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Search Results for: label/drug development

  • Towards better drug development, fewer side effects?

    …on’t worry –- the article is way more interesting than its title.  Those trees on the right are called SPADE trees. They map cellular responses to different  stimuli in a collection of human blood cells. Credit: (c) 2012 Nature America [Nat Biotechnol, 30:858--67, 2012] Here’s the basic idea: The current methods drug developers use to screen potential drug compounds –- typically a blend of high-throughput imaging and biochemical ass…

    Authored by on September 24, 2012

  • The Bright Crystal

    …ut as it turns out, they are big enough for the X-FEL. In the March paper, the team showed that these crystals will diffract x-rays in the X-FEL, but they didn’t solve the resulting structure. Now, in a paper published Nov. 29 in Science, they have. They did it by combining X-FEL and in vivo crystallization to solve the structure of a trypsanosomal enzyme called cathepsin-B, a potential drug target for African sleeping sickness. The team spra…

    Authored by on December 5, 2012

  • Creating viruses to create the vaccines?

    Synthetic viruses could mean a faster flu vax. by Carrie Arnold     In 2009, scientists scrambled to develop a vaccine against the H1N1 influenza pandemic. Although the first cases of illness were reported in March, a vaccine wasn’t ready in the U.S. until late September — a lag of almost seven months. Large amounts of vaccine weren’t available until several months after that. By then, the second wave of infections had peaked, as had much…

    Authored by on May 20, 2013

  • My bipolar life

    …last message, so that no one would be sending out the police. All that was going to happen is one day I would be alive. The next I would be dead. Consequences be damned. Well, the DKA didn’t kill me on day 1. Nor on day 2. What it did do was deplete my blood potassium, which caused a worse problem, an uncontrolled, and very painful heart rate. You see, I didn’t quite think this through as carefully as I should have. Through a strange…

    Authored by on February 8, 2013

  • He found out he has ovaries*

    …dition is Turner Syndrome. The man in this case report has Turner, which can result in features such as short stature and incomplete ovarian development, along with some health issues. Turner Syndrome is present in about 1 in 2500 live female births. Adrenal glands: They’re small, but they’re very, very important. Image, public domain, US Govt. In addition to being XO, though, he has another condition: congenital adrenal hyperplasia….

    Authored by on June 6, 2013

  • Elephant mimics Korean, delighting Arrested Development fans

    …wo female Asian elephants at a zoo became known for using the chirpy mating calls of the Asian elephant instead of the lower-frequency vocalizations of the African elephant. The fellow had to do adjust, evidently. Koshik is a 20-year-old Asian elephant. When you think about animals that mimic human speech, like crows, elephants, and possibly a beluga whale, think about what they have in common with us: They live in complex social groups where co…

    Authored by on November 2, 2012

  • Biology Explainer: The big 4 building blocks of life–carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and nucleic acids

    …molecules themselves break down into a surprisingly small number of building blocks. The proteins that make up all of the living things on this planet and ensure their appropriate structure and smooth function consist of only 20 different kinds of building blocks. Nucleic acids, specifically DNA, are even more basic: only four different kinds of molecules provide the materials to build the countless different genetic codes that translate into all…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

  • How pregnant are you? Let’s find out

    …or “slipping” the top plate), they flow bottom-to-top. Samples and reagents are loaded in one configuration, and the chip is “slipped” to start the readout process. The SlipChip design Source: Nat. Commun. 3:1283 doi: 10.1038/ncomms2292 (2012). Here’s how the authors describe it: In the SlipChip, two pieces of glass etched with microfluidic wells and channels are assembled together in the presence of mineral oil. A fluidic path is for…

    Authored by on January 6, 2013

  • What is a beating embryonic heart?

    …ation. Some of the cells aggregate to create the inner lining of the heart, while others form the muscular tissues. As the cells collect together, they develop two tubes. In humans, these two are supposed to fuse at about day 21 or 22 in embryonic development, forming a single tube. This fusion triggers the rhythmic beating of the heart as the cells start to communicate. In human development, the embryo at this point is 2 to 3 mm in length, about…

    Authored by on April 3, 2013

  • Biology Xplainer: Evolution and how it happens

    …he population will change over time. It will be adapted to its environment. It will evolve. Other mechanisms of evolution A pigeon depicted in Charles Darwin’sVariation of Animals and PlantsUnder Domestication, 1868. U.S.public domain image, via Wikimedia. When Darwin presented his idea of natural selection, he knew he had an audience to win over. He pointed out that people select features of organisms all the time and breed the…

    Authored by on January 29, 2012

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