Stanford Engineering Digital Magazine profiles the work of Maxwell Biosciences co-founder Annelise E. Barron PhD.
Among the powerful biochemicals of the human immune system, peptides are one of the best.
Most commonly found in the places where microbes love to take root – mucous membranes of the eye, mouth, nose and lungs – they’re known to kill all sorts of tiny invaders, such as viruses, bacteria and fungi.
Given their power, one might think peptides would represent promising drug treatments, perhaps even a cure, for many infectious diseases. But, alas, they are fundamentally flawed: They are vulnerable to a myriad of enzymes whose job is to rapidly break them down in a way that robs them of their therapeutic properties.