Anthony King 
Antibiotic resistant bacteria are killing more people each year, but scientists are turning to their natural virus predators to treat infections, as well as new vaccines to prevent disease. In December 1945, during his Nobel Prize lecture for the discovery of penicillin, Dr Alexander Fleming warned that bacteria could become resistant to the drug if exposed to … Read more
Finding new viruses is easy – the hard part is understanding which ones cause disease, says Dr Lia van der Hoek, a virologist from the Amsterdam UMC, the Netherlands, who discovered a human coronavirus called NL63, in 2003. She suspects that not all viruses may be harmful and that having a diverse collection of viruses in … Read more
Only in cancer medicine do we aim to attack and kill legions of our own cells. But healthy bystander cells often get caught in deadly crossfire, which is why cancer treatments can cause severe side effects in patients. Doctors know that we need smarter medicines to target the bad guys only. One hope is that … Read more
Pheromones that interfere with insect mating patterns, crops that are grown together with others and fields edged with wildflowers are just some of the techniques being developed by European scientists to defend crops from pests without resorting to pesticides, which have been linked to widespread insect biodiversity loss. Most crops require pesticides to grow profitably. But … Read more
Two anti-inflammatory drugs – tocilizumab and sarilumab – as well as steroids, have been identified as potential life-saving coronavirus treatments thanks to a trial set up in the wake of the 2009 swine flu pandemic that mirrors the way that people receive multiple treatments while in intensive care. When the H1N1 swine flu outbreak hit in … Read more
A mysterious flu-like illness that caused loss of taste and smell in the late 19th century was probably caused by a coronavirus that still causes the ‘common cold’ in people today, according to Professor Marc Van Ranst at KU Leuven in Belgium, an expert on coronaviruses. He says that the foothold of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the … Read more