In an age of antibiotic resistance and viruses becoming more transmissible, new drugs need to be developed faster than ever. But drug development is a long process: The pipeline from a potential drug candidate to an approved and usable drug can take up to several decades, and diseases are evolving too fast for drug development to keep up. One way scientists aim to make drug development a more efficient process is by repurposing drugs: using currently available drugs to treat different diseases - diseases other than the ones they were first developed to treat.

Dr. Toby Parkes is currently a biologist contracted as a Founder at Deep Science Ventures, a venture studio that funds science company development, particularly in sectors which tend to see fewer start-ups created. Given his work in using novel technologies to reduce the impacts of humans on the climate crisis, Parkes has created a startup to further his research interests; Rhizocore focuses on soil technologies that can boost the carbon capture potential of ecosystem regeneration projects, as well as commercial forestry.

Viruses infect billions of people yearly, seasonal flu is a commonplace occurrence and COVID-19 updates make daily headlines. But not all viruses infect humans. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria, which could advance medicine by killing antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often rely heavily on a strong sense of routine and predictability in order to make sense of the world around them, which can feel confusing and overwhelming. Without this, they can have trouble feeling safe and comfortable in their environment and can feel anxious or depressed or lose their temper.

Across the world, citrus trees infected with Huanglongbing disease are producing fruit that are lopsided, bitter, hard, and green when ripe, instead of juicy and fresh. The citrus industry in Florida has collapsed due to this disease, going from having a turnover of $9 billion to merely $3.28 billion as of 2018. And more plants are becoming infected every day.

With over 3.5 million deaths worldwide – exceeding the death toll of any pandemic in the past two decades – COVID-19 has undeniably left a drastic and lasting impact on the physical, financial, and psychosocial well-being of people all over the world. One specific vulnerable group suffering from the profound impact of COVID-19 is those who have lost a loved one to the virus, and who are thus at a higher risk for developing mental health disorders compounded by the circumstances of isolation and restricted visitation in healthcare settings.

Prostate cancer is the second most prevalent cancer found in men globally, and the fifth leading cause of cancer-related mortality in men. Some patients have a more aggressive disease with increased progression and metastasis, while others have a less aggressive disease with slower progression. There have been recent discoveries on the complexity of molecular and genetic factors behind prostate cancer in order to understand the disease mechanisms.

Swallowing four different tablets three times a day may not sound like a pleasant experience. Neither does injecting medication every day. A new drug delivery system gives hope to bypass these issues by taking advantage of the skin’s physical and chemical properties, and the mass application is imminent.

As entire populations around the world slowly reoccupy the streets after months of uncertainty, medical staff face the traces of a still latent pandemic. Months’ worth of diagnoses regarding chronic illnesses have gone unnoticed due to a lack of advancement of the healthcare system to adjust to the digital lifestyle. The Journal of Young Investigators had the privilege to chat with Dr. Ana M. Wägner, here main collaborator in the European project “Watching the Risk Factors (WARIFA)”, which aims to break the virtual barrier in healthcare by providing individualized early risk prediction using AI.

Dr. Jadavji serves as the chair of the board of directors for the Journal of Young Investigators. Her relationship with JYI, however, spans a decade into the past. As an undergraduate, Dr. Jadavji started off her relationship with JYI in the Research Department as the Associate Editor. From 2004-2008, Dr. Jadavji got promoted from Associate Editor to Research Editor to Senior Research Editor. After graduate school, she returned to JYI through an invite to join the Board of Directors (BoD) in 2011.

Even with insatiable curiosity driven by experiments and observation, science unfortunately cannot proceed without the support of money. Many of the pharmaceuticals and drugs commonly used today are the products of industry, rather than academia, which plays a small role (Frearson and Wyatt). In the past, industry has been a large producer of antibiotics, but the profits earned by manufacturing costly drugs are negligible, and the industry has since lost significant interest in production (Martens and Demain).

Over the past centuries, chess has been a game enjoyed by people of all ages and classes. Being traced as far back as 500 A.D., chess has taken many variations and the rules have changed as it was introduced to various parts of the world. In recent times, artificial intelligence has been playing an ever-greater role in the progression of chess. With such an influence, many have wondered the implications for the game itself. Will AI involvement make chess against humans boring and disinteresting? Is there any point in human play as these supercomputers have far exceeded man’s ability?

Two centuries ago, an English surgeon began noticing three elderly strangers with disrupted movements in the crowded streets of London. They shared similar characteristics of trembling hands, speaking difficulty, and postural instability. These symptoms were documented in ‘An Essay of the Shaking Palsy’ by the surgeon James Parkinson. While the discovery of the disease was merely through observation, there has been tremendous progress in the science of shaking palsy, later renamed as Parkinson’s disease in regards to the surgeon’s name. In a paper published this month by the Journal of Young Investigators, Diego Machado Reyes and Dr. Ana Lilia Reyes-Herrera explore the many ways technology has advanced the diagnosis and monitoring of people with Parkinson’s.

As the world is still combating the COVID-19 pandemic through mass inoculations and finding the definitive treatment, studying medicine efficacy and safety in the human biological system has never been more important. Before any treatment is approved, clinical trials are done to ensure that the new intervention works for every member of society. This, however, is not often the case as there are still many external obstacles to equitable clinical trials.

If you look at each of the cells in our body, you will notice that cells, such as a neural cell and a red blood cell look completely different. Cells with different functions such as muscle cells, liver cells, heart cells, etc. all have differing looks; yet, these differences are not a variation in genes. All of the cells in an individual’s body have the same genetic information, and the dissimilarity that we observe are the result of regulating gene expression. Gene expression is the production of proteins, and in a cell not every part of the genome is used to make all the possible proteins. Rather, complex interactions between various molecules regulate our genes. Regulation of genes is important for both development and maintenance of one’s health. Disease states are linked to a dysregulation of genes, where some genes may be overexpressed or expressed when it should be silent. Therefore, scientists have been looking into gene regulation to distinguish the root causes of certain diseases and innovate therapeutic agents.

On April 22nd 2016, one hundred seventy-four states and the European Union signed the Paris Agreement; an international framework that aims to avert an irreversible climate catastrophe. Aware of the disastrous consequences climate change has on our planet these nations compromise, inter alia, to keep global warming at least under 2ºC, with an ideal target of 1.5ºC.

Since April 2016, many efforts have been made to restrain the causes of global warming yet climate scientists warn the 1.5ºC target will not be met unless global carbon emissions reach net-zero around mid-century. Luckily, mechanisms exist to achieve “net-zero”: Negative Emission Technologies.

What makes us human: our genes or the microbes that colonize us? Throughout our body the microbes that constitute our microbiome outnumber our human cells, meaning there are more microbes present on us than our own genetically distinct cells (Gallager). Moreover, our microbiome contains more genetic information than our human genome (University of Washington). Does this evidence of a large amount of life colonizing our bodies influence our lives? Indeed, the microbiome has been linked to health outcomes such as the development of autoimmune diseases and contraction of non-communicable diseases (West et al.).

Deemed undruggable for almost 40 years since its discovery, mutated KRAS protein has now found its match with Amgen’s sotorasib (LUMAKRAS)—the first drug that specifically inhibits KRAS activity in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

With the advent of many new machine learning packages and tools being open-sourced, there has been increased popularity in machine learning applications among various industries. From predicting the best routes for pharmaceutical drug delivery to gaining insights on stock movements using prior financial data, machine learning has been ever-expanding for the past few decades. Although there has been an increase in its utilization, there are still many who do not know the underlying math used in these algorithms.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a field of computer science and computer systems that emphasizes frameworks to perform tasks that conventionally are perceived as requiring human cognition and intelligence. It is an industry that has been progressing and integrating into our daily lives through the technologies we use. With recent scientific developments, Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) have been prominent names associated with AI. While there is an overlap among all of them, they are not the same.

The bursting of green buds into a vivid splash of white petals to mark the arrival of spring is a feast for the senses. A fully visible spectacle to human sight, there is more to the plant’s biological phenomena than what meets the eye. Deep in a structure of Arabidopsis halleri’s leaves, a molecular machinery governs the entire behavior of this perennial weed. An exhaustive genetic modulation corresponding to seasonal pattern exists as corroborated in a study by Daniel Phillips, Dr Wenbin Guo, and Dr Runxuan Zhang recently published in the Journal of Young Investigators (Phillips, Guo, Zhang, 2021).