How are medications received by the body? How do they work inside the body? Knowledge of how living cells function will probably be the most important source of future new medicines.

More efficient medications will be one of the possibilities created when scientists will be able to study enzymes and proteins in their natural environment and with greater precision. High-energy neutron experiments will also enable the study of systems and processes that change over time. Researchers will have a new powerful tool to study the properties and functions of proteins and cell membranes, and how they integrate with, for example, medicines.

If scientists can study the details of different proteins in the human body, they can more easily create medicines that match those proteins. Proteins are essential, since they act as receptors for the molecules of the medication. Therefore neutron experiments performed on those proteins and enzymes causing diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, can be important contributions to beak-through medicines.

Already today, scientists have, by means of neutrons and X-ray experiments, started the journey towards a cure for Alzheimer’s, through studying the structure in different substances which affect the brain and its nerves. The high-performance that ESS can offer will be important to efficient structure based medicine development. Pharmaceuticals and biotech companies might therefore be interested in setting up research centres in connection to the ESS, just like the Astra Zeneca research laboratory at MAX-Lab today.

With neutrons, researchers can also create drug delivery systems that are time-released in specific parts of the body, create isotopes used in hospitals and find natural antibiotics for the treatment of multi-resistant bacteria.