The traditional way of making medicines from ingredients mixed together in a factory may be joined by a new approach in which doctors administer the ingredients for a medicine separately to patients, and the ingredients combine to produce the medicine inside patients' bodies.

Volcanic-hydrothermal flow channels offer a chemically unique environment, which at first glance appears hostile to life.

Scientists at Harvard University have harnessed the prowess of fast-replicating bacterial viruses, also known as phages, to accelerate the evolution of biomolecules in the laboratory.

Biomolecules are medicine's jacks-of-all-trades: They are suitable for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer diseases; they are used in the treatment of multiple sclerosis and asthma; they help stimulate the build-up of the body's own immune defenses with flu and polio inoculations.

Physicists, chemists and engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated a novel method for the controlled formation of patchy particles, using charged, self-assembling molecules that may one day serve as drug-delivery vehicles to combat disease and perhaps be used in small batteries that store and release charge.