@Research@playground.bonfire.cafe
Research boosted

I'm just exploring topics and sub-topics in Bonfire, but to add something on-topic, here's my doctoral work: <a href="https://dougbelshaw.com/thesis">dougbelshaw.com/thesis</a> <span class="h-card"><a class="u-url mention" data-user="+Research" href="https://playground.bonfire.cafe/pub/actors/Research" rel="ugc">+Research</a></span>

Research boosted

I'm new here, finally after months I was able to receive the confirmation mail...<p>For now, I'll just copy one thing I wrote on Mastodon and to see how it works.</p><p><br/></p><p>#Medicine <a class="hashtag" data-tag="pharmaceutical" href="https://playground.bonfire.cafe/hashtag/pharmaceutical" rel="tag ugc">#pharmaceutical</a> <a class="hashtag" data-tag="explanation" href="https://playground.bonfire.cafe/hashtag/explanation" rel="tag ugc">#explanation</a></p><p>Some information about how new medicines are made by a guy who read a bit about it.</p><p>Most medicines target a particular protein in the human body.</p><p>The objective is to have something that interacts with the protein so that the function of the protein is altered.</p><p>Many things can be used to alter those mechanisms, such as small molecules, other proteins, antibodies and other things.</p><p>These things hopefully go nearby the protein of interest and modify its shape or block some part of it.</p><p>It is difficult to find one such thing that modifies the function of the protein in the desired way that is expected to cure the disease.</p><p>It's even more difficult to find one who does not interact with other proteins and causes toxic side effects.</p><p>I'll quickly outline some methodologies used to find small molecules that can act as medicines.</p><p>Small molecules are molecules made up of atoms with a contained dimension, much smaller than the common protein.</p><p>One very simple way to find such a molecule is to test a lot of different molecules with the protein in a laboratory and observing if something good happens.</p><p>This methodology is pretty good since it requires no prior knowledge about the protein nor about the molecules you're testing.</p><p>This procedure however also has some downsides: you need to obtain all the molecules you need to test and you need either a lot of people testing them or some specialized machinery.</p><p>This is of course very expensive.</p><p>Moreover, if none of the molecules you were able to obtain are good for curing the disease, you just spent a lot of money and gained little information about how to cure the disease.</p><p>This first methodology is very widespread in the big pharma industry, since they have the means to sustain the costs of a potentially fruitless expense.</p><p>It is difficult to find this kind of methodologies used in universities and research institutions, due to more limited budget.</p><p>Alright, this was a first quick introduction to the theme, if you're interested I can write a bit more; trying to keep it simple.</p><p>Let me know what you could be interested in knowing.</p>