Emory University professor Cassandra Quave travels around the world to search for new medicines from plants. She learns from traditional healers, and then she takes plants back to the lab to study their potential to fight deadly infections.
“Everyone right now is, of course, focused on COVID. And for good reason,” she says. “But at the same time, lurking in the background, antibiotic resistance continues to be a major, major problem.”
Quave has overcome obstacles in her scientific journey, including being born with congenital birth defects, leading doctors to amputate one of her legs when she was a child.
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