We may finally be at the threshold of the age of personalized medicine. In a recent study, scientists were able to predict that a man was at a higher risk for developing Type 2 diabetes and over a two-year period tracked his health as he developed the disease. And even better, because they caught it so early, they were able to stave off the diabetes with lifestyle changes. This man’s glucose levels have returned to normal.
An antiviral drug Truvada may soon become the next solution to HIV prevention, while scientists continue to dig for a vaccine. The FDA is likely to approve the medicine for ‘pre-exposure prophylaxis’ by June 15.
Truvada is a trade-name for a combination of two antiviral drugs produced by an American biopharmaceutical company in California. Since 2004, it has been widely prescribed to people already infected with HIV. However, an expert committee at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended last week that the medicine be offered daily to uninfected people to prevent them from being infected.
Loyola researchers are reporting surprising findings about a molecule that helps ramp up the immune system in some cases and suppress it in others. The finding eventually could lead to new drugs to regulate the immune system by, for example, revving it up to attack tumor cells or tamping it down to prevent the rejection of transplanted organs.
A commonly prescribed drug used to treat high blood pressure may have the unintended benefit of muting racist thoughts in those who take it.
A new Oxford University research study found that Propranolol, which works to combat high blood pressure, anxiety, migraines, and a number of heart ailments, affects the same part of the central nervous system that regulates subconscious attitudes on race.
When Tomasz Sablinski was working in pharmaceutical R&D, he was often frustrated by the demand for secrecy in the clinical trials process—a misdirected effort, he says, to keep competitors in the dark about what drug companies were up to. “The price you pay when you hide what you’re doing is you only get feedback from a precious few people,” he says. “There is very little new blood in the ideation process.”
For the past decade, scientists have been pursuing cancer treatments based on RNA interference — a phenomenon that offers a way to shut off malfunctioning genes with short snippets of RNA. However, one huge challenge remains: finding a way to efficiently deliver the RNA.
Sometimes salt is the good guy, in some forms anyway. Lithium chloride – a salt used as a mood stabiliser in bipolar disorder – appears to enhance the recovery of damaged neurons in mice. The drug may also help people with damaged nerves regain movement.
Neuroscientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have made a dramatic breakthrough in their efforts to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers’ findings, published in the journal Science, show that use of a drug in mice appears to quickly reverse the pathological, cognitive and memory deficits caused by the onset of Alzheimer’s. The results point to the significant potential that the medication, bexarotene, has to help the roughly 5.4 million Americans suffering from the progressive brain disease.
A new physical form of proteins developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin could drastically improve treatments for cancer and other diseases, as well as overcome some of the largest challenges in therapeutics: delivering drugs to patients safely, easily and more effectively.
The protein formulation strategy, developed by faculty and students in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Department of Chemical Engineering, is unprecedented and offers a new and universal approach to drug delivery – one that could revolutionize treatment of cancer, arthritis and infectious disease.
A new study has uncovered how targeted suppression of the immune system may prevent type 1 diabetes or induce sustained remission.
Nano Med Tech researchers are developing multi-chambered nanoparticles that are attracted to infected cells but harmless to healthy tissues. When integrated into antibiotics, they will make the drugs much more effective by ensuring that they reach only those cells in need of treatment. As the particles have been specifically engineered to penetrate through the bacterial cell membranes, researchers are confident that these new drugs should be far more effective in fighting diseases that were previously highly resistant to antibiotics.
Researchers have discovered a natural hormone that acts like exercise on muscle tissue—burning calories, improving insulin processing, and perhaps boosting strength. The scientists hope it could eventually be used as a treatment for obesity, diabetes, and, potentially, neuromuscular diseases like muscular dystrophy.
If you are depressed, or schizophrenic or have Alzheimer’s, scientists say you probably have a shrunken hippocampus. The good news: a drug that just entered human trials promises to re-grow that part of the brain.
It sounds like science fiction, but neuroscientists have identified a molecule in mice that, when suppressed, significantly boosts memory. It’s meant as a radical treatment for Alzheimer’s patients, but there’s no reason the rest of us couldn’t take it, too. Baylor University researchers discovered that a molecule called PKR serves two crucial function in the brains of mice. In everyday situations, it’s concerned with regulating how neurons interact in memory-related tasks. But when a virus invades, PRK activates a stress response that alerts the rest of the brain that something is very wrong. Alzheimer’s sufferers also experience PKR-releasing stress in the course of their disease.
When I.B.M.’s Watson computer beat two human “Jeopardy!” champions earlier this year, it was a triumphant demonstration of the company’s technology. It was great for Big Blue’s image, but it was not a moneymaker on its own.
Yet that process is under way. Watson was a bundle of advanced technologies, including speech recognition, machine learning, natural-language processing, data mining and ultrafast in-memory computer hardware. They have been under development at I.B.M. for years, and were pulled into Watson.
