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musings on medicines from the Earth
Abel Pharmboy is the nom de plume of an academic researcher and educator who took his PhD in Pharmacology and Therapeutics and BS in Toxicology. He writes on natural product drugs and dietary supplements, academic career development, medical journalism and, occasionally, making and listening to music and, with the help of his colleague, Erleichda, wine appreciation.
"Why Terra Sigillata?" will tell you more about the origin of the blog name.
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Category: The Awesome Power of Natural Products
You might not care to explain this in great detail to the kids or other Harry Potter fans, but the legend does in fact come from the awesome power of natural products.
Posted by Abel Pharmboy at 12:02 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Academia
Yes, friends: this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry would not have been possible without the awesome power of natural products and the contributions of my natural products chemistry colleagues who provided Ramikrishnan, Steitz, and Yonath with the chemical tools for their work. "The ribosome is the target for about 50% of all antibacterial drugs to date, and the advent of high resolution structures of both ribosomal subunits has opened a large number of possibilities for [structure-based drug design] of new and effective drugs in the race against resistance development among bacterial pathogens."
Posted by Abel Pharmboy at 8:02 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: The Awesome Power of Natural Products
For all of you parents of children with cancer, here's what your kids might be doing in 50 years.
Posted by Abel Pharmboy at 1:02 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Botanical/Herbal Medicines
A widely-available plant that produces highly-disturbing hallucinations is being progressively prohibited in the US. However, as with other psychoactive natural products, salvinorin A holds promise for novel therapeutics to treat psychiatric disorders.
Posted by Abel Pharmboy at 11:04 AM • 28 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Drugs of Abuse
A excellent article on the front page of today's New York Times raises awareness of the flow of inexpensive heroin from Mexico to the suburban US.
Posted by Abel Pharmboy at 8:43 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Drugs of Abuse
A man who lost his son 6 years ago to a poppy seed brew reminds us that users can never know the morphine content of the tea. More importantly, even those of us in science and health care fail to appreciate the danger of this tea. Processing of morphine poppies and concentration by tea making can result in potentially lethal concentrations.
Posted by Abel Pharmboy at 8:02 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Academia
A lesson could have been learned from the 1806 example of the German chemist and pharmacist, Friedrich Wilhelm Sertürner.
Posted by Abel Pharmboy at 8:55 AM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Alternative medicine
So-called alternative medicine advocates have raped my field of natural products, co-opting things that work as "alternative" to justify study of approaches that challenge the basic tenets of physics. My two most-admired blog mentors hold forth on the issues. The bottom line for me: let's pay for studies of approaches that have basic science support rather than fund multimillion-dollar clinical shots in the dark.
Posted by Abel Pharmboy at 9:02 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Pharmacognosy
A research post from Laura Mariani's Neurotypical? reminds us how finding a common receptor mechanism for entheogens and hallucinogens reveals once again the awesome power of natural products in the discovery of the pathophysiology and pharmacotherapeutics of human diseases.
Posted by Abel Pharmboy at 12:02 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Academia
Megaprops to Karl Leif Bates, editor of the online magazine, Duke Research, for some publicity on our recent working vacation.
Posted by Abel Pharmboy at 2:35 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
