Category: How do scientists study drugs and vaccines?

How do scientists study the safety and efficacy of drugs and vaccines? How do we develop new drugs and vaccines?

Telling people it’s a placebo does not stop it from working After being given a placebo and viewing negative images, people felt less distress, even though they knew their treatment had no active ingredients.

Erica Curles

Does giving a placebo require lying to a patient? This study concludes…no! Placebos still work even when the patient knows, at least for emotional distress.

Horseshoe crabs are critical to the biotech industry A new technique in aquaculture has demonstrated a promising ability to improve survival rates, health, and performance of horseshoe crabs harvested for the biomedical industry.

Cathryn Sephus

Did you know that the modern US biomedical industry is built around the baby blue blood of horseshoe crabs? Come find out what scientists are doing to help protect the lives that are saving ours. #horseshoecrabs #conservation #marinebiology #aquaculture

Deliberately infecting volunteers with COVID-19 to speed up vaccine development? Human challenge trials, a process whereby healthy volunteers are given potential vaccines and then infected with COVID-19, could be a way to speed up vaccine development and reduce the global burden of coronavirus.

Caroline Vrana-Diaz

A potential way to speed up vaccine development: human challenge trials. #covid19 #research

The simple lab technique that changed everything How the discovery and validation of a simple lab technique called PCR by Kary Mullis and his team in the 1980’s helped science take a leap forward in understanding genetics and improved our society.

Justin Dingman

What do gene sequencing, catching criminals with DNA evidence, and “designer babies” all have in common? Forty years ago, these were all considered science fiction topics. Today, they are fields of serious study. All three of these fields, and many READ MORE

Laboratory methods behind the polio vaccine discovery In 1949, Harvard scientists established a few tissue culture tricks that not only allowed Jonas Salk to develop the polio vaccine, but also became standard practice when growing polio in the lab. His team was awarded a Nobel Prize.

Gina Misra

Poliomyelitis is the name of the disease caused by the poliovirus, and it mostly affects children under the age of 5, causing paralysis in a small percent of cases. The disease had been around since the 1800s at low levels, READ MORE

Can a Chinese medicinal herb Psoralea fructus build healthy bones? Corylin, a flavonoid molecule derived from a Chinese medicinal herb, is effective in stimulating the body to make osteoblasts, which are cells that form new bones.

Marco Fang

Osteoblasts are cells that are responsible for bone formation. A lack of osteoblasts will cause osteoporosis – a disease that occurs when the body has too little bone. The current treatments for osteoporosis either slow down bone resorption, or promote READ MORE