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. That early testing phase – where potential treatments either show promise or fail outright – is where Aleksandra Nedovic, a doctoral student in Florida Atlantic’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, spends most of her time under the mentorship of Predrag Cudic, Ph.D., professor and associate dean for research.

Nedovic, a doctoral student in chemistry at Florida Atlantic University, 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.”

Recently, Nedovic captured an image of those living cells at the center of her research, a moment that would later earn a top award in FAU’s Art of Science photography contest. The image reveals densely packed cells used in pharmaceutical research to test how drugs behave long before they reach animal models or clinical trials.

The image, titled Developing New Drugs, was taken while Nedovic 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.”