enzymes

Many cancer treatments are notoriously savage on the body. Drugs often attack both healthy cells and tumor cells, causing a plethora of side effects.Immunotherapies that help the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells are no different. Though they have prolonged the lives of countless patients, they work in only a subset of patients. One study found that fewer than 30 percent of breast cancer patients respond to one of the most common forms of immunotherapy.  But what if drugs could be engineered to attack only…

A plastic container thrown into landfill can take hundreds of years to break down naturally, but a newly discovered enzyme could eat up the waste in less than a day.The highly efficient polyester hydrolase, known as PHL7, was recently found in a German cemetery munching through compost.  In the lab, researchers found it was able to decompose polyethylene terephthalate (PET) by 90 percent within 16 hours.PHL7 isn't the first natural 'plastic eater' discovered by scientists, but it is the fastest.In 2016, a PET-guzzling…