News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

New studies from Lawson Health Research Institute and Western University have found for the first time that HIV can be transmitted through the sharing of equipment used to prepare drugs before injection and that a simple intervention - heating the equipment with a cigarette lighter for 10 seconds - can destroy the HIV virus, preventing that transmission. The findings, used to inform a public health campaign called 'Cook Your Wash,' have helped reduce rates of HIV transmission in London, Ontario.

Researchers at Berkeley Lab have 3D-printed an all-liquid "lab on a chip" that, with the click of a button, can be repeatedly reconfigured on demand to serve a wide range of applications - from making battery materials to screening drug candidates.

Having a map of the two cell receptors for melatonin could lead to better drugs to address insomnia or other conditions affected by those receptors.

The use of thiazide diuretics was associated with a decreased risk of low energy fractures in people with Alzheimer's disease, a new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows. The association was found in long-term use exceeding three years; however, shorter term use did not reduce the risk of fractures. Thiazides are typically prescribed to treat hypertension.

EPFL chemists have developed a new, light-based method for modifying peptides at the C-terminal position. The method introduces the structural diversity needed for drug design in this class of bioactive compounds.

Professor Thomas Gervais of Polytechnique Montréal and his students Pierre-Alexandre Goyette and Étienne Boulais, in partnership with the team led by Professor David Juncker of McGill University, have developed a new microfluidic process aimed at automating protein detection by antibodies. This work, the topic of an article in Nature Communications, points to the arrival of new portable instruments to accelerate the screening process and molecule analysis in biological laboratories to accelerate research in cancer biology.