Biomedical/pharma

Biomedical/pharma, Infectious disease, Personal/public health, Public health

The discovery of antibiotics fundamentally changed healthcare in the 20th century. Deadly infections suddenly became treatable and millions of lives were saved. But excessive antibiotic use in both healthcare and agriculture has allowed some microbes to become resistant. Resistance has even been reported to last resort treatments, like colistin, in the past few years. With classic antibiotics failing, will trivial infections become deadly again or will we manage to find new solutions? In this two-part series, we will look into some of the fundamentally different therapeutics that are being developed as alternatives to traditional antibiotics. In this second installment, we highlight bacteriophages: are they finally ready to take center stage, nearly 100 years after being discovered?
The Spanish start-up Minoryx Therapeutics recently opened a subsidiary in Belgium to further their research on treatments for rare and orphan diseases. Co-founder and CEO Marc Martinell spoke to BioVox about his personal reasons for founding the company and why Belgium is such an attractive location to start-ups in the medical sector.
The microbiome had been at the forefront of a lot of research and news in the past few years. Now, a new study published in Nature Microbiology has linked specific microbiome changes with depression and quality of life. The largest of its kind to-date, the research was made possible by over 2000 participants from the Flemish Gut Flora Project and the Dutch LifeLines DEEP project. The results may lead to novel therapies for people suffering from this debilitating mental illness.
The sun is shining, the grass is green, but hay fever season is at its peak! Many people (myself included) will spend a lot of money on antihistamines and tissues this summer. Wouldn’t it be lovely if there was a vaccine against grass pollen allergies?