Treatment for more advanced and difficult-to-treat head and neck cancers can be improved with the addition of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), the same ingredient used in children's glue. Researchers found that combining PVA with a boron-containing compound, D-BPA, improved the effects of a type of radiation therapy for cancer, compared to currently clinically used drugs. The PVA made the drug more selective of tumor cells and prolonged drug retention, helping to spare healthy cells from unnecessary radiation damage.
A common heart drug may slow the progression of Huntington's disease (HD), according to a new study by University of Iowa Health Care researchers.
Using clinical information from a large, observational database of over 21,000 people with HD, the UI team found that the use of beta-blocker drugs - commonly used to treat heart and blood pressure issues - was associated with both a significantly later onset of HD symptoms for people in the pre-symptomatic stages, and a slower rate of symptom worsening for those with symptoms.
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to help speed up the process of matching potential volunteers to relevant clinical research trials listed on ClinicalTrials.gov. A study published in Nature Communications found that the AI algorithm, called TrialGPT, could successfully identify relevant clinical trials for which a person is eligible and provide a summary that clearly explains how that person meets the criteria for study enrollment.
Large language models, a type of AI that analyses text, can predict the results of proposed neuroscience studies more accurately than human experts, finds a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers.
The findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, demonstrate that large language models (LLMs) trained on vast datasets of text can distil patterns from scientific literature, enabling them to forecast scientific outcomes with superhuman accuracy.
An injection given during some asthma and COPD attacks is more effective than the current treatment of steroid tablets, reducing the need for further treatment by 30%.
The findings, published today in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, could be "game-changing" for millions of people with asthma and COPD around the world, scientists say.
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) announced that after a comprehensive internal and external selection process, the company is appointing Chris Boshoff, M.D., PhD, as Chief Scientific Officer and President, Research & Development effective January 1, 2025. Dr. Boshoff, who most recently served as Chief Oncology Officer and Executive Vice President, will succeed Dr. Mikael Dolsten whose departure from Pfizer was announced earlier this year. In his new role, Dr. Boshoff will remain a member of Pfizer's Executive Leadership Team reporting to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Albert Bourla, and he will oversee all functions of Research & Development across all therapeutic areas.
With the rapid development of antibiotics in the 1930s, phage therapy - using viruses known as bacteriophages or phages to tackle bacterial infections - fell into oblivion. But as the current rise in antibiotic resistance is making it increasingly difficult to treat bacterial infections, phage therapy is once again sparking interest among physicians and scientists - although it remains complex in practice because of the great diversity and specificity of phages. Against this backdrop, scientists from the Institut Pasteur, Inserm, the Paris Public Hospital Network (AP-HP) and Université Paris Cité have developed a simple and effective new tool that recommends the best possible phage cocktail for a given patient.
The preclinical study, published in Cardiovascular Diabetology, found LXA4, which is known for its "calming agent" action in turning off the body’s inflammatory response and preventing chronic inflammation, could also serve as a potential new treatment for diabetes-induced heart disease.
Heart conditions like atherosclerosis, heart attacks and heart failure are the leading killers of people with diabetes, driving a growing global health crisis.
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have found a molecule that can both help the intestines to heal after damage and suppress tumour growth in colorectal cancer. The discovery could lead to new treatments for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and cancer. The results are published in the journal Nature.
Many patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) such as Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis do not respond to available treatments, highlighting the need to identify novel therapeutic strategies.
Malaria, particularly in its severe forms, remains a global health and economic burden. It causes the deaths of more than 600,000 people every year - most of them African children under five. In a new study, published in the journal Nature, researchers from EMBL Barcelona, the University of Texas, the University of Copenhagen, and The Scripps Research Institute have discovered human antibodies that can recognise and target some of the proteins that cause severe malaria. This breakthrough could pave the way for future vaccines or anti-malaria treatments.
AstraZeneca has announced $3.5 billion of capital investment in the United States focused on expanding the Company's research and manufacturing footprint by the end of 2026. This includes $2 billion of new investment creating more than a thousand new, high-skilled jobs contributing to the growth of the US economy.
Researchers at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion have developed a new chemical process to produce raw materials for the manufacture of polymers, pharmaceuticals, and agricultural compounds. In a paper about the process in Nature Chemistry, the researchers detail how they developed the new process and conducted a computational analysis to explain its mechanisms and key stages. The study was led by doctoral students Alexander Koronatov and Deepak Ranolia, and postdoctoral researcher Pavel Sakharov, under the guidance of Prof. Mark Gandelman.
A multitude of genes have been linked to the development of Alzheimer's disease. Specifically how those genes might influence the progression of neurodegeneration remains something of a black box though, in part because of the challenges of examining in molecular detail the brain of a living patient.
Using cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) collected from living patients, a team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has for the first time linked disease-related proteins and genes to identify specific cellular pathways responsible for Alzheimer's genesis and progression.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Kebilidi (eladocagene exuparvovec-tneq), an adeno-associated virus vector-based gene therapy indicated for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients with aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) deficiency. Kebilidi is the first FDA-approved gene therapy for treatment of AADC deficiency.
Scientists at the University of Copenhagen have discovered a new weight loss drug target that reduces appetite, increases energy expenditure, and improves insulin sensitivity without causing nausea or loss of muscle mass. The discovery was reported in the journal Nature and could lead to a new therapy for millions of people with both obesity and type 2 diabetes who do not respond well to current treatments.
Millions of people around the world benefit from weight loss drugs based on the incretin hormone GLP-1.
Immune cells are capable of detecting infections just like a sniffer dog, using special sensors known as Toll-like receptors, or TLRs for short. But what signals activate TLRs, and what is the relationship between the scale and nature of this activation and the substance being detected? In a recent study, researchers from the University of Bonn and the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) used an innovative method to answer these questions. The approach that they took might help to speed up the search for drugs to combat infectious diseases, cancer, diabetes or dementia.
Researchers at Uppsala University and KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed a new form of precision medicine, an antibody, with the potential to treat several types of cancer. Researchers have managed to combine three different functions in the antibody, which together strongly amplify the effect of T cells on the cancer tumour. The study has been published in Nature Communications.
Researchers have developed a unique type of antibody that both targets and delivers a drug package via the antibody itself, while simultaneously activating the immune system ("3-in-1 design") for personalised immunotherapy treatments.
Even treated with the most advanced therapies, patients with glioblastoma - an aggressive brain cancer - typically survive less than two years after diagnosis. Efforts to treat this cancer with the latest immunotherapies have been unsuccessful, likely because glioblastoma cells have few, if any, natural targets for the immune system to attack.
In a cell-based study, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have forced glioblastoma cells to display immune system targets, potentially making them visible to immune cells and newly vulnerable to immunotherapies.
Scientists have uncovered how certain E. coli bacteria in the gut promote colon cancer by binding to intestinal cells and releasing a DNA-damaging toxin. The study, published in Nature, sheds light on a new approach to potentially reduce cancer risk. The study was performed by the teams of Prof. Lars Vereecke (VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research) and Prof. Han Remaut (VIB-VUB Center for Structural Biology).
Pfizer Moves Forward With Obesity Pill, Plans Dose Optimization Studies This Year 7/11/2024