Let's Talk Therapeutics

Bacteria are becoming resistant to our antibiotics, and we urgently need to find more. Scientists are working hard to find new inventive ways to find these new antibiotics – but could the answer be in the past? For thousands of years humans have turned to nature to treat their aliments, and many have been documented throughout history. These remedies often call for multiple ingredients and have multiple steps. Here, I am going to talk about how scientists are looking deeper into these historical remedies, some of which work against modern day superbugs, like MRSA.

Cancer immunotherapies are thought of as a modern medicine but their origins can be dated back to 1500 BC. More recently, since the late 1800 many advances have been made in our understanding of how and why our immunes system can be used to destroy cancerous cells and this has led to many new therapeutics being licensed for everyday use. This talk will look at the origins of cancer immunotherapy and explain how some of the modern medicines used today aid our immune system in targeting and destroying cancerous cells. Tom Tipton is a researcher at the University of Oxford and obtained his PhD at Southampton University in the area of improving antibody therapies to treat leukemia and lymphoma patients.