Hugh Bloomfield: Beam of Life: Lighting Up Anticancer Drugs and Proteins

<p dir="ltr">Making anticancer drugs is one thing - knowing how they work is another. Using a brilliant beam of light, called synchrotron radiation, we can capture atomic-scale snapshots of anticancer drugs interacting with proteins. These 3D pictures, or crystal structures, reveal how the next generation of anticancer drugs bind to proteins in the body, giving us precise information of a drug's target and how it might work. The centrepiece is a diffraction image, a pattern of spots obtained when synchrotron radiation, represented by the brilliant blue light, hits protein molecules. The spots contain critical information allowing us to build models of anticancer drugs binding to proteins, with incredible atomic-scale resolution. These can be seen flanking the sides of the image, whilst the purple shading is representative of the vibrant colours our anticancer drugs often display.</p>