Advancing Medical Research
Foundations of Science
The Evolution of Inflammation
Hunting wooly mammoths with stone age technology took guts. If the archaeological record is to be believed, it also took an incredible ability to bounce back from serious injuries.
Stone age burial sites are filled with examples of early humans who recovered from broken bones, dislocated limbs and infected wounds, all without any help from modern medicine. The active lifestyle required to feed oneself led…
New RNA Technology Could Get the Flu Vaccine Right, Every Year
We’ve been making the flu vaccine in nearly the same way for 70 years. A new technology based on RNA could disrupt that. Developing the flu vaccine each year is like a game of prediction.
What is Green Chemistry?
The way contemporary chemists work is a lot different than the way their predecessors worked only a few generations ago. You might think that the change is due to new technologies or breakthroughs in scientific understanding, but that’s only partly right. One of the major reasons chemistry is different today is because of songbirds.
Throughout the 20th century certain human-synthesized chemical compounds in…
Scientific ‘Swap Meet’: Pharma Competitors Form Novel Consortium to Share Materials
Just as an amazing meal often begins with the best ingredients, the most innovative compounds are likely to emerge when scientists have access to diverse and high-quality chemical building blocks.
Using ‘Omics to Understand the Rise in Breast Cancers Among Young Asians
Asian women, compared to their counterparts in western countries, are diagnosed with breast cancer at earlier ages and face a worse prognosis.
In an effort to better understand this patient population, scientists from Pfizer and Samsung Medical Center (SMC) in Seoul, Korea, have embarked on a multi-phase project to do multi-omic profiling of the tumors of some 187 younger Korean breast cancer patients.…
Matching Drugs to Diseases: Advances in Targeting JAKs Leading to New Autoimmune Therapies
Janus kinases (JAKs) named after Janus, the Roman two-faced god of duality, are enzymes with two “faces,” or domains, that play a key role in signal transduction of cytokines, the molecular messengers that trigger the inflammatory and immune responses. Scientific discoveries related to JAKs in recent years have led to novel treatments for…
Unlocking the Secrets of a Protein “Superfamily"
Large families can be complex. And while you may know some of its members individually, you can’t really gain a true understanding of their relationships and dynamics without considering the group in its totality.
Such is the case for solute carrier (SLC) transporters, a “superfamily” of some 400 proteins found in our cell membranes responsible for shuttling nutrients, neurotransmitters, medicines and other…
Using DNA ‘Barcodes’ in the Search for New Drugs
Inside the Toxicology Lab: From Guardians of the Genome to Bottleneck Breakers and Beyond
When it comes to creating new medicines, the stories that most often reach the public are the discoveries of new biological pathways or novel compounds. But in the nearly decade-long journey a medicine takes to get from the lab to patients, drug safety studies are an integral, though often behind-the-scenes, part of the process. We recently spoke with Pfizer scientists who work in various areas of toxicology to…