Each second of our lives, cells in our body grow and divide to ensure we stay healthy. However, this process has a dark side: if cell growth and divisions become excessive, that may cause cancer. To keep a safe balance, our cells are equipped with several molecular mechanisms to limit their own growth and division.

EMBL Hamburg's Wilmanns Group, in collaboration with research groups from the Center for Experimental Medicine Institute of Tumor Biology and the Martini Clinic at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), as well as the Leibniz Institute on Aging - Fritz Lipmann Institute, has revealed a new mechanism

A class of drugs already on the market to lower blood pressure appears to reduce adults' risk of developing epilepsy, Stanford Medicine researchers and their colleagues have discovered. The finding comes out of an analysis of the medical records of more than 2 million Americans taking blood pressure medications.

The study, published June 17 in JAMA Neurology, suggests that the drugs, called angiotensin receptor blockers, could prevent epilepsy in people at highest risk of the disease, including older adults who have had strokes.

Tuberculosis is still one of the deadliest infectious diseases, causing over one million deaths each year worldwide. On the other hand, about one-fourth of the world's population carries Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) without showing any symptoms, and most of these carriers do not develop the disease.

The current anti-tuberculosis vaccine, BCG, is administered worldwide. However, considering that more than 10 million new tuberculosis cases are reported each year, its effectiveness is deemed insufficient.

Bayer announced that the Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) of the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) in China has granted Breakthrough Therapy designation for BAY 2927088, a potential new targeted therapy for adult patients with unresectable or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), whose tumors have activating HER2 (ERBB2) mutations, and who have received a prior systemic therapy. The CDE's designation for BAY 2927088 follows the Breakthrough Therapy designation granted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in February 2024 for the same patient population.

Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, have developed a new nanomedicine therapy that delivers anticancer drugs to lung cancer cells and enhances the immune system's ability to fight cancer. The team showed promising results for the new therapy in cancer cells in the lab and in mouse lung tumor models, with potential applications for improving care and outcomes for patients with tumors that have failed to respond to traditional immunotherapy. Their findings are published in Science Advances.

Immune system cells called macrophages play an unexpected role in the complicated connection between obesity and cancer, a Vanderbilt University Medical Center-led research team has discovered.

Obesity increases the frequency of macrophages in tumors and induces their expression of the immune checkpoint protein PD-1 - a target of cancer immunotherapies. The findings, published June 12 in the journal Nature, provide a mechanistic explanation for how obesity can contribute to both increased cancer risk and enhanced responses to immunotherapy.

Proteins are workhorses that carry out most of the biological functions in our cells. While the genes we inherit from our parents, our so-called genome, are fixed and usually remain unchanged throughout our lives, proteins in our bodies are constantly changing, as we age, under different health conditions and upon stimulation, such as with medical treatment.

This makes monitoring proteins and their molecular changes - the study of proteomics - beneficial for drug discovery, disease diagnosis and health management.

Drugs with the potential to change the course of Alzheimer’s disease are expected to be approved by mid-year in the UK. Healthcare services may need to change to ensure that all patients have equitable access to these new modifying anti-amyloid therapies, according to research led by Queen Mary University of London and University College London (UCL).

Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia. Of the 944,000 people living with dementia in the UK, 60-80% have Alzheimer's.

A bacterial enzyme called histidine kinase is a promising target for new classes of antibiotics. However, it has been difficult to develop drugs that target this enzyme, because it is a "hydrophobic" protein that loses its structure once removed from its normal location in the cell membrane.

Now, an MIT-led team has found a way to make the enzyme water-soluble, which could make it possible to rapidly screen potential drugs that might interfere with its functions.

Researchers from Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan have successfully treated the skin diseases epidermolytic ichthyosis (EI) and ichthyosis with confetti (IWC) by transplanting genetically healthy skin to inflamed areas. Transplanting healthy skin to inflamed areas has been used as a treatment option for severe burn injuries. They applied this technique from a common disease to rare diseases.

Diabetes rates continue to rise, with 11.7 million Canadians living with diabetes or pre-diabetes. At UBC, scientists have created a pain-free drug delivery method to help people with diabetes manage the disease and maintain their health more easily.

Researchers at the Li Lab have developed oral insulin drops that when placed under the tongue are quickly and efficiently absorbed by the body, potentially replacing the need for insulin injections.

GSK plc (LSE/NYSE: GSK) today announced that it has acquired Elsie Biotechnologies, a San Diego-based private biotechnology company dedicated to unlocking the full potential of oligonucleotide therapeutics, for up to $50 million (approximately £39 million).

Oligonucleotides have a unique ability to modulate gene expression, making them an attractive modality to address a significant proportion of therapeutic targets that are not amenable to traditional small molecules or biologics.

Blocking a protein known as CDK7 could prevent heart damage associated with a commonly used cancer chemotherapy medication, according to a study led by scientists at Washington State University. Importantly, the researchers also found that inhibiting CDK7 could help enhance the medication's cancer-killing capability.

Based on an animal model, the study findings could provide a foundation for future treatment strategies to reduce chemotherapy-related heart toxicity and increase treatment effectiveness.

In an era marked by rapid technological advancement in biomedical engineering, a groundbreaking development is set to revolutionize our approach to drug testing and disease modeling. Researchers from Shanghai University and the University of California Los Angeles have made significant strides in the field of in vitro vascularized organ-on-a-chip systems, offering a promising alternative to traditional methods that rely heavily on animal testing and simplistic two-dimensional cell cultures.

A novel immunotherapy approach developed by Ludwig Cancer Research scientists employs a two-pronged attack against solid tumors to boost the immune system’s ability to target and eliminate cancer cells.​​​​​​

The research focuses on an immunotherapy called adoptive cell transfer (ACT), which involves extracting T cells from a patient, enhancing their ability to fight cancer, expanding them in culture and reinfusing them into the patient's body.

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) today announced longer-term follow-up results from the Phase 3 CROWN trial evaluating LORBRENA® (lorlatinib, a third-generation ALK inhibitor, available in Europe under the brand name LORVIQUA®) versus XALKORI® (crizotinib) in people with previously untreated, anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Bayer AG and BlueRock Therapeutics LP, a clinical stage cell therapy company and wholly owned independently operated subsidiary of Bayer AG, announced today that BlueRock's investigational cell therapy bemdaneprocel for the treatment of Parkinson's disease has been granted Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

A new study by researchers from Arizona State University and their colleagues highlights a dietary strategy for significant health improvement and weight management.

Participants following an intermittent fasting and protein-pacing regimen, which involves evenly spaced protein intake throughout the day, saw better gut health, weight loss and metabolic responses. These benefits were notably greater than those seen with simple calorie restriction.

Antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) is one of the most common causes of kidney transplant failure. To date, however, no treatment has proven effective in combating this complication in the long term. As part of an international and multidisciplinary clinical study led by Georg Böhmig and Katharina Mayer, Clinical Division of Nephrology and Dialysis, Department of Medicine III at MedUni Vienna and University Hospital Vienna, a new therapeutic principle in transplant medicine has been found to be both safe and highly effective.

Sanofi, Formation Bio and OpenAI are collaborating to build AI-powered software to accelerate drug development and bring new medicines to patients more efficiently. The three teams will bring together data, software and tuned models to develop custom, purpose-built solutions across the drug development lifecycle. This represents a first collaboration of its kind within the pharma and life sciences industries.