NIH / Bouhaddou et al. Elsevier 2020
Nevan Krogan, University of California, San Francisco
Kinases are cellular control switches. When they malfunction, they can cause cancer. The coronavirus hijacks these kinases to replicate, and cancer drugs that target them could fight COVID-19.
There are 20,000 FDA approved drugs. One of them might fight COVID-19, if we can find it.
Peter Dazeley/The Image Bank via Getty Images
Nevan Krogan, University of California, San Francisco
Among the more than 20,000 drugs approved by the FDA, there may be some that can treat COVID-19. A team at the University of California, San Francisco, is identifying possible candidates.
High-tech ways to scan nature’s own creations.
Caleb Foster/Shutterstock.com
Pharmaceutical companies focus on small molecules they’ve devised – and can easily patent. But nature’s already come up with many antibacterial compounds that drug designers could use to make medicines.
The not-for-profit UK group The Loop said it tested the drug ecstasy with ‘loop lasers’ at a festival in July 2016.
The Loop UK/Facebook
Victorian Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said conducting on-site drug tests at public events “safely and quickly is not really a practical option”. But the technology is available.
Ketamine crystals could help depression, too.
michel1972
Ketamine may be the latest recreational drug to find a new legal use.
Indonesian schoolchildren show off the mark indicating they’ve just taken anti-filariasis medication, a drug that prevents just one of the world’s ‘neglected’ diseases.
CDC Global
The 2015 Nobel Prize in medicine went to research on remedies derived from natural compounds. Academia is continuing the fight against ‘neglected’ diseases by similarly hunting for new drugs in nature.
Pills ok during pregnancy? We can’t know if we don’t study them.
Medications image via www.shutterstock.com
Imagine being pregnant while having a chronic health condition such as diabetes, hypertension, depression or asthma, or being diagnosed with an illness while pregnant. Amazingly, your doctor may not know…
Congratulations are in order. The pair have known each other for some time. But the relationship has now been formalised. Living as we do in modern times, both may have other relationships, but it’s still…
‘I’m not so much anti-establishment as pointing out the obvious.’
Imperial College London/Layton Thompson
The John Maddox Prize for standing up for science is awarded to individuals who are judged to have “promoted sound science and evidence on a matter of public interest” and especially those who have faced…
Professor and Director of Quantitative Biosciences Institute & Senior Investigator at the Gladstone Institutes, University of California, San Francisco