Experimental drug shows promise against NRAS-driven melanoma

One of the first ways in which this would be really felt by patients is through the repurposing of existing drugs for new diseases. Clearly, even though one could improve the process in a number of ways in terms of speeding up medicinal chemistry programs and potentially speeding up the amount of things such as toxicity trials etc., that is still going to take time. However, if we can take existing drugs, perhaps drugs which have gone off patent or are currently being marketed for another indication, and repurpose them in areas where there are high unmet medical needs, those drugs could go into that new indication in phase 2 in patients and you would know very quickly whether the drug worked or not. Then the route to market or the route to being able to make the drug more broadly available to patients would be much more rapid because you don't have to go through all those earlier stages of toxicity, testing, phase 1 testing, volunteers and so on.

One major example is protein structure. Methods such as AlphaFold and Boltz-2 have transformed how we generate 3D structural data. Accurate protein structure prediction has been a decades-old challenge, and while there is still work to do on underrepresented protein classes, these models have opened an extraordinary pathway. We have also seen progress in multi-output models. Just over a decade ago (circa 2013), toxicology and property prediction models often focused on one endpoint at a time. Now, multi-output models, especially from methods such as graph neural networks (GNNs) and other deep learning methods, can predict multiple endpoints simultaneously. This allows for transfer learning between related properties. That creates opportunities across ADMET (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity) prediction and toxicology. Another exciting area is machine learning potentials. Molecular simulations traditionally rely on fixed mathematical functions to describe molecular interactions, but neural potentials can now replace or augment those functions. They can, in many cases, provide highly accurate simulations and structures at lower computational cost than quantum chemistry. However, its not just down to model architectures. The biggest blind spot behind all of these advances remains careful data curation, annotation, and collection. Open databases for example ChEMBL, PubChem and Chemspider together with data initiatives such as OpenADEMT and OpenBind to name but a few are making notable progress here. We still see some data for example on formulation chemistry often receiving less attention. Its is not just about data scale, but quality that is critical here to. Accessible high quality data sets are the fuel of AI methods. Architecture matters, but high-quality, accessible and abundant data is also absolutely critical.

Algae are photosynthetic aquatic creatures that grow through the consumption of nutrients, light, and carbon dioxide. They are a diverse group of creatures that include tiny single-celled algae and enormous kelp, as well as seaweed 1. Numerous prokaryotic and eukaryotic algae species are desirable food sources for humans due to their inherent qualities 2,3. Human intake of macroalgae such as seaweed and microalgae like phytoplankton dates back many years. Multicellular macroscopic aquatic plants, or macroalgae, are classified into three taxa: Phaeophyceae, or brown algae, Rhodophyta or red algae, and Chlorophyta or green algae. Microalgae, the unicellular counterpart of macroalgae, are categorized in a broader framework that includes prokaryotic cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), Euglenophyta, and Chlorophyta, which are genetically distinct from one another. The ancient populations of Chad and the Aztec culture were already familiar with the cyanobacteria spirulina, which is currently advertised as a superfood in the West 4. In Burma, Vietnam, and India, other cyanobacteria/microalgae, like Spirogyra and Oedogonium, were eaten as food or as a supplement 4. Seaweed is a staple of daily meals in many Asian and Pacific civilizations, including Korea, Japan, and Indonesia, as well as Hawaii and New Zealand 5.

The bulk of vitamins and supplements containing fish oil, biotin, and vitamins A, C, and E can potentially promote nail and hair growth. You can find dietary supplements with higher concentrations of vitamins and minerals that aid skin, hair, and nail health. Fish oil supplements make nails and hair shiny. Fish oil also serves as an agent that can decrease signs of aging. If sun exposure damages the skin, the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil can help. Biotin, also known as B7, increases hair density and strengthens it. It is found naturally in bananas, eggs, and milk. Vitamins are vital for skin health as well. Vitamin A reduces acne flairs and helps with changes due to aging like wrinkling. A vitamin A deficiency may increase the risk of acne because it becomes difficult for dead skin to slough off hair follicles, blocking pores. Vitamin B lowers the risk of precancerous growths and nonmelanoma skin cancer. Vitamin C is an antioxidant. It leads the fight against free radicals to help stimulate collagen and brighten skin. It also helps to prevent the formation of unneeded melanin that causes uneven skin pigmentation.

More specifically, the study showed that the female patient produced very few cathelicidins, which is a natural toxin found in the immune cells of the lungs needed to fight tuberculosis. In most people infected by tuberculosis, tuberculosis bacteria attack the immune cells of the lungs. The immune cells fight the bacteria by eating them. But the tuberculosis bacterium has developed various evasive mechanisms that reduce the immune cells’ ability to digest and thus to kill the Mtb. “You could say that the tuberculosis bacterium has developed a way to lull the immune cells to sleep. This enables the disease the hide inside the immune cells, making it invisible to other parts of the immune system,” Martin Kongsbak-Wismann explains. This is where vitamin D enters the picture. Because vitamin D is able to counteract the soporific effect of the tuberculosis bacteria by making the immune cells produce more of the cathelicidin toxin. “Cathelicidin is like a microscopic needle that is able to pierce the tuberculosis bacteria. And when it does, it weakens the bacteria’s soporific effect on the immune cells. This restores the immune cells’ ability to kill tuberculosis bacteria,” says Martin Kongsbak-Wismann and adds: “We were amazed by the effect of vitamin D. In immune cells from healthy control subjects, vitamin D improved the cells’ ability to fight Mtb, whereas in the female patient’s immune cells we saw no response to vitamin D. This shows that vitamin D is key to the immune system’s ability to fight Mtb and prevent tuberculosis.” Al-Jaberi, F.A.H., et al. (2022) Reduced vitamin D-induced cathelicidin production and killing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in macrophages from a patient with a non-functional vitamin D receptor: A case report. Frontiers in Immunology. doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2022.1038960.