Question: Hey :)..... what drugs do you make?? like desiease drugs??

Lizzard O'Day answered on 15 Jun 2011:

It’s a two-step process. First we try to identify the molecules in your body that are important for disease. Figuring out with proteins, nucleic acids, or metabolites are necessary for a cancer cell to survive. Then we do whatever we can mess w/ it’s function. Sometimes we use small molecule inhibitors (like drugs) other times we use more sophisticated techniques called RNAi where we use small RNA molecules to silence genes. It’s pretty cool- so say we find a gene that lets a cancer cell grow and grow- we can use RNAi to turn off the gene and stop the cancer cell from growing! The problem is we have a hard time getting the gene to be turned off in only the cancer cell and if turned off in healthy cells that can not turn out so good for the patient. This is the area of drug delivery- it’s tough but we’re making progress though!