All engine running.

running.

Absolutely genius. Get this.

Welcome.

This is the show where we bring science.

What that essentially means is

Discoveries,

advances, research, technology, unbelievable. is the naked scientists to show where we bring you the latest breakthroughs in

science technology and medicine with me James Titco and with me Chris Smith

and coming up the old liver drug that turns out to be able to prevent COVID-19

infection the artificial intelligence systems that pass the

Turing test and can write their own programs and what bats and heavy metal singers turn out

to have in common.

The Naked Scientists Podcast is powered by UKfast.co.uk. And we kick off this week with a topic that thankfully we haven't had to talk about for a while and that's COVID-19. And this is some good news because

researchers at Cambridge University have discovered that a very cheap, very safe

drug called erso deoxycholic acid which is already in routine use in the clinic for treating

some forms of liver disease temporarily turns off the gene for the chemical

called Ace 2 that the COVID-19 virus uses as a doorway into our cells to infect us.

Taking the drug reduces the levels of this protein which appears to make a person much

harder to infect and potentially retards the ability of the virus to cause disease.

Fotus San Patsiotis is one of the team that spotted this could happen.

It was a serendipitous finding so we are working on mechanism to make the liver repair itself

...