You cannot understand biology by killing it Drug discovery still relies on destroying cells to understand how they respond, but new real-time measurement approaches are beginning to reveal biology in motion rather than in snapshots. Written byBree Foster, PhD May 11, 2026 | 5 min read

You cannot understand biology by killing it Drug discovery still relies on destroying cells to understand how they respond, but new real-time measurement approaches are beginning to reveal biology in motion rather than in snapshots. Written byBree Foster, PhD May 11, 2026 https://www.drugdiscoverynews.com/you-cannot-understand-biology-by-killing-it-17159?utm_campaign=DDN_Newsletter_Dose&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_92ADwkr17b9kR6cIm8jRhtvdR7Ezbyp0z15t8O-F_bP3qW3mr8-uKjmOAf-3hTg9US063U4ud68mgRxDESj1i5gaKCA&_hsmi=438910159&utm_content=438910159&utm_source=hs_email Modern drug discovery is built on a paradox. To learn how living systems respond to intervention, we routinely destroy them. Cells are lysed, fixed, stained, sequenced, averaged, and reconstructed after the fact. This gives us a snapshot of what the cells were like before and after, but tells us very little about what happened in between.