Category: drug discovery

Broad-spectrum antibiotics may be more effective in treating tuberculosis than the current narrow spectrum antibiotics

May 7, 2024

Mycobacteria tuberculosis is an intracellular pathogen, and thus, it is difficult to be eradicated based on current antibiotic therapy where there is insufficient dose of the drug that reach the bacterial cell hiding inside a human cell. Therefore, we can treat the active form of tuberculosis (TB) with an aggressive broad spectrum antibiotic regiment that … More Broad-spectrum antibiotics may be more effective in treating tuberculosis than the current narrow spectrum antibiotics

Activating mutated proteins presents an extreme challenge to biochemistry and molecular biology

December 9, 2023

Sequence alteration could walk into the amino acid sequence of a protein due to deficiencies in DNA repair mechanisms or malfunctioning transcription and translation processes. These then represents mutated proteins, which may have deficient function or lost function compared to non-mutated proteins. Some proteins such as tumour suppressors are of particular importance to cell physiology … More Activating mutated proteins presents an extreme challenge to biochemistry and molecular biology

Antimicrobial tolerance emerges prior to antibiotic resistance

June 19, 2021

Resistance to many frontline antibiotics is a problem of important concern to the global medical community. Antibiotic resistance refers to the minimum inhibitory concentration at which a microbe could not grow in a medium spiked with the antibiotic. Various mechanisms such as expression of efflux pumps and mutations to targets of antibiotics could account for … More Antimicrobial tolerance emerges prior to antibiotic resistance

Reactivation of tumour suppressor as cancer therapy

March 11, 2021

Tumour suppressors are frequently downregulated in cancer cells. However, their importance to prevent cells from entering cell senescence meant that tumour suppressor proteins remain circulating in cancer cells, albeit at lower concentrations. This came about due to haploinsufficiency of the tumour suppressor resulting from monoallelic loss, aberrant subcellular localisation, and post-translational modifications in human cancers. … More Reactivation of tumour suppressor as cancer therapy

Research on new antibiotics will increasingly be carried out in academic labs

December 18, 2020

Profits on antibiotics are generally lower compared to medicine for chronic diseases or cancer; thus, many large pharmaceutical companies have stopped their research and development programmes for new antibiotics. This trend comes with the emerging recognition that more microbial pathogens are developing resistance to existing antibiotics in use. So, where would the world find its … More Research on new antibiotics will increasingly be carried out in academic labs

RNA viruses evolve more rapidly than DNA viruses

November 20, 2020

Viruses can generally be classified as DNA and RNA viruses, which differ in their genetic makeup. During infection, DNA viruses inject DNA into the host cells, which is transcribed to mRNA for downstream protein translation. On the other hand, RNA viruses inject RNA into host cells, which must be reverse-transcribed into DNA, prior to transcription … More RNA viruses evolve more rapidly than DNA viruses

Integrating synthetic organic chemistry and biocatalysis for drug synthesis

July 24, 2020

Many natural products with medicinal properties are isolated from microorganisms, but difficulty exist in using these compounds as drugs as they may elicit undesirable immune reactions. Hence, one approach for circumventing the problem is the development of closely-related compounds that could mimic the bioactivity of the original natural products while not posing undesirable activity to … More Integrating synthetic organic chemistry and biocatalysis for drug synthesis

Generating analogues of natural products with medicinal properties is a challenge in synthetic organic chemistry

July 1, 2020

Natural products derived from microorganisms is a treasure trove of compounds with medicinal properties. However, these compounds are typically not suitable for development into pharmaceutical compounds. Specifically, they may contain highly reactive nitrogen and oxygen atoms that complicates their synthesis through synthetic organic chemistry routes. Hence, this opens up the possibility of using analogues of … More Generating analogues of natural products with medicinal properties is a challenge in synthetic organic chemistry

Repurposing existing drugs for treating other diseases

April 22, 2020

Drugs and medicine are typically approved for treating a particular disease after many years of extensive test in humans known as clinical trials. However, there have been cases where existing drugs was serendipitously discovered to be useful for treating diseases for which it was not originally developed for. The mechanisms underlying this phenomenon could be … More Repurposing existing drugs for treating other diseases

Development of broadly neutralizing antibodies could aid the fight against coronavirus

April 20, 2020

In the current coronavirus pandemic, vaccines have been touted to be the essential weapon for the fight against the disease. But, the typical vaccine development timeline requires at least 6 to 12 months to complete all the necessary checks and tests prior to introducing the vaccine to the population. Hence, vaccine can be viewed as … More Development of broadly neutralizing antibodies could aid the fight against coronavirus