In what could potentially be the greatest medical discovery in ages, scientists at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory are working on a broad-spectrum drug that could be used to cure viral infections.
Most of the world’s infectious diseases are caused by either bacteria or viruses. And while bacteria can be treated with antibiotics, there is nothing to combat viral infections. But this new discovery could even overcome another problem — the drug resistance that bacteria are able to acquire with antibiotics.
“Viruses are pretty good at developing resistance to things we try against them,” says Karla Kirkegaard, professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University, “but in this case, it’s hard to think of a simple pathway to drug resistance.”
