Hochviral

According to the World Health Organization, around 40% of all adults are overweight, and around a third of those are obese. Alarmingly, overweight/ obesity is the fifth leading cause of death and considerably increases the risk of getting other diseases, such as diabetes. Unfortunately, curing obesity is not that simple. Since it is a multifactorial disease, lifestyle interventions including exercise and diet are not always sufficient to achieve weight loss. Hence, there is a high interest in the development of safe anti-obesity drugs. In 2009, brown adipose tissue emerged as attractive drug target and the application of targeted nanoparticles could be a novel solution to deliver drugs selectively into adipose tissue in order to avoid side effects. mehr

Since the discovery of penicillin in the early 20th century the image of bacterial infections has changed dramatically. Numerous diseases that have been a death warrant before do no longer pose a thread to modern medicine. But, soon after Fleming’s famous discovery a resistant strain of Staphylococcus was found that urged the need for new antibiotics. And thus, up to date, a plethora of different antibiotics have been developed. However, 100 years after the discovery of penicillin, the world is now facing another bacterial threat, this time caused by the cure itself. In their global report on surveillance, the WHO alerts that without urgent action we are heading for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can once again kill. This crisis is not only attributed to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, but also to the lack of new innovative drugs. mehr