Washington Post (September 1)
DeepMind has expanded its “database of folded proteins to more than 200 million — nearly all catalogued proteins known to science, including those in humans, plants, bacteria, animals and other organisms” and made “them publicly available and free.” The AlphaFold database “does not reveal all of biology’s mysteries, nor is it the only advance needed for drug development or disease fighting. But the views are truly astonishing.”
Tags: Advance, AlphaFold, Animals, Bacteria, Biology, Catalogued, Database, DeepMind, Disease fighting, Drug development, Folded proteins, Free, Humans, Plants, Science
The Guardian (November 18)
“Last-line antibiotics against serious pneumonia and bloodstream infections are under real threat in Europe as resistant strains of bacteria emerge…. Particularly worrying is the increase in resistance to antibiotics considered the last line, where there are no new drugs to treat patients with certain serious infections.”
Tags: Antibiotics, Bacteria, Bloodstream, Drugs, Europe, Infections, Last-line, Patients, Pneumonia, Resistance
Washington Post (October 9)
The “Ebola virus is a sobering reminder that we live in a world more connected and fluid than at any time in human history…. Viruses and bacteria do not stop at passport control.”
New York Times (May 11)
“Antibiotics have transformed medicine and saved countless lives over the past seven decades. Now, rampant overuse and the lack of new drugs in the pipeline threatens to undermine their effectiveness.” The last new class of antibiotics emerged in 1987. Today both standard-treatment and last-resort antibiotics often fail due to growing resistance in germs and bacteria.
Tags: Antibiotics, Bacteria, Drugs, Effectiveness, Germs, Lives, Medicine, Overuse, Pipeline, Resistance
New York Times (October 14)
Malaria “kills some 600,000 people a year, mostly children under the age of 5” and there is now “hope for a malaria vaccine” based on trials sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “If the results hold up after further follow-up, the vaccine will be the first ever shown to be effective on a large scale against a disease-causing parasite, an organism that is much harder to neutralize than viruses or bacteria.”
Tags: Bacteria, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, Malaria, Parasite, Vaccine, Viruses
