drug design

A first-of-its-kind gene therapy dramatically reduced misfolded protein levels in some clinical trial participants for up to six months and reduced levels in all participants for up to a year.

Immunologists and parasitologists are working to revive the idea that helminths, and more specifically the molecules they secrete, could help treat allergies and autoimmune disease.

Research in animals and people supports a range of mechanisms by which the parasites affect physiology and immune responses.

Researchers turned white blood cells called neutrophils into drug-smuggling “neutrobots,” which penetrated the blood-brain barrier to treat brain cancer in mice.

Screens of hundreds of drug excipients reveal that some can interact with biological targets, contradicting their FDA categorization as inert.

Researchers are engineering microbes to deliver therapeutics specifically to tumors, maximizing the treatments’ efficacy while minimizing side effects.

Autonomous, living microrobots that seek and destroy cancer are not as futuristic as one might imagine, thanks to a fusion of robotics and synthetic biology.

Researchers build a peptide that causes a receptor to form toxic, amyloid-like clumps in cells.

Using computational algorithms and experimental evolution, researchers are predicting antimicrobial-resistance patterns to improve drug design. 

See Scientist To Watch Phil Baran describe the artistry of his research in drug discovery.