4 ms·
Just to confirm, are you saying that this "miracle cure" news article (which are notoriously bullshit) might actually be true?
by drspacemonkey 9y ago
Just to confirm, are you saying that this "miracle cure" news article (which are notoriously bullshit) might actually be true?
- folli 9y agoThe use cases are quite limited since it can only be applied externally (e.g. wound infections) and not against systemic infections.
- AstralStorm 9y agoEven there, there is quite a bit of potential for allergic reactions.
- jfarlow 9y agoIt's not a miracle cure, it's just a nicely different way of attacking a problem. It still has tradeoffs - I'm not versed on what they all are, but its tradeoffs are of a different kind than of small molecules. A few guesses of what those tradeoffs might look like: A peptide will be more expensive to synthesize in bulk, it will not have as long of a shelf-life, it likely has a different (not perfect) resistance mechanism and will be more or less effective on different specific microbes. It's likely not as effective on a per/molecule basis. And it's much larger, meaning it will have a greater difficulty diffusing through the body of an organism - and might actually be degraded more quickly once inside an organism because it's peptide-like. But the mere fact that there are alternative tools in our toolbox for different scenarios is useful in our fight against disease (if not a 'miracle'). DRGN1 is not the first of such antimicrobial peptides, but it was found in a systematic way, and once it was found it was systematically made more effective. This hints at workflows to mine and refine more genetically encoded peptides like it in the future.
- drspacemonkey 9y agoThank you very much for the insight!