Fundación MEDINA participated at the European Researcher Night in the Fundación PTS´s stand last 28th of September considering necessary within its compromise with society to make people understand its operational environment. One of the main objectives was to transfer to the citizen the excellence of the research in drug discovery from microbial Natural Products performed in its own town, the microbes value as a source of solutions for our daily life and to let everyone participate in the scientific and technological process that finally reverts in their future. The whole team disseminated the microorganism’s contribution in human health and the development of new antibiotics, antitumoral and antifungals drugs.
The detailed examples in the didactic material showed how a soil, water or lichen samples among others were the source of microorganism strains that produced molecule that permitted the development of innovative medicines. Three workshops representing the different stages of the microbial Natural Products drug discovery process accompanied the poster and was the starting point of the explanation given to the general public about the research developed by the researcher’s groups of MEDINA. One of the workshop showed how to isolate microorganisms from a soil o leaf sample. The second workshop, through a simple technique (thin layer chromatography) simulated how the different compounds produced by the microorganisms can be separated. The third workshop was more about visualizing and getting familiarized with the laboratory equipment used for the assays that permit to determine for the diseases against which the compounds may be useful and transformed into medicines.
