By Alessandra Suuberg, Decency LLC
March was a thought-provoking month for medical and biotechnology news—from across the Atlantic.
Here are some of the headlines:
Mandatory Medical Checks for Drivers?
On March 27, The Connexion reported that the European Union’s “council and parliament have . . . agreed on the main points of a new driving licence directive,” which is “yet to be finalised and publicised.”
According to the outlet, the EU’s update touches on an ongoing debate about medical fitness to drive.
The Connexion noted that MEPs had “voted last year against the idea of mandatory medical checks” for drivers, but quoted the European Commission stating that “the fitness to drive of driving licence holders will in the future be more systematically checked.”
Readers seeking additional context can link here to a table comparing rules, by country, for medical tests and driver’s license renewal (source: European Commission; last visited March 27, 2025).
New Applications for Amyloid Fibrils
On March 10, Chemical & Engineering News published a conversation with an ETH Zurich scientist seeking new uses for amyloid fibrils.
Note: The linked story is behind a paywall as of March 27, 2025. A previously-published open source version appears to be available here.
According to the researcher, proteins extracted from food waste “can be turned into amyloid fibrils,” which are a class of protein aggregate “discovered in the context of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.”
He notes that while amyloid fibrils “used to be the bad guys,” they can now be “building blocks for complex materials and technologies.”
He reports having commercialized two such technologies—one using amyloid fibrils for water purification, and another using them to “grow gold in a specific plane to make single crystals.” He also reports working on two additional technologies, respectively for alcohol detoxification and recovery of gold from e-waste.
Rehabilitating Unsafe Drugs with Artificial Intelligence
On March 21, Business Insider reported on a Cambridge, UK-based company using artificial intelligence to give “failed drugs . . . a second chance.”
According to Business Insider, the company acquires abandoned drug candidates, “focus[ing] on drugs that were 80-90% of the way to success before being scrapped due to safety issues.” The company then uses a proprietary AI platform to identify the “root cause of toxicity”—understanding why the drugs are unsafe—so that chemical adjustments can be made.
The outlet reported that the company plans to advance a PDE9A inhibitor into early trials.
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