Given the current opioid crisis, I have been wondering about how the situation got where it is today. As someone who lives with chronic pain due to a neuropathy resulting from abdominal surgery, I can relate to the anxiety and fear associated with knowing you will be in pain and that you need medicine to … Read more
Amyloid-beta (Aβ) is a collection of peptide fragments derived from cleavage of amyloid precursor protein (APP). Some of these fragments are toxic to neurons and aggregate forming oligomers and fibrils. These clusters of Aβ form plaques that accumulate in the brains of people with dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease (Figure 1). Preventing the accumulation of … Read more
Toxicity to healthy cells limits the usefulness of conventional chemotherapeutic agents. These drugs kill rapidly dividing cells of all types, not just those in a tumor. In addition to dividing rapidly, some cancer cells establish metastases that have a different stiffness than the surrounding tissue. This mechanical property of a cellular microenvironment is referred to … Read more
A recent conversation inspired me to start the series: “In case you were wondering.” This is the first post in the series. We were discussing how people can exhibit different sensitivities to medicines, either the desired effect or side effects. The example that my relative used was the difference in children’s responses to local anesthetics, … Read more
Benefits of Off-Target Effects There are many FDA-approved medicines. Most have some “off-target” effects, meaning effects that are not those intended for the drug. Sometimes these off-target effects limit the dose of a drug that can be used to treat the intended disease or symptom. Sometimes these off-target effects are unwanted side effects that the … Read more