People have been searching for new medicines for thousands of years, and yet we have barely explored the universe of possibilities. Recently chemists at the University of Bern in Switzerland tried to estimate how many promising molecules have yet to be tested. In June they published their best guess: over a million billion billion billion billion billion billion. Blindly testing those molecules one at a time is not practical, and most of them will turn out to be useless anyway. So many scientists are looking for strategies they can use to zero in more quickly on promising candidates.

Continue reading “Gene Tests in Yeast Aid Work on Cancer” →

Four times in the past century, a new strain of flu has emerged that can spread quickly in humans. One of those strains, which emerged in 1918, killed an estimated 50 million people.

All human flu strains evolved from flu viruses that live in birds. To understand how these transitions happen, scientists have recently been tinkering with a strain of bird flu to see how many mutations it takes until its spreads from mammal to mammal.

When news of their efforts emerged last fall, a fierce debate broke out about the wisdom of publishing the experiments in full.

Continue reading “Flu That Leapt From Birds to Seals Is Studied for Human Threat” →