Chemistry

Reactive electrophilic drugs like Tecfidera, approved for the treatment of relapsing multiple sclerosis, show a lot of potential but are also mystery. Their effects are notoriously difficult to study, which hampers progress testing and approving them. EPFL scientists have now used an innovative chemical method to uncover the biological mechanisms of Tecfidera, providing a powerful tool for exploring other reactive electrophilic drugs.

EPFL Summer Series: How science works. Science is based on coherent reasoning, while intuition follows a more disjointed path. But scientific research couldn’t succeed if scientists didn’t listen to their gut feelings every once in a while.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a molecule that fluoresces where new tissue is forming in the body. Alongside helping to detect tumours, the molecule could play a significant role in research of wound healing disorders.

Many scientific experiments require highly precise time measurements with the help of a clearly defined frequency. Now, a new approach allows the direct comparison of frequency measurements in the lab with the atomic clock in Bern, Switzerland.

EPFL scientists have devised a new method that can speed up the real-time observation capabilities of cryo-electron microscopy.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is able to recognise the biological activity of natural products in a targeted manner, as researchers at ETH Zurich have demonstrated. Moreover, AI helps to find molecules that have the same effect as a natural substance but are easier to manufacture. This opens up huge possibilities for drug discovery, which also have potential to rewrite the rulebook for pharmaceutical research.