Alzheimer’s disease: fundamental research paves the way for therapeutics.
Introduction: biotechnology’s ambitious goals
Until recently, the discovery of a successful drug wasn’t actually the logical end point of the elucidation of a disease process. Rather, it was dependent on major doses of luck and coincidences. One speaks of ‘serendipity’: ‘the effect by which you accidentally discover something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely’. A world-famous example is Fleming’s discovery of penicillin as a treatment for infectious diseases. Upon returning from a holiday, he realised he had not cleaned up his bacterial plates before leaving. When he took them out, he noticed a strange thing: fungus had grown on the plates and killed all the bacteria in its vicinity. Fleming deduced that the fungus produced an ‘antibiotic’ substance and went on to isolate it.
Modern biotechnology asks for a more rationalistic approach: the development......
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