Growing medicine

Have you ever thought about how or where your medicines are made? Depending on the type of pharmaceutical, it could be made in a laboratory, or perhaps sourced directly from nature.

Plants have been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years, and many modern medicines are derived from plant-based compounds, but modern pharmaceutical production tends to be associated with a laboratory setting.

Using plants instead of labs to make modern medicines could help reduce the cost and environmental impact of their production, and allow medicines to be more accessible across the globe.

Join us this month to hear how scientists are combining the traditional with the modern by creating plants that can make new pharmaceuticals. 

Watch the recording

Recording of "Growing medicine" talk (YouTube, 62m)

Meet the presenter:

Bronwyn Smithies is a PhD student who studies how plants can be used to make brand new peptide-based medicines. She is interested in how plants work and how they can be used to benefit society in new and interesting ways. She is part of a multi-disciplinary team at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at UQ, headed by Professor David Craik.