Victims suffer confusion, personality changes and impaired judgment that eventually leaves them unable to care for themselves. Tang and his research team have not yet designed the drug needed for a cure. His current research focuses on making the inhibitor gain the necessary properties for pharmaceutical design. Tang's challenge is to enable it to penetrate the brain without adverse side effects and toxicity to brain tissue. Tang believes he can completely disable the disease-producing enzyme.
Research is difficult.
Most of the time we spend finding out what won't work and what is a dead end. But once in a long while, if you're a reasonably good scientist, you ask the right question, at the right time, with the right tool, and come out with the answer that people are waiting for. He realized the power of his curiosity when he left Taiwan to go to graduate school at the University of Oklahoma. Undergraduates do not have the opportunity to investigate, Tang said. You are trying to get enough background knowledge.