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HIV/AIDS remains a major global health challenge, with an estimated 39 million people living with the disease and 1.5 million new infections each year. Though antiretroviral therapy provides effective treatment and prevention, limitations arise due to inadequate adherence to the required lifelong daily drug regimen. There is thus significant interest in the development of long-acting drug delivery systems that enable consistent and sustained drug release for extended periods. Researchers from Queen’s University Belfast have recently published proof-of-concept of a long-acting drug delivery platform based on a novel peptoid-peptide material. The contribution to this work by the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) demonstrates, once again, the facility’s dedication to the provision of neutrons for society.

The PSB spotlight on “Neutrons in Biology” took place on 29 June 2024, gathering more than 50 participants from the four institutes of the EPN campus (European Photon and Neutron campus) in Grenoble.

A recently published study uses neutron and X-ray scattering to deepen our understanding of freeze-drying protein stabilisation processes, widely used in biopharmaceutical applications. The results obtained for a protein relevant for pharmaceutical applications are in stark contrast with those previously obtained for lysozyme, widely used as a model protein. This highlights the importance of protein selection in such studies.

The goal of this study was to complete the mapping of the dynamics of the well-known protein Hsp90 by studying the 5-500 ns timescale using a combination of state-of-the-art complementary techniques, and to take the first steps towards understanding how this timescale relates to the slower dynamics known to drive the protein’s functioning.

An article recently published in Cell Reports reveals how researchers have for the first time directly visualized the position of protons within key functional elements of an enzyme that plays an important role in the metabolism of many microorganisms. Neutron diffraction measurements at ILL of protein crystals grown under microgravity conditions at the International Space Station (ISS) were key ingredients in this work.

Understanding the interactions of biomolecules such as proteins or drugs with the membrane of cells is important in biomedical research and for the pharmaceutical industry. The sensitivity of neutrons to hydrogen atoms make neutron scattering a unique probe.

The serum protein ApoE is known to bind to LNPs after administration and to be critical for cellular uptake and protein production in the liver. The acquisition of complementary SANS and SAXS data revealed the structural and compositional effects induced by this binding: a rearrangement of both t…

Anthracyclines are widely used and highly effective chemotherapy drugs, clinically used to treat various types of cancer. Powerful characterisation techniques were combined by researchers from the University of Manchester, University of Warsaw and the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in order to bette…

What exactly happens inside a cell during thermal death was, until recently, a hotly debated question. Collaborative research led by Alessandro Paciaroni, Associate Professor at the University of Perugia, Judith Peters, Professor of Physics at the Université Grenoble Alpes and Fabio Sterpone, CNRS…

By Upward, the official magazine of the ISS National Lab

The worst of COVID-19 may have past, but new viral variants keep showing up. Developing new drugs that remain potent against the emerging variants is essential to stopping the spread of the deadly disease and protecting human health.After more than two years of studying SARS-CoV-2—the virus that c…