The gas your own body makes, turned into a wound fighter

Nitric oxide is a gas your body produces naturally — and bacteria dislike it. Researchers at the University of Reading, led by pharmacy professor Vitaliy Khutoryanskiy, packaged it into tiny particles that release the gas where it is needed, then tested them on infected wax moth larvae, a standard stand-in for early infection studies. Nine in ten treated larvae survived their bacterial infections, compared with about six in ten untreated — a result published in the Journal of Drug Delivery Science and Technology. Infected wounds that shrug off antibiotics are a growing problem in hospitals; a treatment borrowed from the body's own chemistry could one day give doctors another option alongside conventional antibiotics. It is early, moth-stage science — and a genuinely clever idea.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation