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A small dose
Biological enigma machine could treat incurable diseases
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biological ‘enigma machine’ could be the answer to identifying and treating currently incurable diseases, research suggests. Researchers at The University of Sydney and the Royal Women's Hospital Australia developed the machine to interpret the cellular language used by the body. The machine is able to isolate the warning signs issued by the body when something has gone wrong. Labelled ‘complaint signals’, the team used these to detect diseases quicker than current techniques allow. This could potentially enable more effective early treatments for conditions including Parkinson’s and currently incurable progressive lung disorders. Author associate professor Wojciech Chrzanowski said: “By detecting complaints
within the messages, and understanding where they come from, we have developed a range of new diagnostic tools to detect disease faster and enable more effective treatments with minimal side effects. “Importantly, this technique will enable us to develop treatments for currently incurable conditions – taking us from palliative therapies into cure.” The team focused on the role tiny messengers called extracellular vesicles (EVs) play in regulating cellular function, the individual function of which had not been determined until now. Through a new technique using atomic force microscope infrared spectroscopy, the team were able to see how every cell in the body produces a kind of tiny bubble filled with DNA and other molecules which they use to communicate with each other.
Drug discovery collab targets Parkinson’s d A
UK-based biopharmaceutical company dedicated to drugging ‘undruggable’ disease targets has announced a neurodegeneration drug discovery collaboration focusing on Parkinson’s disease. PhoreMost will team up with C4X Discovery to use both companies’ technology platforms to validate novel targets for Parkinson’s disease.
PhoreMost’s phenotypic screening platform Siteseeker will be used to guide selection of novel targets identified by C4XD’s target identification platform Taxonomy3. This will hopefully provide chemical starting points to launch drug discovery programmes. It’s hoped that the collaboration will bolster C4XD’s drug discovery pipeline of novel
neurodegeneration drug targets. Dr Chris Torrance CEO of PhoreMost, said: “Neurodegeneration is a therapeutic area that has a pressing need for new and better targets. The opportunity to incorporate genetic insights gained from C4XD’s Taxonomy3 data alongside our Siteseeker screening platform has great potential to reveal