Health Sciences

Older traumatic experiences are harder to get over compared to recent ones, and EPFL scientists have started to understand why – at the level of brain circuits. The results point the way for treating long-term trauma.

ETH Fellow Rodrigo Arzate-Mejia is studying how traumatic life experiences affect the brain, with a focus on epigenetic changes in brain cells.  

Through a unique combination of computer simulations and laboratory experiments, researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have discovered new binding sites for active agents – against cancer, for example – on a vital protein of the cell cytoskeleton. Eleven of the sites hadn’t been known before. The study is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Novel nanoparticles developed by researchers at ETH Zurich and Empa detect multi-resistant bacteria hiding in body cells and kill them. The scientists' goal is to develop an antibacterial agent that is effective where conventional antibiotics remain ineffective.

Machine learning methods help to optimise the development of antibody drugs. This leads to active substances with improved properties, also with regard to tolerability in the body.