We are glad to announce that Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute (RKMVERI) will be conducting a special colloquium on “Magic Bullets: No Longer so Magical” on 15 Apr 2024, 12 noon at Seminar Hall, Narendrapur Campus.

Speaker : Prof. Partha P Majumder, ISI-Kolkata, National Science Chair
Co-ordinator: Prof. Abhijit Chakrabarti

Abstract

An old superstition believed that it was possible to charm a bullet to hit a particular person. Such a bullet was called a “Magic Bullet.” The Nobel laureate Paul Ehrlich, called a chemical as a “Magic Bullet” that would both attach itself to a specific germ (i.e., stain it) and kill it. In the modern era of genomics, scientists are attempting to treat diseases using drugs that are precisely meant to treat persons with specific genetic signatures.  Even if many people have the same disease, they will not be treated with the same drug.  Instead, drugs that precisely target those genetic factors that resulted in the disease in a particular patient will be used to treat that patient. Such drugs are called “magic bullets” in this era of precision medicine.  In this talk, I shall provide the basis of such scientific
developments using different forms of cancer as examples.