New cancer drug delivery system is effective and reversible

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. For cancer drug developers, finding an agent that kills tumor cells is only part of the equation. The drug must also spare healthy cells, and ideally its effects will be reversible, to cut short any potentially dangerous side effects. University of Illinois researchers report...

UCSF researchers identify new drug target for Kaposi's sarcoma

UCSF researchers have identified a new potential drug target for the herpes virus that causes Kaposi's sarcoma, re-opening the possibility of using the class of drugs called protease inhibitors against the full herpes family of viruses, which for 20 years has been deemed too difficult to attain. ...

Common allergy drug reduces obesity and diabetes in mice

BOSTON, Mass. (July 26, 2009) Crack open the latest medical textbook to the chapter on type 2, or adult-onset, diabetes, and you'll be hard pressed to find the term "immunology" anywhere. This is because metabolic conditions and immunologic conditions are, with a few exceptions, distant cousins. ...

New drug may reduce heart attack damage

A novel drug that targets a master disease-causing gene can dramatically reduce heart muscle damage after a heart attack and may lead to significantly improved patient outcomes, researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have shown. The drug, known as Dz13, specifically targets and...

UA pharmacy research shows prescribers miss potentially dangerous drug pairs

Tucson, Ariz.Research led by The University of Arizona College of Pharmacy has found that medication prescribers correctly identified fewer than half of drug pairs with potentially dangerous drug-drug interactions. These findings raise concern because of the high number of drugs Americans take...

Alzheimer's disease drug treats traumatic brain injury, report GUMC researchers

Vienna, Austria The destructive cellular pathways activated in Alzheimer's disease are also triggered following traumatic brain injury, say researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC). They say this finding suggests that novel therapy might successfully target both conditions. ...

Possible drug target found for one of the most aggressive breast cancers

Grand Rapids, Mich. (July 8, 2009) Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) investigators have identified a gene that could be an important therapeutic target in the treatment of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer. Currently, patients with these cancers have few treatment options. "Breast...

Funxional successfully completes initial clinical trial of FX125L, an anti-inflammatory drug with a novel mechanism of action

CAMBRIDGE (UK). 8th July 2009 / b3c newswire / - Funxional Therapeutics Ltd (Funxional) has announced today the successful completion of the first Phase I study with FX125L , an orally available small molecule which belongs to a new therapeutic class named Broad Spectrum Chemokine Inhibitors ( BS...

GUMC discovery highlights new direction for drug discovery

Washington, DC In a discovery that rebuffs conventional scientific thinking, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) have discovered a novel way to block the activity of the fusion protein responsible for Ewing's sarcoma, a rare cancer found in children and young adults. In ...

New nanoparticles could revolutionize therapeutic drug discovery

A revolutionary new protein stabilisation technique has been developed by scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) which could lead to 30 per cent more proteins being available as potential targets for drug development - opening up exciting possibilit...

Common chemotherapy drug triggers fatal allergic reactions

CHICAGO -- A chemotherapy drug that is supposed to help save cancer patients' lives, instead resulted in life-threatening and sometimes fatal allergic reactions. A new study from the Research on Adverse Drug Events and Reports (RADAR) pharmacovigilance program at Northwestern University Feinbe...

Simple drug treatment may prevent nicotine-induced SIDS: Study

A new study has identified a specific class of pharmaceutical drugs that could be effective in treating babies vulnerable to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), because their mothers smoked during pregnancy. According to researchers at McMaster University, exposure of the fetus to nicotine res...

Newly discovered reactions from an old drug may lead to new antibiotics

A mineral found at health food stores could be the key to developing a new line of antibiotics for bacteria that commonly cause diarrhea, tooth decay and, in some severe cases, death. The trace mineral selenium is found in a number of proteins in both bacterial cells and human cells called sele...

International Serious Adverse Events Consortium announces initial study results in its global research collaboration to identify genetic markers related to drug induced liver injury

Chicago (June 1, 2009) The International Serious Adverse Events Consortium (SAEC) announced today initial results from its research designed to discover genetic markers that may predict individuals at risk for serious drug induced liver injury (DILI). The SAEC is a nonprofit research corporation...

Rapid approach to identify influenza A virus mutations and drug resistance developed

Genome Institute of Singapore scientists, led by Christopher Wong, Ph.D., have developed a novel approach to uncover the complete sequence of any influenza A virus, including H1NI, with just a quick nasal swab or nasal pharyngeal wash from patients. The new method, which enables scientists to ...

Clinical trials for shingles drug take an important step forward

A possible new anti-viral drug designated FV-100, which could alleviate the suffering of millions of people with herpes zoster or shingles, has entered the second stage of clinical testing in patients. Developed and patented by scientists based at Cardiff University, a Phase II clinical trial ...

Prefilled WFI Syringe Provides a High-Quality Solution for Drug Reconstitution

Ravensburg, Germany, May 8, 2009 / b3c newswire / - West (NYSE: WST), the world’s premier manufacturer of components and systems for injectable drug delivery, and Vetter, a worldwide leading independent specialist in the contract manufacturing of prefilled application systems, have introduced...

Nanotechnology holds promise for STD drug delivery

New Haven, Conn. Yale researchers describe a breakthrough in safe and effective administration of potential antiviral drugs small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules that silence genes the first step in development of a new kind of treatment for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The work is r...

Brain protein central to both Parkinson's, drug addiction identified

Scientists have identified a protein that appears not only to be central to the process that causes Parkinson's disease but could also play a role in muting the high from methamphetamine and other addictive drugs. The action of the protein, known as organic cation transporter 3 or oct3, fills a...

For cancer cells, genetics alone is poor indicator for drug response

BOSTON, Mass. (April 12, 2009) In certain respects, cells are less like machines and more like people. True, they have lots of components, but they also have lots of personality. For example, when specific groups of people are studied in aggregate (conservatives, liberals, atheists, evangelicals)...

New drug shows promise in treating drug-resistant prostate cancer

A new therapy for metastatic prostate cancer has shown considerable promise in early clinical trials involving patients whose disease has become resistant to current drugs. Chemists and biologists at UCLA and colleagues at several other institutions, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer...

Penn researchers demonstrate a new model for drug discovery with a fluorescent anesthetic

PHILADELPHIA - A collaboration of University of Pennsylvania and University of Wisconsin chemists and anesthesiologists have identified a fluorescent anesthetic compound that will assist researchers in obtaining more precise information about how anesthetics work in the body and will provide a mea...

Potential new HIV drug may help patients not responding to treatment

A potential treatment for HIV may one day help people who are not responding to Anti-Retroviral Therapy, suggests new research published tomorrow in The Journal of Immunology . Scientists looking at monkeys with the simian form of HIV were able to reduce the virus levels in the blood to undetecta...

Targeted drug therapy prevents exercise-induced arrhythmias

A 12-year-old Dutch boy bedridden for three years because of an inherited cardiac arrhythmia syndrome can now join his friends on the soccer field thanks to a discovery made by Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers. The investigators, led by Bjrn Knollmann, M.D., Ph.D., report this ...

New drug agent knocks out multiple enzymes in cancer pathway

A team of 24 researchers from the U.S., Europe, Taiwan and Japan and led by University of Illinois scientists has engineered a new anti-cancer agent that is about 200 times more active in killing tumor cells than similar drugs used in recent clinical trials. The study appears this week in the ...

To fight drug addiction, UB researchers target the brain with nanoparticles

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A precise, new nanotechnology treatment for drug addiction may be on the horizon as the result of research conducted at the University at Buffalo. Scientists in UB's Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics and UB's Department of Medicine have developed a stable nanoparti...

Synthetic biology can help extend anti-malaria drug effectiveness

In addition to providing a simple and much less expensive means of making artemisinin, the most powerful anti-malaria drug in use today, synthetic biology can also help to extend the effectiveness of this drug. Fermenting artemisinin via engineered microbes, such as yeast, can be done at far lower...

1 drug may help people both lay down the drink and put out the cigarette

A popular smoking cessation drug dramatically reduced the amount a heavy drinker will consume, a new Yale School of Medicine study has found. Heavy-drinking smokers in a laboratory setting were much less likely to drink after taking the drug varenicline compared to those taking a placebo, accordin...

Gene mutation increases drug toxicity, rejection risk in pediatric kidney transplants

CINCINNATI Screening for mutations in a gene that helps the body metabolize a kidney transplant anti-rejection drug may predict which children are at higher risk for side effects, including compromised white blood cell count or organ rejection, according to new research. Published online Feb. ...

Singapore research organisations team up to advance drug discovery using brain tumor stem cells

Lilly Singapore Centre for Drug Discovery (LSCDD), Singapore's National Neuroscience Institute (NNI), and the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (SICS), have teamed up to advance drug discovery using adult brain tumour stem cells. NNI is one of the institutions of SingHealth, the larges...

Major step for drug discovery and diagnostics

Researchers from Nano-Science Center, University of Copenhagen and National Centre for Scientific Research, France have developed a general method to study membrane proteins. This method can be used to screen several thousand proteins, and it will reduce the way from development to useful drugs su...

Measuring molecules to improve drug design

CSIRO has patented an improved microscopy method for measuring the shapes and sizes of proteins which could help scientists create new pharmaceuticals that are a better match for the proteins they target. The method, called Differential Aberration Correction (DAC) microscopy, measures distances ...

Scientists can predict nano drug outcome

Scientists including one from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston successfully predicted the outcome of a nano drug on breast tumors in a pre-clinical study. Their research could help determine which patients will respond best to cancer-fighting nano drugs. Researchers from...

Acorda Therapeutics submits new drug application for Fampridine-SR in multiple sclerosis

HAWTHORNE, N.Y., February 2, 2009 Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOR) today announced the submission of a New Drug Application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on January 30, 2009 for Fampridine-SR, a novel therapy being developed to improve walking ability in people with multi...

TGen and ASU researchers find drug that could reduce risk of Alzheimer's

PHOENIX, Ariz. Feb. 2, 2009 A drug used to improve blood flow to the brain also could help improve learning and memory and reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study released today by investigators at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and Arizona State Un...

UC Davis research shows that newly discovered drug reduces heart enlargement

DAVIS--Researchers at the University of California, Davis have discovered that a prototype drug reduces heart enlargement, one of the most common causes of heart failure. Heart failure, which occurs when the heart can't pump enough blood throughout the body, affects 5 million people in the Un...

New asthma research opposes current drug treatment, says UH prof

HOUSTON Just when the Food and Drug Administration is reconsidering the use of stimulants to treat asthma, a new research study offers further evidence to support a University of Houston professor's theory that an opposite approach to asthma treatment may be in order. Richard A. Bond, profes...

New drug holds out promise of normal diet for sufferers of devastating PKU genetic disease

Imagine being forced to say no to a child crying for more food at supper. Sadly, Margie Fischer doesn't have to imagine it; that was normal life at her family's dinner table for years. Her daughter Maggie, now 20, suffers from phenylketonuria (PKU), a genetic disease that means her body can't tole...

Promising new drug being evaluated as possible treatment option for fragile X syndrome

(Chicago) A pilot trial of an oral drug therapy called fenobam has shown promising initial results and could be a potential new treatment option for adult patients with Fragile X syndrome (FXS). Findings of the open label, single-dose study by researchers at Rush University Medical Center and th...

TGen, Scottsdale Healthcare, Mayo Clinic study new drug to stimulate immune system of cancer victims

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. Dec. 19, 2008 The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), Scottsdale Healthcare and Mayo Clinic are testing a new drug that could help cancer patients by stimulating the immune system. Clinical trials of the drug VTX-2337 are being conducted at TGen Clinical Resear...