Biomedical Beat: A Monthly Digest of Research News from NIGMS

Louis Pasteur once said, “Chance favours the prepared mind”. Most of us naturally attribute the discovery of the cancer treating drug Cisplatin to a team of cancer researchers, but that would be incorrect! Actually, this drug “was discovered by chance by an NIGMS grantee who was studying the effect of electrical fields on bacteria” (What Makes Good Research, http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/basicresearch/). Biomedical Beat is an electronic digest of research news, produced monthly (on the third Wednesday) by the Office of Communications and Public Liaison of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), which is part of the National Institute of...