Advancing Medical Research

Brenda Carrillo-Conde has a talent for conjugation: making connections for the greater good — inside the lab and out. As a principal scientist with Pfizer’s Conjugation and Polytide Process Development Group in St. Louis, Missouri, she spends her workdays using chemical conjugation to improve the effectiveness of vaccines and medicines. 

In the lab, conjugation is a process that connects molecules together…

Sulfuryl fluoride gas is the chemical equivalent of Mr. Hyde. Like the fictional monster, it’s dangerous and difficult to work with. But by inventing a process that creates a new substance called [4-(Acetylamino)phenyl]-ImidodiSulfuryl diFluoride, referred to as AISF, scientists are replacing the gas with the chemical equivalent of Dr. Jekyll. In its new state, it shares several characteristics with the good doctor…

In the genteel game of croquet, the goal is deceptively straightforward: to hit your ball through a series of hoops before your opponent does. However, anyone who has picked up a mallet knows the sport can get downright cutthroat. A strong player with the right strategy can hit her opponent’s ball so far away that it essentially knocks him out of the game.

That’s similar to what scientists are starting to…

Making cells in the lab may not sound too dramatic, but under the microscope, what scientists call cell-line development can be even more competitive than the most cutthroat reality-show contests.

In a New Yorker article about how evolutionary psychology findings are usually based on surveys of undergraduates, Anthony Gottlieb wrote, “American college kids, whatever their charms, are a laughable proxy for Homo sapiens.” 

Biomedical research can suffer from a similar bias: Subjects don’t always represent the full range of patients in terms of gender, race and ethnicity. But why is it…