UGAPreMed a magazine for uga pre-med students
VOLUME II ISSUE FOUR
SHAPING OUR
FUTURE IN MEDICINE
FROM STEM CELLS TO CANCER CURES
GENOMIC MEDICINE: THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE
THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
|What’s Inside|
FEATURE PRESENTATION FROM STEM CELLS TO CANCER CURES REPROGRAMMING IS THE WAY OF THE FUTURE BY NINA PALETTA
DEPARTMENTS
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EDITOR’S LETTER 3
A message from our Editor
YOUR VOICE 4
Should We Use Clinical Trials?
THROWBACK
GENOMIC MEDICINE
THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE BY: CATHRINA NAUTH
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How Penicillin Saved the World
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A Fatal Cure: Treatment in the Age of Heroic Medicine
COLUMNS 14 When Worlds Come Together 15 Eat Your Greens 20 Top 5 New Healthcare Businesses
IN EXCELLENCE THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE FOR 2013 BY: ERICA LEE
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21 The Evolution of Surgical Treatment for Cancer 26 DrugMint: Catalyzing Drug Discovery
ON THE COVER
UGAPreMed Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
FACULTY ADVISOR Dr. Leara Rhodes
EDITOR IN CHIEF Shajira Mohammed
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Aashka Dave MANAGING EDITOR Erica Lee WEB EDITOR Selin Odman PHOTO EDITOR Heather Steckenrider DESIGN EDITOR Tammy Luke GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Tammy Luke Galit Deshe DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS David Kupshik ASSOCIATE EDITOR Michelle Vu FACT CHECKER Ahmed Mahmood PROMOTIONS EDITOR Kathleen LaPorte PUBLIC RELATIONS Hannah Kim Sona Sadselia Chisom Amazae Shelby Pobison WRITERS Sarah Caesar Selin Odman Ahmed Mahmood Erica Lee Nina Paletta Cathrina Nauth Chiara Tondi Resta Carley Borrelli www.premedmag.com facebook.com/premedmag twitter.com/UGAPreMedMag
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PHOTOGRAPHERS Jessica Rebaza Heather Steckenrider
|Editor’s Letter|
A MESSAGE
FROM OUR EDITOR Happy one-year anniversary to PreMed Magazine! This issue marks our first anniversary since we published our first issue in January 2013. We hope you continue to show us even more tremendous support in issues to come. Given the start of 2014, we would like to highlight the future of medicine and the many innovations modernizing the field. When you take a look at all the technological advancements made in 2013, you see a trend of young entrepreneurs achieving overnight success. Take a deeper look into the medical field, though, and the reality is completely different. The most anticipated breakthroughs of medicine this year are outgrowths of projects initiated decades ago.
Shajira Mohammed Editor-in-Chief
The completion of The Human Genome Project in 2003 marked the birth of a new era for medicine. In the article “Genomic Medicine: The Future of Healthcare,” Cathrina Nauth examines this revolutionary advancement, which makes monograms out to be petty forms of personalization. Since the need for new medicinal drugs has become increasingly important, Michelle Vu takes a look at a new computational tool called DrugMint, which aims to narrow down the best contenders for synthetic drugs at a faster rate. Senior Writer Nina Paletta discussed the developments that have “stemmed” from stem cell research and the latest stem cell technology termed “reprogramming.” As we look to the future, the entire PreMed Magazine team is working hard to accomplish its mission of inspiring students in all fields. Together, we can all contribute to the betterment of medicine, science and society.
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|Your Voice|
SH OU LD W E
PROS THE PROS OF CLINICAL RESEARCH BY: SARAH CAESAR Just as Dr. Derek Shepherd in the extremely popular medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy, conducts a research study hoping to cure Alzheimer’s, many doctors and researchers today take the initiative to conduct clinical trials as well in the hopes of curing the incurable. Although quite an onerous task, taking years and often decades to complete and costing millions of dollars on average, many of these trials have led to remarkable discoveries and treatments that have shaped the medical world we know today. Defined by the World Health Organization as “any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes”, the concept of clinical trials is not a modern one.
Clinical trials date back to the sixth century BC and were mentioned in several early books and pamphlets. In the biblical book of Daniel, for example, Daniel vividly describes a controlled experiment in which he was trying to determine the nutritional benefits of certain foods. In this experiment, King Nebuchadnezzar, who initiated the experiment, asked the Babylonians to only eat meat and drink wine alone, believing that this would keep the people healthy. Almost a millennium later, similar techniques are still used today to ascertain whether a specific drug, treatment or device is safe and effective for human use. Clinical research studies are often conducted in order to discover more efficient and effective ways to treat, prevent or detect illnesses.
However, a most important function of clinical trials is to establish the safety and understand any possible side-effects a certain drug or treatment may have on the human body, despite evidence suggesting success in animal or cell-culture models of the disease. Some clinical trials, such as the in vitro fertilisation (IVF) study done by Robert G. Edwards in 1978, have shown positive results. In this study, Edwards was successful at creating the first “testtube baby”, Louise Brown, who was born after conception by IVF (Kolata, 2013). Although studies like these do show promising results, there are also some clinical trials that have shown that cer-
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tain treatments do not work. This is also just as important, as the results of these studies allow doctors and health care providers to focus their energy and resources on methods that work best (“Why are clinical,” 2012). With many diseases still left untreated, researchers and doctors are making more of an effort to establish treatment options and cures for these so-called “incurable” diseases. However, the problem arises when many people who are eligible to participate in these research studies are not willing to. A recent statistic regarding clinical trial participation indicated that less than 20% of clinical trials successfully enroll the required number of participants. This fact is quite staggering considering that those who join these trials often get much better medical care than most other patients (Pines, 2000). People are often hesitant to participate in these studies because they believe that they may receive a placebo, or dummy pill, instead of an actual treatment. It is true that many research studies are placebo-controlled; however, this is often the best method to determine whether a treatment works or not. Considering all things, the benefits of clinical trials definitely outweigh the risks and these trials are often very advantageous for participants and researchers. For example, if a new and innovative treatment works, the participant will be among the first few people to make use of it and will be helping others with the same disease. Furthermore, the patient will be taking control of his or her health and in most cases receive special attention and great care by the team overseeing the trial. Most trials are sponsored by the federal government, volunteer groups, pharmaceutical companies, and private citizens; therefore, patients and doctors do not have to pay out of their pockets. Consequently, participation in clinical trials is crucial for both the participant and the countless others he or she is helping. The continued initiation of clinical trials is very essential in order to ensure that medical advances are made; therefore, encourage others to partake in these research studies.
U S E C L I N IC AL T RIA L S?
CONS
CLINICAL TRIALS MAY NOT BE FIT FOR YOU
BY SELIN ODMAN In this time of innovation and medical advancement, new options for curing diseases are coming up in an astonishing rate – maybe even too quickly. The massive volume of ideas makes it difficult for officials to make proper, timely decisions about regulating treatments and research. This becomes a problem in the case of clinical trials when someone’s life is in danger.
If we’ve ever turned on a news channel, at one point or another, the topic of breakthroughs in clinical trials will be discussed this term seems to be tossed around and used broadly. What is a clinical trial? Emory Winship Cancer Institute explains clinical trials as research studies that are testing new treatments to find better cures for diseases like cancer. It sounds wonderful, and through a research perspective, it is. Keep in mind that clinical trials regarding diseases that affect humans must be tested on volunteer patients. Someone you know may have participated in a clinical trial. While it’s very optimistic and motivational to view clinical trials as the fountain of youth, there are certain drawbacks that need to be considered.
In addition to the risks you take with your health, clinical trials require many more visits to clinics and hospitals. They may ask you to come in every day, every other week, or only a few times a year. You don’t know, but all the extra time in a hopeful-treatment could be spent elsewhere. Also, more trips to your doctor go handin-hand with higher medical bills. There is no guarantee that your health insurance will cover all the costs of new drugs or new tests. Usually, established methods and medicine cost much less than pioneer treatments because they have been developed and made accessible to most healthcare providers. It’s undeniable that clinical research helps doctors make tremendous advances in modern medicine. However, if you find that traditional treatment is working for you, I would recommend continuing with the treatment as opposed to trying to find a new one. Don’t risk your own well-being for the progression of science. Participation in clinical trials should be used as a last resort, because if it happens to be the right one, it can save your life.
To begin with, any new treatments will have unknown side effects. Since clinical trials may or may not have as many regulations as prior treatments, and will not have as much data as traditional treatments will, there is always a risk that the treatments will have an adverse affect. The question is whether the side effects are manageable and will not leave you unable to fight off the disease otherwise. Even if the side effects are minimal or handled well by your body, the treatment may not work. Obviously, doctors do not know if the proposed cure will better than or even half as good as the old treatments. The Ovarian Cancer Research Fund specifically states that although treatments may work for other people, there’s no guarantee it will work for you. This will mean that you have lost precious time playing around with something that didn’t work as opposed to receiving regular treatment that is proven to work. PreMed Magazine at UGA
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HOW
PENICILLIN SAVED THE WORLD BY AHMED MAHMOOD Modern medicine seems like science fiction but the science behind modern medicine couldn’t be closer to reality. In the 1980’s, genetic engineering allowed scientists at Genentech to synthesize human insulin in E. coli bacteria which greatly improved the lives of diabetes patients. Studies conducted starting from 2005 to 2012 report that various kinds of tissue and organ damage can be easily repaired and regenerated through the use of stem cells. In 2010, Scientists at Organovo, an organ bioengineering company, harnessed the technology of 3D printing and literally printed organ scaffoldings for adult cells to grow on. The list of medical breakthroughs goes on. To truly appreciate today’s innovations in medicine, we must go back in time to one of the greatest medical discoveries: penicillin. Before discovering penicillin, Alexander Fleming attended St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School at the University of London and became a bacteriologist. Later, he served in Royal Army Medical Corps in France during World War I and worked with antiseptics. Fleming conducted experiments with antiseptics that proved antiseptics were ineffective against bacterial infection and were actually damaging white blood cells. After the war, he returned to St. Mary’s to become the assistant director of the Inoculation Department in 1928. And so begins a legendary tale. Fleming left for a two-week vacation and unknowingly forgot to put a Petri dish containing a Staphylococcus culture in the incubator. When he came back, he noticed that the Petri dish had been contaminated with a Penicillium spore. Some accounts say that he discovered that the fungal colony caused the bacteria to lyse, or split open, and other accounts say he saw a “clearing” of bacteria surrounding the mold “juice.” Whatever the case, Fleming realized that the chemical inside this mold juice was killing off the bacteria. Even though he was unable to extract the chemical, he had already named it “penicillin” after the fungus from which it came.
Most people think the tale of penicillin stops here, but it doesn’t. Tom Volk, Mycologist and Professor of Biology at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, has a Fungus of The Month article series that is dedicated to the unsung story of penicillin. Volk writes that the story continues with Fleming and Ronald Hare, his colleague, trying to recreate those original conditions for Penicillum to thrive. They finally got the fungus to grow under cold conditions and noticed that not all strains of this fungus, Penicillium notatum (later changed to P. chrysogenum), produced penicillin. In 1929, Fleming published a paper that documented his experiments with Penicillium and observed that the fungus
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would only kill gram-positive bacteria. Gram-positive bacteria have a thick cell wall with peptidoglycans which are long chains of repeating units of sugar molecules mixed with amino acids. It was later discovered that penicillin breaks up those peptidoglycan chains and disrupts the cell wall of the bacteria, causing it to lyse. Gram-negative bacteria don’t have much peptidoglycan and have another layer on top of the peptidoglycan layer, so penicillin was noted to be virtually ineffective against them. After publication, Fleming’s work was ignored for almost 10 years. It wasn’t until a team of University of Oxford scientists, including Howard Florey, E.P. Abraham, Boris Chain and Norman and Mary Heatley, believed that they could isolate penicillin from P. chrysogenum and combat infections brought upon by World War II that penicillin got its day in the spotlight.
During this time, Great Britain was under heavy bombing, so the scientists came to the U.S. to continue their work. The first strain they cultured only produced 4 units/mL of penicillin. Through tedious culture medium modification, the output of their strain became 40 units/mL, but that wasn’t nearly enough. Their strain could not grow in a submerged culture which is essential to increase penicillin output. To find another viable strain, they tasked young lab worker Mary Hunt, unfortunately nicknamed “Moldy Mary,” to go to local produce markets and look for moldy foods. She finally brought in a moldy cantaloupe which turned out to be the perfect sample. Mary’s sample yielded a strain that produced 70-80 units/mL, and then the scientists isolated a spore that resulted in a strain producing 250 units/mL of penicillin. The results were so astounding that the War Production Board, a U.S. government agency that was in charge of manufacturing and distribution of war assets during World War II, set up projects in other labs. Soon fungal lab strains were producing 900 units/mL and through UV radiation some strains produced over 2500 units/mL penicillin. Today, industrial strains of P. chrysogenum, distantly related to the original cantaloupe strain, produce 50,000 units/mL of penicillin (which is equivalent to 30 milligrams) and is extremely effective. Alexander Fleming once said, “...I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionise all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic... But I suppose that was exactly what I did.”
Yes, that is exactly what he did. Tom Volk states in his penicillin article, “We are grateful to veterans for fighting in wars, but veterans should likewise be grateful for Penicillium’s production of penicillin, as well as the scientists who made that possible.” According to Volk, only 25 percent of World War I soldiers healed from infection. Once penicillin was introduced, the number of World War II soldiers that healed from infection skyrocketed to 95 percent. In an interview, Dr. Ali S. Khan comments, “With penicillin...we were no longer talking about the prevention of infectious diseases, we started to talk about treatment...which gave us a brand new weapon to use on microbes.” Even though resistance to antibiotics is a threat, for once in human history, we are actually winning the war against microbes. Modern medicine is allowing our population to grow, our lifespan to be longer, and our quality of life to be much higher, and it all started with the accidental discovery of penicillin.
Above: Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) discovered penicillin in 1928. Below (left): An image of mold that contaminated a petri dish of Staphylococcus bacteria, from which Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. (Right) An advertisement for use of penicillin to treat gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted infection.
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A FATAL CURE:
TREATMENT IN THE AGE OF HEROIC MEDICINE BY ERICA LEE George Washington was dying.
For two days he had gone out onto his plantation in the snow and sleet, overseeing farming activities and designating trees to be felled, even staying in his wet clothes to be on time for dinner. He was a robust man. He put it out of his mind.
Washington fell asleep with a cold and woke barely able to breathe. His friend tried to give him molasses, vinegar and butter to calm his throat but this vile mixture only caused Washington to convulse and nearly suffocate.
Instead, he drew up his sleeve and presented the veins there. He ignored his wife’s warnings. Washington was a firm believer in the practice of medicinal bleeding, or venesection. “Don’t be afraid,” he said when the lancet punctured his skin. “The orifice is not large enough. More, more.”
Twelve hours, three doctors and four bleedings later, Washington got his wish. Five pints of his own blood had been drawn from his veins, more than half of the blood in his body. He passed away that night at the age of 67. He left behind a mourning widow, solemn friends, a grieving nation and the fuel for a malpractice debate that would last for two centuries.
migraines. Fantastically, many patients survived the procedure. Over two-thirds of the skulls found show bone regrowth around the incision site. Scared of death? STIs? We’ll poison you.
Heroic medicine also had tinctures, tonics and salves often made from poisonous ingredients. One popular ingredient for these tonics was mercury, whose strange properties have always been a source of fascination and wonder. One person fascinated by the metal was China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di. He believed that mercury would make him immortal. Every day, he drank mercury tonics and swallowed mercury pills. When he grew old and sick--no doubt from the overexposure to mercury--he even ordered himself to be buried in a tomb flowing with mercury rivers.
Thankfully, after the mid-nineteen hundreds, modern research replaced these methods with more scientific, if still sometimes imperfect, methods of curing disease.
Washington and his doctors merely followed the common medical beliefs of the time, in an age of medicine that would come to be known as the heroic age. Doctors in this age believed in strange, unscientific cures that were often more dangerous than the original disease. Respiratory problems? We’ll bleed you dry. Headaches? We’ll put a hole in your skull.
The act of drilling or scraping a hole into a human skull, or trepanning, has been around for millennia. Skulls with the trademark bores or “burr holes” up to two inches in diameter have been found dating from the Neolithic period onward. Early physicians believed trepanation would cure mental disorders, epileptic seizures demon possession and, ironically, PreMed PreMed Magazine Magazine at UGA at UGA
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FROM
STEM CELLS
TO
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CANCER CURES:
REPROGRAMMING IS THE WAY OF THE FUTURE BY: NINA PALETTA
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The media loves to sensationalize stories of medical marvel – from movies and TV specials to magazine articles and aggrandized Facebook posts, it seems as though the science fictional nature of modern medical advancements is a topic that both fascinates and mystifies the public. The line between fact and fiction, however, is difficult to discern because of this; facts can get distorted or exaggerated in order to craft a more appealing outlook, or details may be fabricated, overly simplified, or even omitted entirely to ensure that the layman can understand the underlying concept. What the media fails to realize is that this glorified presentation of information gives the public a fantasized and incorrect view of the true medical advancements of the time. By both appealing to the political and social views of the time, the media’s influence on the public’s reception of medical advancement is more detrimental than beneficial. For the past decade, issues such as stem cell research and modernized cancer treatments have been topics of heated debate. Because of past media stigma and great selectivity in the
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presented details, however, many people have been reluctant to further explore or accept these advancements. What these people do not know is that both stem cells and modern cancer treatments have something in common – a new and emerging technology called “reprogramming.” By looking at the entirety of the situation, it is easy to see that reprogramming is the way of the future.
When some people hear the words “stem cells,” they automatically think of embryonic stem cells; and the ethical backlash can be brutal because of the controversial way of obtaining them through undeveloped embryos. What most people fail to realize, however, is that in scientific experiments, a new type of stem cell has been developed in order to bypass using embryonic stem cells. This new technology is called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs. Induced pluripotent stem cells were first discovered in 2006 when Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University experimented with mouse skin cells. In his experiment, Yamanaka was able to repro-
(left) Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, who discovered Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells
gram the mouse skin cells into a sort of pluripotent stem cell that could be converted into any type of cell – just as a naturally occurring pluripotent stem cell would be able to do. In 2007, Yamanaka was able to recreate his mouse experiment with human cells. In his process, the cells were exposed to a retrovirus – an RNA virus, like HIV – that contained four genetic reprogramming factors; once infected, the reprogramming factors would integrate into the cell’s DNA. The cell would then be reprogrammed to function as an induced pluripotent stem cell. Even though it was the most effective way of reprogramming cells, there were a few problems with Yamanaka’s methods. First, the use of a retrovirus to introduce the reprogramming factors can be damaging to the cells. Because the DNA of the reprogramming factors is integrated into the DNA sequence of the host cell, there could be problems with integrating in a coding region; if this is the case, the integration of this DNA could cause cancer. In addition to the DNA integration causing cancer, some of the reprogramming factors themselves are carcinogens. Because of these limitations, scientists worked towards developing methods to reprogram the cells without the use of a retrovirus. Today, researchers at Johns Hopkins have not only successfully employed a virus-free induced pluripotent stem cell development technique but have also used these stem cells to repair retinal tissue in mice. Dr. Zambidis and his research team used stem cells taken from human cord blood and genetically reprogrammed them with DNA plasmids – small, round fragments of DNA that replicate independently of nuclear DNA in the cell and degrade after short periods of time. This method of reprogramming eliminates the use of carcinogenic reprogramming factors and yields a more stable cellular product. After these cells were reprogrammed, the cells expressing the correct cell surface proteins were selected for and grafted into the blood vessels of mice with damaged retinas. The results were astounding – most of the mice that were injected developed normally functioning retinal vascularity. When compared to an embryonic stem cell control, the induced pluripotent stem cells yielded augmented success.
Many labs across the country are now using these techniques in order to study induced pluripotent stem cells. The implications of these successful findings are limitless – by developing a safe and effective way to reprogram cells into pluripotency, researchers can not only develop human models for testing drugs and other treatment options for currently untestable diseases but they can also develop artificially grown organs to monitor abnormal function. For example, until this point, in order to study Alzheimer’s disease in a live environment rather than a postmortem autopsy, a viable disease model is needed in order to ethically and efficiently tests these neurons. In just the past few years, induced pluripotent stem cells have been utilized to grow Alzheimer’s diseased neurons in a Petri dish. In an experiment done at the University of California,
San Diego by Larry Goldstein, skin cells from three different risk groups – people with familial Alzheimer’s disease, people with sporadic Alzheimer’s disease, and people with a normal genotype without dementia – were transformed into induced pluripotent stem cells. These iHPS cells were transformed into neurons that mimicked the Alzheimer’s disease (or lack thereof) in the patients; the neurons produced by this culture were used in order to compare the live models of the different types of disease as well as diseased tissue to genotypically normal tissue. Up until this point, Alzheimer’s diseased neurons had not been able to be produced purely in a laboratory setting. By using these induced pluripotent stem cells, areas of medicine that have stagnated due to ethical concerns can now be reignited.
In addition to stem cell reprogramming, there have been many reports circulating recently about a seven year old girl dying of leukemia who was cured after being injected with the HIV virus. This dramatized story spread like wildfire on social networks such as Facebook and Reddit over the past few months – people were outraged by the fact that a virus as dangerous and as taboo as HIV was willingly used on a dying child. What these aggrandized stories did not fully disclose, however, were the methods and protocols that the doctors working on this experimental treatment followed. Dr. Stephan Grupp at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia aided in developing a technique called CTL019, or CART19, since 2011. CTL019 is a T cell modifying procedure in which a lentivirus is injected into the T cell and incorporates its DNA into the host cell’s DNA – similar to the retrovirus induced pluripotent stem cell reprogramming methods. The T cells are modified to attack the acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells; with the two trials done at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one of the children – Emma Whitehead from the story – had sustained complete remission. From this success story, the media latched onto controversial buzzwords like “lentivirus” and spun the report around that. Although HIV is in the lentivirus family, Grupp and his team used a modified virus from that family that was equipped with self-regulating mechanisms. Although the mechanism employed by the virus was similar to that of the HIV virus, it was not the infectious agent itself. Instead of reporting a controversial view of the story, the media should have focused on the reprogramming mechanisms that were developed. By reprogramming immune cells to recognize specific cancerous cells, new treatments for many inoperable or currently untreatable cancers could be developed in the near future, changing the face of oncology altogether. New technological advances in the medical field are swiftly changing the way doctors are thinking about treatment plans for their patients. Once stagnated areas of research are now becoming more feasibly available to lab researcher teams. By harnessing different cellular reprogramming technologies, diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and others can be ethically studied and experimentally tested and manipulated. In addition, breakthrough transplant technologies are being redeveloped – if new organs can be grown in a lab using the patient’s own cells, the problem of finding a transplant match would become an obsolete problem; and rejection would be less of a worry. Even with the stigmas associated with these new technologies, the medical field is being revolutionized by reprogramming – the medicine of the future. PreMed Magazine at UGA
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When Worlds Come Together BY: CHIARA TONDI RESTA
BY: CARLEY BORRELLI Many undergraduate students concerned with their future careers
choose to take a traditional “track,” such as pre-medicine, pre-law, or pre-pharmacy. Although each of these disciplines is independent and has its own expectations for students, it is easy to get caught up in the tiny “bubble” of each track, and forget that in the real world, all of these professions overlap and often work together, even if they seemingly have nothing to do with each other. But in today’s world, this separation is becoming smaller each day, and it is important to not only realize this, but to embrace it with full force.
For starters, students often tend to ignore their “opposing” classification of fields. For example, many science and math students avoid the humanities, and vice versa. And while this may not necessarily be true for medical schools, law schools are shooting this practice down, and rather aggressively hunting for pre-med and science students to pursue law. Why? Because the field of law is growing rapidly, and in this technology-ridden world, more and more lawyers are needed to straighten out things like patents, contracts between technological and medical companies and of course, to help write up paperwork for the new healthcare law. While good lawyers are well trained in what they need to do for these “clients,” they rarely have the scientific background that they need to truly understand how their work will affect these groups. As a result, many law programs are simply turning away humanities applicants for these positions and only accepting those with a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering. The problem is that most science students are not aware of this pursuit and most have never even considered going into law. Hopefully with time and patience, the word will spread more quickly, and people with STEM backgrounds will be able to do important legal work for clients who need it.
By the same token, doctors, pharmacists and others in these fields are often naïve in their understanding of how the law affects their work and the health of their patients. More often than not, this leads to costly malpractice suits that can potentially ruin a career, or even result in the physician losing his or her license. The new healthcare
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law has changed everything that deals with insurance companies and policies, and often times lawyers are necessary to work out problems and clarify the responsibilities of physicians, patients, and insurance companies.
For pharmacists and drug companies, the law has always been an essential part of the way they work. The process of developing new drugs has always been complicated, tedious and governed by federal laws that protect patients involved in clinical trials and approve drugs for sale to the public. Without knowledgeable lawyers to clarify these rules and give the green light to each involved party, the entire process would be a disaster. Despite the fact that the law world and the science world have been involved with each other for a long time, their relationship is becoming stronger and more important every day. If everyone, especially students, is aware of this, then perhaps the situation can improve for both parties alike.
Remember when you pushed your veggies around your plate to only have your mom make you eat them anyways? Well, those pesky green veggies may have done you some good! Dark green vegetables contain a carotenoid called lutein which is important for good eye health. Lutein is also found in egg yolks and is the main carotenoid in breast milk. It is crucial in developing healthy vision and maintaining it throughout one’s life. Lutein has also been found to supply antioxidants to the skin and reduce harmful effects from blue and ultraviolet light.
Age-related macular degeneration is an eye condition that is the leading cause of vision loss in individuals age fifty and up. This condition damages the macula, a small area near the center of the retina, which is necessary for sharp vision. According to a yearlong study from the National Institute of Health, veterans showed improved visual function and glare recovery with a lutein supplement. Veterans took a 10 mg supplement of lutein twice daily with food to mimic levels found in spinach. While lutein has been proven effective in older adults, it is also important in maintaining good eye health for all ages. According to a study published in the College Student Journal, undergraduate college students consume, on average, 2 mg of lutein per day and
an average of 2.5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day. The recommended daily intake of 6 mg of lutein per day and 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables per day were not met.These levels are extremely disconcerting to the health of college students.
As a third-year undergraduate student, I can attest to the difficulty of eating a well-balanced meal every day. It can be inconvenient to pack a lunch, and vegetables can be hard to eat on-the-go. However, it is crucial to eat right and make sure you are getting the essential nutrients in your food. There are also a variety of dietary supplements, like lutein, that can improve your health. Currently, Dr. Stringham is leading a study on lutein supplements.
Dr. Stringham is a Research Professor in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology at the University of Georgia. He has previously worked with the Schepens Eye Research Institute at Harvard Medical School and the Air Force Research Laboratory. He has recently received a grant to study the effects of lutein supplements on college-aged students over a one-year period. Dr. Stringham is interested in using lutein supplements to improve visual function, glare recovery, and cognitive functions in college-aged students. He plans to start his study in the next couple of months. PreMed Magazine at UGA
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Genomic Medicine BY: CATHRINA NAUTH
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From head to toe, we are all different. We come in
different shapes and sizes, and none of us are the same, inside or out. So why treat our bodies like we are? Modern medicine often uses a “one size fits all” approach to treat everything from the common cold to serious diseases like heart disease or cancer. However, some treatments may work better for some patients than others because of differing human genomes, which forces physicians to use a trial-and-error method to determine whether or not a particular treatment is sufficient from patient to patient. Using the wrong treatment can result in no change in the patient’s condition to a drastically negative change in the patient’s condition, often from an incorrect drug prescription. Consequently, it is necessary to tailor health care to patient differences for an individualized and effective approach. Personalized treatments will have more effectively designed drugs, allow physicians to prescribe the best treatments for each individual patient and to identify or monitor patients with a high risk for particular health implications. Studying human genomics will improve modern-day approaches to health care.
Human genomics is the study of the entire set of genes
found in the human body. The human genome itself consists of a sequence of approximately three billion component parts known as nucleotides. The four nucleotide bases—adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine—combine in pairs which code for the sequence of amino acids the body uses to build proteins. A combination of three nucleotides will code for one of twenty amino acids. For example, GCA codes for the amino acid alanine. Chains of amino acids are then linked together to form proteins, which contribute to structure, function and regulation of body tissues and organs, in addition to features such as behavior, learning and predisposition to disease. A segment of one DNA molecule that codes for one specific protein is known as a gene. There are approximately 20,000 to 25,000 protein coding genes altogether. This entire structure is referred to as the human genome.
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Analyzing and understanding the human genome is crucial to modern healthcare. Think of it like taking a car to a mechanic shop. One would expect the mechanic to know about every part of the car in order to determine the problem and to be able to fix it properly. Healthcare works the same way. People expect physicians to know as much as possible of their individual genomes in order to properly diagnose and treat them, for a patient’s genetic makeup is the key to their care. However, this would be physically impossible without holding ample knowledge of that individual’s genome, or “genetic blueprint.” For this reason, the Human Genome Project (HGP) was founded, which aimed to put the three billion pairs that make up the human DNA into a proper sequence and to identify every protein coding gene written within these molecules. In order to sequence the genome, the HGP’s primary method was to use map-based, or BAC-based sequencing. In this process, human DNA was fragmented into large pieces and cloned into bacteria, which would replicate the DNA so that it would be prepared in quantities large enough for sequencing. Each BAC clone was “mapped” to determine where the DNA in the clone came from in the human genome. This allowed scientists to determine the precise location of the DNA letters. For sequencing, the BAC clone is cut into a smaller fragments known as subclones. A “sequencing reaction” is then performed and the products are put into a sequencing machine, known as a sequencer, and then a computer assembles the sequences in order to enable them to represent DNA in the clone.
With the DNA sequenced, and the human genome identified, personalized medicine can become possible. Personalized medicine, commonly known as genomic medicine, is a way to use the human genome to customize medical care based on individual’s unique genetic makeup and gene expression patterns. Genomic medicine allows for targeted therapies because unfortunately, the “one size fits all” pharmaceutical model is not
very effective at all times, for most drugs produce a spectrum of responses in various recipients. Targeted therapies will allow physicians the ability give particular drugs to those of whom it is effective, and avoid giving it to those of who it would be of no help. Targeted therapies also allows for the revitalization of older drugs that may have been disregarded because it only cured a small population at the time it was first used, but would be beneficial for a person right now.
In addition to the genome-guided treatments in patients with complex diseases through targeted therapies, genomic medicine can be beneficial and gaining a momentum in other areas. For one, genomic medicine can assist in the risk assessment of healthy individuals. For example, according to the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, women with the BRCA gene mutation have a 40% chance of developing breast cancer within the next ten years. By analyzing the genome and shedding light on this mutation, women can take preventive measures such as receiving tamoxifen treatments or having an oophorectomy. Besides risk assessment, genome analysis can help in early detection, such as individuals with mutations for colon cancer, who would benefit from earlier and more frequent screenings to detect in its earlier stages. Aside from risk assessment and early detection, genomic analysis can assist in diagnosis and prognosis. For example, in certain types of heart diseases, any detection of particular gene mutations can lead to the diagnosis and early treatment to prevent sudden cardiac death before symptoms occur. Furthermore, by identifying individual gene differences, better medications and proper dosages can be selected for the best results. Genomic medicine is expected to have an immense impact on healthcare in the upcoming years, for genomic medicine is gaining momentum across a continuum of clinical practices including everything from dermatology, anesthesiology, and endocrinology to pathology, cardiology and even psychiatry. For example, newly discovered results from genome-scale genetic studies of schizophrenia and autism suggest specific areas of neural function as possible sources of disease risk. On the other hand, genomic medicine can help in areas like cardiology, for some recent studies from the American College of Cardiology Foundation have shown that specific DNA variants and genes known as LPA, CXADR, and APOE are genetic markers for becoming susceptible to coronary artery disease and even sudden cardiac death. To look at it as a whole, genomic medicine can assist in copious amounts of specialties. In fact, there are very few specialties where knowing the human genome would not assist, proving its profound impact on the future of healthcare. After analyzing the various aspects and profound impact genomic medicine would be able to make in healthcare, it is necessary to realize the key enablers that would allow for its integration into healthcare. For one, genomic literacy is important. As of right now, many people are not able to interpret the actual information, for it is very complex. Even practitioners and specialists, who are enthusiastic about the idea, have a difficult time understanding genomic information and are not prepared to deal with this in their practices. Pressing on the idea of genomic literacy is very important for this change to occur. Another enabler would have to be along the lines of securing privacy.
With one’s entire genome sequence, it is not hard for the government to get a hold of the results and use it against people. For example, genome sequencing could affect one’s insurance negatively. If there are specific mutations (even if they are not deadly, or only account for a small percentage chance of acquiring a particular disease), it may affect an individual’s ability to acquire life, long-term care, or disability insurance. It could also work against an individual if their employer denied them specific opportunities after learning the results of their genome sequencing. Another enabler would have to be funding. Genomic medicine can be costly. However, individuals need to look at the big picture. Evidence-based medicines may or may not help. Also, if they do help patients, they may not always be effective. They may be sufficient in the short-run, however, it may be an improper treatment to the disease, and continuous forms of that treatment will be needed, costing a great amount, also. This would be where genomics plays a major role, for it would be able to direct the physicians to the correct targeted therapy necessary for the disease, rather than working through previous experiences and trial and error. After these implications are dealt with, genomic medicine would be easily integrated into healthcare.
All that is left to do now is in our hands. Analyzation of genomic medicine demonstrates and proves its promising future in healthcare. Fortunately, genomic medicine is already being used to radically alter healthcare today, despite its critics, for some cases of chronic diseases. According to Xi Lin’s publication on Applications of Targeted Gene Capture and Next-Generation Sequencing Technologies, a few years ago, it cost about $10,000 to have an individual’s genome sequenced. Today, with current technologies such as Illumina’s Genome Analyzer, the cost is closer to $1000. With more and more technology, having one’s genome sequenced can become more affordable and lives can be prolonged and saved. With that being said, we are halfway there. We just need to recognize the value of medical innovation. With the proper resources, the scientific community can make this possible. Remember, the future is now, and it is in our hands. We just have to make the leap. PreMed Magazine at UGA
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Top 5 New Healthcare Businesses BY: TRANG NGUYEN Science is constantly evolving and improving; as a result, businesses are competing to produce the next big idea. Here are the top five emerging businesses that are tackling the world’s biggest healthcare issues. 1. Safaricom is an integrated communications company in Kenya. With more than half of the country in extreme poverty, Kenyans struggle to get access to healthcare. Safaricom works to bridge this gap in several ways. A few years ago, the company launched a 24/7 call-in service that has connected patients directly with physicians for an affordable fee. Additionally, Safaricom partnered with the insurance company, Britam, to launch a healthcare plan aimed at the millions of uninsured Kenyans.
2. Countless debates are centered on the best way to reduce healthcare costs. SeeChange Health believes encouraging healthier living will help lower healthcare costs. The company’s Incentive Platform brings an innovative twist to traditional healthcare. Some of the features of the Incentive Platform include a “Personalized Health Action Plan” that maps out actions to take to improve one’s health, which is customized based on an individual’s demographic group and is updatable. Along with the “Personalized Health Action Plan” are “Health Action Rewards,” which reward individuals for taking the steps to live a healthier life.
3. Millions of people worldwide are victims of mosquito-borne diseases, with the two most prevalent being malaria and dengue fever. Oxitec is pioneering a prevention method that focuses on controlling these diseases by reducing the mosquito carrier population. Their proposed solution works like this: male mosquitoes are genetically engineered to carry a lethal gene and are subsequently released into dengue heavy populations to mate with female mosquitos. The following generation of mosquitoes do not live to adulthood to reproduce, thus reducing the disease-carrying mosquito population. Oxitec is now expanding their scope to target insects that destroy crops.
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4. D-Rev is a not-for-profit aimed at improving third-world health care through product design. The goal is to design and distribute more affordable health care products by lowering manufacturing costs. A few of their current products include a design for a high-performance knee joint for amputees, solar technology to help power households in rural areas and a microscope for rural clinics to aid in the detection of diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. Some of the low income areas that D-Rev has worked with are Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, and Iraq. 5. The last company on this list has a product that seems to be straight out of a science fiction novel. Proteus Digital Health offers its customers a Digital Health Feedback System. The platform works through an ingestible sensor, taken with an individual’s medications and powered through stomach fluids. The patient wears a patch that receives information from the ingested sensor and relays this information to to your mobile device. This technology can track how a certain medications will affect an individual’s body, which appeals to many pharmaceutical companies and patients. As technology and science advance, new businesses are competing to come up with the next big idea. These five companies are paving the way for new innovations to take almost any direction.
The Evolution of Surgical Treatment for Cancer BY: SONA RAO Cancer has always been a disease of mystery. It is the subject of countless movies and songs and has demanded increasing amounts of attention through time. Thousands of years ago, when great medical experts like Galen and Hippocrates revolutionized science, cancer was deemed incurable. Today, a handful of treatments help eliminate cancer sites, like chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy and hormone therapy. Perhaps the oldest and most improved type of treatment is surgery.
In Galen’s time, around the 2nd century BCE, surgery was complicated, painful, and life-threatening. Surgeons weren’t exactly equipped with sterilized scalpels and stainless steel forceps. Scholars and experts recorded accounts of medical procedures and trends in pedagogic documents. One of these landmark documents was the Florentine Codex, a 16th century text written by a Franciscan friar named Bernardino de Sahagún. Bernadino’s intentions were to proselytize the Aztecs, so he attempted to understand their culture by recording the entire spectrum of Aztec beliefs and customs, including medicine. He encountered medical practices that were bizarre treatments for various ailments and diseases, like bathing in urine and consuming fried chameleons; however, surgery was rarely an option. The operations they did perform were done without the use of anesthesia, so patients underwent excruciating episodes of pain during the process.
dent, who utilized diethyl ether to facilitate a surgical removal of a cancerous tumor from a patient’s neck. This was when physicians proceeded to eliminate tumors more frequently, since patients would no longer feel pain during the operation.
Today, cameras are used to identify tumors and cancer sites and operations occur on a daily basis. Of course, this trend could be attributed to the nearly exponential increase in cancer diagnoses since antiquity as well as the steady increase of cases within the last 40 years alone. According to the SEER Cancer Statistics Review, overall cancer diagnoses per year have increased from 400,000 cases in 1975 to nearly 500,000 in 2010. Of these cases, surgery was the most common treatment for early stage cancer, particularly rectal and colon cancer, for which 94% and 74% of patients underwent surgery respectively. Surgery definitely has a presence in modern cancer treatment despite its ancient roots. The practice of surgery has experienced a major transformation through the history of cancer, and it continues to delay, if not cure cancer’s mysterious effects.
When it came to treating cancer, surgery was a more popular option, though it was still rare. Many times, surgery was required because physicians needed to identify a tumor within a patient’s body. For certain cases like breast cancer, patients underwent procedures similar to modern techniques, in which tumors are removed entirely before they develop. The practice of surgery on cancer did not extend beyond this. It wasn’t until 1846 when physicians administered anesthetics that surgery became more prevalent. One of the pioneers of this breakthrough was Crawford W. Long, a former University of Georgia stu-
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IN EXCELLENCE THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE FOR 2013 BY ERICA LEE
Albert Nobel and the Nobel Prize Albert Nobel was dynamite. As a child, he inhaled languages and absorbed every scientific text he could find. He later became the sole chemist among a family of engineers. When the Crimean War ended in 1856, the state no longer had any use for the Nobel family’s factory for war material. Nobel, who was still a young man at the time, began working to stabilize nitroglycerine into a safe and effective explosive, a compound he refined into dynamite.
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|Feature| With his new invention, Nobel morphed into an entrepreneur, rolling when his factories exploded and investing wisely when sales jumped. He patented his invention in 1867, and the next year, he and his father were awarded the Letterstedt Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for “important discoveries of practical value to humanity.” However, his work came at a grave price.
Nobel’s obsessive, often dangerous overwork wracked his body with indigestion, headaches and depression. He had few friends and rarely allowed himself to spend time with them. He was always working, always worrying. Later in life, his chronic stress manifested in severe angina pectoris, or chest pain due to restricted vessels. His physicians found that the compound he created, nitroglycerin, would help his condition. He was amused at this coincidence but declined treatment and died of a stroke in 1896. He left behind a massive estate and a revolutionary will. It stated that every year, the interest on his estate would be split into five prizes which would mark excellence in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace.
It wasn’t a smooth transition. His family vehemently opposed the establishment of a prize, and the prize awarders he had named refused to follow his will. Five years passed before they reconsidered and moved to honor his wishes. The first Nobel Prize was awarded in 1901.
Influential Discoveries Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1901- The first Nobel Prize was awarded to Emil von Behring for his work in serum therapy. Behring focused on the eradication of diphtheria, a bacterial upper respiratory tract infection. Diphtheria was one of the major epidemics in history, and Behring’s antitoxin saved countless lives. 1930- Karl Landsteiner discovered human blood groups.
1945- Alexander Fleming, Ernst Boris Chain and Sir Howard Walter Florey discovered penicillin and its wide range of medicinal uses. 1953- Hans Adolf Krebs and Fritz Albert Lipan discovered the citric acid cycle and co-enzyme A and their roles in cellular metabolism.
1962- Francis Harry Compton Crick, James Dewey Watson and Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins discovered DNA and its use in cellular reproduction.
1988- Sir James W. Black, Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings discovered important principles for drug treatment, including the discovery of receptor-blocking drugs.
2009- Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak discovered how telomeres and telomerase protect chromosomes during replication.
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The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2013 Cells are the basic building block of all living organisms. They were first discovered by Robert Hooke in 1665. In the threeand-a-half centuries since, scientists have unveiled an entirely new world in these microscopic structures. For a cell to function as a part of a whole organism like the human body, it must organize its nutrients and production centers efficiently. Sometimes the cell needs to transport structures to another part of the cell or outside of it, and the cell does this through vesicles. Vesicles are an important part of the cell’s endomembrane system, the membranes that occur inside the cells themselves and are not the outer protective membrane. They often have different chemical characteristics than the cytosol of the cell to attract different solutes to transport. When scientists viewed animal cells under a microscope, it was very clear that they used these little bubble-like structures to transport various structures. However, scientists knew little about how cells moved these vesicles.
Until 2013, James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas c. Südhof were jointly awarded the Nobel prize for their discoveries of the cellular mechanisms in vesicle traffic and cellular transport. James E. Rothman is a professor of Biomedical Sciences at Yale University, the Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology at the Yale School of Medicine and the Director of the Nanobiology Institute at the Yale West Campus.
Rothman studied vesicle transport in the 1980s and 1990s. When studying mammalian cells, he discovered a certain protein structure that allows transport vesicles to “dock” onto their target membranes and release their contents inside those membranes. Many proteins on both the vesicle membrane and the target membrane bind to each other like a zipper. This happens both inside the cell itself and when travelling vesicles attach onto the outside of the entire cell membrane. Randy W. Schekman is a cell biologist at the University of California and serves as the editor for eLife, a scientific journal published by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
He began his study of the cell’s transport systems in the 1970s using yeast as a model system to understand the genetic code behind vesicle transport. In his studies, he observed that sometimes the vesicles in the yeast cells piled up in certain parts of the cell like a bottlenecked road. He went to find the reason for this in the genetic code and found a mutated gene. He later identified three genes that control the cell’s transport system in both these yeast cells and in mammalian cells. Thomas C. Südhof is a biochemist specializing in synaptic transmission. He is a professor in the School of Medicine in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
The 1962 Nobel Prize of Francis Harry Compton Crick
Südhof investigated how neurotransmitters in the brain communicated with each other. Neurons in the brain use neurotransmitters to communicate with each other. These neurotransmitters are released from vesicles from the first neuron and attach to the second neuron in the chain and release their contents there. What makes neurotransmitters unique is their specificity. Hormones, for example, are delivered to the entire body, but neurotransmitters only arrive at certain neurons. Südhof found that molecular machinery in these nerve cells responds to calcium ions which direct nearby proteins to bind these vesicles to the outer membrane of the second nerve cell. Then, like in Rothman’s discovery, the “zipper” opens up the cell and joins the vesicle with its membrane.
The Impact of this Discovery
This new information about cell physiology and how cells transport their cargo might shine a new light on diseases caused by imperfect mutations to the genes involved in cellular transport. Since cells use vesicle transport in almost every aspect of their
function, it is crucial to continue to unveil its exact process. Imperfect or mutated genes result in many kinds of diseases, including neurological and immunological disorders. It also plays a factor in diabetes. A greater understanding of vesicle transport will allow scientists and physicians to better treat these diseases.
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DrugMint: Catalyzing Drug Discovery BY: MICHELLE VU BY: CARLEY BORRELLI With the modern age colored pills, it’s hard to believe that modern
medicine has been largely founded on tradition: “nine out of the top 20 best-selling drugs are either natural products or semisynthetic products,” modified versions of barks, venoms, and other natural compounds, according to a study investigating the key characteristics of drugs. Despite advancement in combinatorial chemistry, which creates new compounds at record speeds, few synthetic compounds work as drugs. However, a breakthrough called DrugMint promises to isolate the best synthetic-drug candidates, and faster. Spearheaded by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), DrugMint is “a web server developed for predicting drug-likelihood of a compound” and represents one of many computational tools that promise to catalyze the rate of drug discovery. To understand DrugMint’s value, we first need to discuss the evolution of drug research methodologies.
Drug Discovery: From Trial and Error to Files and Sharers
A recent estimate suggested at the current rate of drug discovery “it would take more than 300 years to increase the number of available drugs by two fold.” This is because most drugs continue to fail in clinical trials due to toxicity, insolubility, and undesirable side-effects in vivo (when tested in humans). Due to insufficient knowledge of human biochemistry, scientists are unable to predict the effects of drugs in vivo. Dr. Claiborne Glover, a UGA biochemistry professor, summarizes this challenge by stating, “You might know that a drug binds to this active site, but what else does it bind to? We just don’t know.” Therefore, scientists have relied on non-hypothesis-based methods in researching what a drug binds to and how to develop the drug to make it work in humans?
To assess what compounds will bind to target receptor sites, scientists are randomly reacting synthesized compounds with enzymes active sites and recorded the successes, using an expensive and complex method called high throughput screening (HITS). Dr. Schmidt, a biochemist at University of Georgia who researches these
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early phases with grants from the Developmental Therapeutics Program (DTP), describes this process as throwing components into “one pot reactions.” This challenge is analogous to placing shapes (compounds) in holes (receptor sites), but blindfolded. Already an inefficient process, in vitro studies are only the starting point in drug development.
The next challenge is asking: which shapes will fit into the holes and still be drug-like: functional and compatible in vivo. Most compounds that fit into the active sites did not meet these criteria in clinical testing, as previously noted in the high rate of experimental failure. Only in the 21st century, did a scientist Christopher Lipinksi, ask: do drug-like compounds have different characteristics than nondrug-like compounds? After assessing drug failures and successes from HITS, scientists discovered and refined shared criteria of drugs, narrowing down the shapes (only square shapes) and characteristics (only red squares) of a drug-like molecule. Now, virtual screening hopes to replace HITS by using these criteria to computationally test for viable drug candidates.
DrugMint: virtual screening server
DrugMint derived the criteria for a drug-like molecule from the similarities among experimental and marketed drugs in the DrugBank database. For example, this analysis suggested that druglike compounds contain less primary alcohol, phosphoric monoester, diester and mixed anhydride, when compared to experimental compounds. DrugMint’s most groundbreaking quality is that it was engineered using compounds that are accessible to the public, from DrugBank, and that it has posted its open-source software on a web server. This access allows researchers unprecedented access to chemo-analytical software, which was only available commericially, to improve their experiments. Explore DrugMint yourself by using its sample molecule! The webserver’s tools guide researchers through the initial stages of drug development. Users can first draw a molecule using the Marvin applet, which creates its molecular fingerprint, the digital data of a
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“There is a potentially serious concern with the validity of the results due to the fact that the experimental design may result in overfitting.”
compound’s structure. Then, they can upload this molecule and run DrugMint’s virtual screening software, which assesses the drug-likeness of the molecule. If the assessment is unfavorable, users can modify the molecule’s structure using a Design Analogs Module. In addition, the website includes specialized modules for drugs designed to target cancer cells, HIV, and other notable diseases. Some scientists are skeptical about the DrugMint’s usefulness, including Dr. Robert Murphy. Criticizing its accuracy and computation-
al design he stated, “There is a potentially serious concern with the validity of the results due to the fact that the experimental design may result in overfitting.” However, DrugMint provides a powerful tool in initially screening for the best drug candidates; it provides a preliminary hypothesis and direction for drug development. Until we have developed a better knowledge base for human biochemistry, DrugMint, and other computational servers, will catalyze the rate of drug discovery. PreMed Magazine at UGA
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