Efforts to make healthcare more sustainable are continuing. On October 9, thirteen industry organizations signed the new Green Deal for Sustainable Healthcare. This continues the successful collaboration after the current Green Deal expires at the end of October.

Many medicines are thrown away even though they still contain valuable active ingredients. At the same time, drug shortages are becoming increasingly common, and the production of medicines has a major impact on the environment. Dr. Lisa-Marie Smale of Erasmus MC wants to investigate whether unused medicines can be “recycled” into new medicines.

Nitika Taneja shows how cells can protect newly copied DNA when the copying process is under stress: it protects itself by stabilizing into loops. This protective organization may also help explain how tumor cells tolerate stress caused by chemotherapy. ‘When DNA is under stress, it doesn’t just get repaired, it hides inside protective loops.’

Nitika Taneja is working on a technique to better visualize the DNA of tumor cells. Through this work, she hopes to contribute to improved treatment options from the laboratory for people with cancer. ‘Sometimes half of the patients do not respond to a treatment.’

Finding drugs for outbreaks of new virusses often takes a lot of time. Researchers at Erasmus MC now show that this process can be sped up using organoids: miniature versions of human organs. Thanks to new techniques, these can now be used to expeditiously identify antiviral drugs. 

Researchers at Erasmus MC are gaining an increasingly clear understanding of vascular ageing. Two PhD theses from the research group of Ingrid van der Pluijm show that DNA damage plays a major role and that the ageing process is not necessarily irreversible. ‘Man is as old as his arteries.’