Art of Science: Building Better Medicines

Before a drug can treat pain, addiction or neurological disease, it must first prove itself at the cellular level, according to Aleksandra Nedovic, a doctoral student studying chemistry at Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. That early testing phase – where potential treatments either show promise or fail outright – is where Nedovic said she spends most of her time.

Nedovic studies how newly designed drug compounds interact with specific receptors in the brain. Her work focuses on drugs made up of short chains of amino acids that could one day offer safer, more targeted treatments for conditions such as chronic pain and neurodegenerative disease.

“These cells are the starting point for everything,” Nedovic said. “If a compound doesn’t work here, it won’t move forward.”

Nedovic’s image of those living cells, titled Developing New Drugs, earned People’s Choice in the Art of Science. The image reveals densely packed cells used in pharmaceutical research to test how drugs behave long before they reach animal models or clinical trials.

Nedovic said she took the picture while she was adjusting growth conditions to improve data quality but, when she stepped back, she saw something more. “I realized it showed the reality of what early drug discovery looks like,” she said. “It’s complex, it’s crowded and it’s where progress really begins.”