Posts

Toxicology

Image
  What is toxicology? Toxicology is a field of science that helps us understand the harmful effects that chemicals, substances, or situations, can have on people, animals, and the environment. Some refer to toxicology as the “Science of Safety” because as a field it has evolved from a science focused on studying poisons and adverse effects of chemical exposures, to a science devoted to studying safety. Toxicology uses the power of science to predict what, and how chemicals may cause harm and then shares that information to protect public health. When talking about toxicology it is important to keep a few things in mind. Not everyone will respond to substances in exactly the same way. Many factors, including the amount and duration of exposure, an individual’s susceptibility to a substance, and a person’s age, all impact whether a person will develop a disease or not. There are times in a person’s life when he or she may be more susceptible to chemicals. These times may include peri...
Post a Comment
Read more

Biomaterials And Tissue Engineering

Image
Tissue engineering is a multidisciplinary field (physics, chemistry, biology, engineering) that employs a combination of cells, scaffolds, and bioactive molecules to generate functional tissue grafts for the repair, replacement, or regeneration of diseased tissues.  Biomaterials are biocompatible natural or synthetic materials that interact with biological systems and used for prosthetic, diagnostic, therapeutic, or storage applications. In the tissue engineering realm, biomaterials are used to engineer a temporary framework (scaffold) that resembles the native tissue and provides a support structure to facilitate cell adhesion, proliferation, differentiation, and tissue regeneration. Dr. Vipuil Kishore's Functional Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering laboratory in the chemical engineering program at Florida Tech has several ongoing research projects on the development of collagen-based biomimetic scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. Biofabricatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Drug Discovery and Drug Development

Image
Drugs were discovered by identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies or by serendipitous discovery, like penicillin. More recently, chemical libraries of synthetic small molecules, natural products or extracts were screened in intact cells or whole organisms to spot substances that had a desirable therapeutic effect in a process known as classical pharmacology. After sequencing of the human genome allowed rapid cloning and synthesis of huge quantities of purified proteins, it's become common practice to use high throughput screening of large compounds libraries against isolated biological targets which are hypothesized to be disease-modifying in a process known as reverse pharmacology. Hits from these screens are then tested in cells then in animals for efficacy. Drug development is that the process of bringing a new pharmaceutical drug to the market once a lead compound has been identified through the process of drug discovery. It includes preclinical research on m...
Post a Comment
Read more