Drugs on demand

The Academy brings back to Spain Aaron Ciechanover, Nobel Prize in Chemistry and honorary academician

Aaron Ciechanover, Nobel prize in Chemistry and honorary member of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED), will star in two scientific sessions in Spain at the end of January under the auspices of RAED. The first one will be held on January 29, at 7.00 pm, at CosmoCaixa of Barcelona by La Caixa Banking Foundation, the event’s organizing institution. The second, a day later at the auditorium of the Cajasol Foundation in Seville, which also collaborates in the Nobel’s visit. In both cases Ciechanover will deliver the conference “Development of medicines in the 21st century: will we cure all diseases?”.

In his work, the speaker addresses how many important pharmacological substances such as penicillin, aspirin or digoxin were discovered by chance, some by researchers moved by curiosity on a subject and accidentally perceived some strange phenomenon and others by the isolation of active ingredients which are part of plants known to have a specific therapeutic effect. Other important drugs, such as statins, cholesterol reducers, were discovered using advanced technologies.

Dr. Aaron Ciechanover

In the same way, in many clinical studies it has been discovered that patients with apparently similar diseases at the time of diagnosis respond differently to similar treatments and that the clinical behaviour of a disease differs from patient to patient. From there it has been possible to determine that the molecular basis of what we think is the same entity of the disease doesn’t work mechanistically. Therefore, cancers such as breast or prostate cancer appear to be subdivided into smaller and different classes according to their molecular characteristics.

The conclusion is that pharmacological research no longer focuses on the treatment of these and many other diseases as “one size fits all” and has entered a new era of “personalized medicine” in which it adapts the treatment to different profiles. In this era, understanding the mechanisms of each disease and the biological response to them is imperative.
 

Confirmation of attendance to the conferences is required, contacting the Academy by e-mail to secretaria@raed.academy.
Please click here to find out more about these conferences and location