Archives
Finding new drugs for malaria
New drugs may be on the way for malaria, a disease that helps push millions of people into extreme poverty, thanks to an Australian team working with a remarkable new Japanese organisation.
Is your city making you sick?
Fiona Bull can tell if your city is making you sick just by looking at how easy it is to walk around—and she plans to use this knowledge of good city design to help reduce global physical inactivity by 10 per cent by 2025.
In your face: new role found for blood vessels
Blood vessels act as tissue engineers during facial development, guiding the formation of jaw structures in mice, according to research from South Australia.
Continue reading In your face: new role found for blood vessels
Could your lab have the next antibiotic?
Could your newly synthesised molecule kill a superbug? Matt Cooper can tell you.
His team is offering a free screening service for the world’s chemists to test their compounds against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, helping them to potentially find a new antibiotic that will fight the rise of these ‘superbugs’.
“We’re helping the community unlock the hidden value of these chemicals,” says Matt, whose team is from the Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery (CO-ADD), a not-for-profit, global initiative of The University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience. The screening began in February 2015, and Matt has already received thousands of samples from locations including India, Singapore, New Zealand, France, Israel, UK and the USA.
Insulin in a plant seed
An edible plant seed could deliver your insulin or cancer drugs if David Craik’s research progresses as hoped. His team’s work at The University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience centres on cyclotides, which are a family of exceptionally stable circular proteins that occur naturally in many plants, such as violets and petunia.
Inspired by the stability and diversity of natural cyclotides, David’s team has developed a way to join the two ends of a linear protein, allowing them to create ‘designer’ cyclotides that can be incorporated into crop plants, turning them into production factories for therapeutic drugs and insecticides.
Liver testing without a biopsy
A West Australian invention has become the gold standard in liver testing around the world.
An auto-correct system in plants could fix human gene faults
An auto-correct system for genetic errors in plants is helping plant breeders grow robust hybrid crops more efficiently. It also offers new tools for modifying human and animal proteins without modifying their genomes.
Continue reading An auto-correct system in plants could fix human gene faults
A microscope in a needle
A microscope that fits inside a hypodermic needle is the latest surgical tool in the fight against cancer.
Bypassing genetic ‘spelling errors’ in muscular dystrophy
A promising treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) could open the way to therapies for cystic fibrosis, spinal muscular atrophy and other disorders.
Continue reading Bypassing genetic ‘spelling errors’ in muscular dystrophy