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Read our latest stories on the people and scientific innovations making a difference in patients’ lives.
advancing-medical-research
Patients as Partners in Developing New Medicines
With a growing emphasis on patient-reported outcomes, study volunteers are becoming active participants in evaluating a treatment’s efficacy. Since the first reported controlled clinical trial in 1747, when Scottish surgeon James Lind studied how eating oranges and lemons can cure scurvy among sailors at sea, patients have always been essential to expanding medical knowledge and developing new therapies. After all, no one knows your body like you do. But for the most part, patients have...
Advanced Culture: Making More ‘Life-Like’ Cellular Models
Cellular models, an essential part of developing new medicines, are becoming more realistic and relevant to patients. Long before a drug candidate enters clinical trials to be tested in humans, it goes through countless rounds of testing over several years in cellular models, also known as cell-based assays. From the earliest stage of identifying active molecules that can interact with a disease target to the later stages of testing toxicity and dosing, cells, particularly human cells, are...
Scientists Mimic Human Organs on Microscopic ‘Chips’ That Enable Drug Testing
*/ /*-->*/ /*-->*/ By mimicking the way organs operate in the body, the organ-on-a-chip can offer a more...
Deploying DNA-Delivery Trucks To Fix Genetic Diseases
The adeno-associated virus (green) can infect a wide range of vertebrates without causing symptoms. It needs a helper virus like the adenovirus (orange) to replicate. (Science Photo Library) A benign virus, turned DNA-delivery truck, may hold the potential to repair gene malfunctions that can trigger disease. Over millions of years, viruses have evolved to be efficient at invading our cells and inserting their genetic material so they can multiply. If you’ve ever had the flu, measles...
foundations-science
Tools of the Trade: Harnessing Bioluminescence
Species from cats to monkeys and protozoa to plants can borrow a jellyfish’s luminescence to help trace the spread of disease. Tagging and tracking disease – visualizing the insidious spread of Alzheimer’s or a metastasizing cancer, or tracing how a pathogen moves – is possible today thanks to the harnessing of a 160-million-year-old protein responsible for a jellyfish’s green glow. Aequorea, a jellyfish species that lives off America’s Northwest Coast that reaches up to ten centimeters in...
How Virtual Reality Takes Scientists Inside New Molecules (video)
A walk-in 3-D cube lets scientists explore the human body, its organs, and even the tiniest of cells. From video games to immersive documentaries, virtual reality is beginning to transform the consumer media and entertainment experience. But it’s poised to improve the way scientist discover new medicines as well. At Pfizer’s Research & Development hub in Cambridge, Mass., chemists, neuroscientists and other researchers use 3D VisBox technology to visualize and virtually explore the human body...
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