Dating as far back as Plato’s account of Atlantis, healing crystals have been around for a very long time and are now at the forefront of cutting-edge pharmaceutical technology in the form of ‘drug taxis’, with the help of University of Malta Prof. Liana Vella-Zarb and her team.
The PharmaTaxis project, which Vella-Zarb founded, is developing new ways of delivering medicines around the body using methods which can manipulate molecules and what they can do. The team of crystal engineers are designing structures that break down at the correct stage to effectively deliver the medicine in a process called active targeting. Describing the crystals as being like “a taxi, but for molecules” when speaking to THINK magazine writer Chris Styles, Vella-Zarb explains that these crystals are being developed to act as a protective coating to medicines to help take them where they need to go. These crystalline carriers show strong potential in the future development of emerging drug transport technology.
The structure of these revolutionary materials can be manipulated by first understanding how crystals form and how they can be put together. The properties of a crystalline structure are determined by the atoms that make up the structure, how these atoms are arranged and how many bonds each atom has to others atoms around it. Vella-Zarb and her team investigate the properties of existing crystalline structures by using state of the art X-ray crystallography which creates a 3D image of the shape of the structure, down to the molecular level, allowing researchers to figure out if their crystals contain the properties they are seeking.
The team at PharmaTaxis recently secured an investment from the European Regional Development Fund of 4.8 million euros that has funded “shiny new solid-state laboratory facilities” based off-site from the University of Malta, according to Vella-Zarb. However, the research hasn’t been all plain sailing; with power cuts and other issues out of their control, causing instrumental downtime and damages. Yet, the team of material scientists will continue to rock on, of quartz.
For more information, read the latest issue of THINK, the University of Malta’s research mag- azine, released last week: https://www.um.edu.mt/think/. Physical copies available on campus. E-mail: think@um.edu.mt.
Did you know?
• A man from London has become a second person cured of HIV. Adam Castillejo has been free of the active virus for more than one month.
• To be able to use toilet paper everyday of the year, more than 27,000 trees are cut down daily.
• A disorder called Prosopagnosia makes it hard to recognise human faces. That’s because of the brain area, the fusiform gyrus, that specialises in recognising objects and faces.
• King Richard the Lionheart’s heart was found, in a recent study, to have been preserved with mercury, mint and frankincense, among other sweet-smelling plants, in 1199.
• In space, people do not burp but puke if they’ve eaten too much or things mix imperfectly in their stomach.
For more trivia see: www.um.edu.mt/think
Sound bites
• The consumption of fruit and vegetables seems to be a bridge for a longer life, according to data representing nearly two million adults. The findings, supported by US dietary recommendations, suggest that at least two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables are the best combination.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210301084519.htm
• Have you ever lost yourself in a fictional character and think about them constantly? Scientists from Ohio University have now found out what happens in the brain in a study that scanned the brains of Game of Thrones fans. The conclusion is terrifying. The more these fans thought about their favourite characters, the more they used a specific part of the brain (the ventral medial prefrontal cortex [vMPFC]) that people normally use when thinking about themselves.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/ 210315132143.htm
For more science news, listen to Radio Mocha on Radju Malta and www.fb.com/RadioMochaMalta/.