drug

Controversial drug shown to act on brain protein to cut alcohol use

Medicationagainst nicotine addiction is nowadays readily available. However, asimilar and equally dangerous addiction, alcoholism, can't yet becontrolled by drugs. Or can it be? Researchers from the University ofCalifornia in San Diego identified a natural compound able to blockalcohol addiction in rodents. We can only hope that anti-alcoholismpatchs or gum...

UCLA Study Shows One-Third of Drug Ads in Medical Journals Do Not Contain References Supporting Medical Claims

UCLA investigators reviewed pharmaceutical ads in American medical journals and found that nearly one-third contained no references for medical claims; while the majority of references to published material was available, only a minority of company data-on-file documents were provided upon request; and the majority of original research cited in the ads was funded by or had authors affiliated with...

Drug That 'Tags' Decision-making Areas Of The Brain May Aid

Along with aiding efforts to study addictedsmokers, a new drug that attaches only to areas of the brain that havebeen implicated in may help studies of people battling other disorders such as Alzheimer’sdisease and schizophrenia.Developed by UC Irvine Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers...

Computers to be used to find blueprint for new influenza drug

Researchers at the University of Bath have won a £261,000 grant to use the latest software to produce a blueprint of a designer drug that could stop influenza and some other diseases from replicating in humans. Professor Ian...

HIV Patients May Be at Risk of Heart Problems When Taking Protease Inhibitor Drugs

A widely-used class of drugs that keep the HIV-virus infection from progressing to AIDS may cause serious and potentially lethal heart rhythm disturbances in some patients. The finding of a Mayo Clinic-led investigation appears in the current edition of The Lancet. In collaboration with colleagues from the HIV Program of Hennepin County Medical Center, Minneapolis; the University of Minn...

Leukemia Drug Breakthrough Study In New England Journal Of Medicine

Alan List, M.D., leader of the Hematologic Malignancies Program at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, recently conducted a phase I/II trial of the experimental drug Revlimid showing promise as an innovative way to treat patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a form of pre-leukemia. Given in pill form, Revlimid simultaneously blocks the growth of new blood vessels th...

Molecular machine may lead to new drugs to combat human diseases

The crystallized form of a molecular machine that can cut and paste genetic material is revealing possible new paths for treating diseases such as some forms of cancer and opportunistic infections that plague HIV patients. Purdue University researchers froze one of these molecular machines, which are chemical complexes known as a Group I intron, at mid-point in its work cycle. When frozen...

Study identifies predictors of HIV drug resistance in patients beginning triple therapy

A scientist at the Marine BiologicalLaboratory (MBL) has published the results of an EPA-funded clam embryostudy that supports her hypothesis that, when combined, the pollutantsbromoform, chloroform, and tetrachloroethylene--a chemical cocktailknown as BCE--can act synergistically to alter a key regulator in nervecell development. While scientists have previously studied the effectsof these...

Gene variations explain drug dose required to control seizures

Determining which variants of particular genes patients with epilepsy carry might enable doctors to better predict the dose of drugs necessary to control their seizures, suggest basic findings by researchers at the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (IGSP) and the University College London. Patients often undergo a lengthy process of trial and error to find the dose of ant...

Purdue proves concept of using nano-materials for drug discovery

Researchers at Purdue University have built and demonstrated a prototype for a new class of miniature devices to study synthetic cell membranes in an effort to speed the discovery of new drugs for a variety of diseases, including cancer. The researchers created a chip about one centimeter square that holds thousands of tiny vessels sitting on top of a material that contains numerous pores...

Researchers identify target for cancer drugs

For nearly a decade, scientists have been trying to fully understand a particular communication pathway inside of cells that contributes to many malignant brain and prostate cancers. While scientists have identified elements of this pathway, other key components have remained a mystery. Researchers at Whitehead Institute now have discovered a missing puzzle piece, a finding that may present drug...

Fundamental Finding Yields Insight into Stem Cells, Cancer; Opens Door to Drug Discovery

Few things about growing older are asinevitable and obvious as “going gray,?yet scientists have been unableto explain the precise cause of this usually unwelcome transformation.In a report posted today on the Web site of the journal Science,researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s HospitalBoston say they have found the cellular cause of graying hair whileinvestigating th...

NYC's First Rapid HIV Drug-resistant AIDS Case Prompts Call to Step Up HIV Prevention

New York City's Public Health Department today issued a public health advisory after reporting the first documented case of an alarming, new, rapidly-progressing and highly drug resistant strain of HIV in a New York man who progressed from his initial HIV infection, thought to have occurred in mid-October 2004, to a largely untreatable strain of AIDS in just three months. According to City...

MetaChip provides quick, efficient toxicity screening of potential drugs

A large, multisite trial designed to examine the safety and preliminary effectiveness of two candidate topical microbicides to prevent HIV infection has opened to volunteer enrollment. The trial, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, represents a partnership among various research institutions in Africa and the U...

Simple drug has the potential to save many lives threatened by malaria

A simple drug, given to children with severe malaria before they reach hospital, has the potential to save many lives, say researchers in this week's BMJ. C...

FDA Approves New Drug to Treat Type I and Type II Diabetes

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved Symlin, an injectable medicine to control blood sugar for adults with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Symlin is to be used in addition to insulin therapy in patients who cannot achieve adequate control of their blood sugars on intensive insulin therapy alone. Symlin will be the only therapy for the treatment of type 1 diabetes other than in...

Use of PET can reduce, may eliminate more strenuous drug development trials with animals

A number of articles explore the use of positron emission tomography (PET) and small animal imaging--nonsurgical techniques that open the door to understanding and treating human diseases--in the April issue of the Society of Nuclear Medicine's Journal of Nuclear Medicine. A major benefit of small animal imaging "is the ability to carry out many studies at various time points with the same...

Drug-resistant bacteria on poultry products differ by brand

The presence of drug-resistant, pathogenic bacteria on uncooked poultry products varies by commercial brand and is likely related to antibiotic use in production, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their study is the first to directly compare bacterial contamination of poultry products sold in U.S. supermarkets from food producers who use antibiotics...

PET/MRI scans may help unravel mechanisms of prenatal drug damage

Scientists have demonstrated a new way to assess the potentially damaging effects of prenatal drug exposure--a technique that could also be used to monitor a fetus's response to therapeutic drugs--using sophisticated, noninvasive medical imaging tools. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, whose findings are reported in the February issue of the Society of...

New Drugs For Bad Bugs: UF Approach Could Bolster Antibiotic Arsenal

Call it a chemical crystal ball. A new approach to predict whether a drug in development is likely to work and which dose is best could get antibiotics to market faster and more cheaply, say University of Florida researchers. In recent years, scientists worldwide have sounded the alarm: There simply aren’t enough drugs to combat bad bugs. Bacteria are increasingly adept at outwitting the t...

New drug shows promise as powerful anticancer agent

Research published in the March issue of the journal Cancer Cell describes a small molecule inhibitor of polo-like kinase1 (Plk1) that could lead to a new avenue for targeted cancer therapy. The compound, ON01910, is a potent inhibitor of human tumors in a mouse model system and has low toxicity. The results of this study have led to clinical evaluation of this compound in phase I clinical trials...

Newly discovered pathway might help in design of cancer drugs

Johns Hopkins chemists have discovered a new way to sabotage DNA's ability to reproduce, a finding that could eventually lead to the development of new anti-cancer drugs and therapies. The method could enable future doctors to target treatment more precisely, rather than directing chemotherapeutic medication or radiation to tumors through a scattershot approach, said Marc Greenberg, a chem...

FDA Announces Series of Changes to the Class of Marketed Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs)

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced a series of important changes pertaining to the marketing of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory class of drugs, including COX-2 selective and prescription and non-prescription (over-the-counter (OTC)) non-selective NSAID medications. A list of these products is available on the Internet at http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/cox2/default.h...

Discovery may lead to better Candidiasis drug

Oral biologists at the University at Buffalo have shown for the first time how histatin, the naturally occurring antifungal agent in saliva, kills the oral pathogen Candida albicans, the fungus responsible for most HIV-related oral infections. Researchers led by Mira Edgerton, D.D.S., Ph.D., discovered that histatin binds to a specific membrane protein called TRK1p, which regulates potass...

Potential Drug Target For Treating Cocaine Abuse Found

A substance similar to a drug used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease blocks the stimulating effects of cocaine and could potentially be used to develop drug therapy for cocaine abuse, new research shows. In an article published in the February 23, 2005, issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, Jonathan Katz and his colleagues at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) report the re...

UNC launches study of liver injury caused by drugs

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of five clinical centers nationwide to receive funds from the National Institutes of Health to study why good medications are sometimes bad for the liver. During the next seven years, the Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network, or DILIN, will study patients who have suffered severe liver injury caused by prescription and over-the-counter m...

Nanoparticle Breast Cancer Drug Approved by FDA

Research at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine played a significant role in Food and Drug Administration approval of Abraxane (paclitaxel protein-bound particles for injectable suspension), indicated for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. "The approval means that women with metastatic breast cancer no longer need to endure the toxicities associated with solvents and will...

Multiple-drug resistant gene expression pattern predicts treatment outcome for pediatric leukemia

A new study is providing scientists with a better understanding of why some pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients fail to respond to treatment even when existing clinical predictive criteria point towards a positive treatment outcome. The research, published in the April issue of Cancer Cell, is likely to facilitate development of new strategies to combat drug resistance and treat...

NSAID drug protects against intestinal tumors in mice, despite poor diet and gene losses

In mouse models of intestinal cancer, use of an anti-inflammatory drug eliminated all of the cancer-causing risks produced by a high-fat Western-style diet - even when several genetic brakes to cancer formation were missing in the animals, say researchers from the Albert Einstein Cancer Center. The investigators, who presented their findings at the 96th Annual Meeting of the American Assoc...

South African Tribunal Asks For Damages Estimates in GSK AIDS Drug Case

A landmark South African legal complaint against British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) over its AIDS drug pricing and policies in that country will proceed following an order late last week by South Africa's Competition Tribunal that will allow the complaint to go forward. GSK has sought outright dismissal of the case; however, the Competition Tribunal issued an order last week giving the comp...

OneWorld Health drug receives 'Orphan' designation from U.S. and European regulatory agencies

The Institute for OneWorld Health, the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company in the U.S., announced today it has received Orphan Drug Designation from the two leading regulatory agencies in the world, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA), for paromomycin to treat visceral leishmaniasis (VL). VL, also known as kala a...

FDA Warns About Antipsychotic Drugs and Elderly

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today issued a public health advisory to alert health care providers, patients, and patient caregivers to new safety information concerning an unapproved (i.e., "off-label") use of certain drugs called "atypical antipsychotic drugs." These drugs are approved for the treatment of schizophrenia and mania, but clinical studies of these drugs to treat behavioral...

Findings have implications for tracking disease, drugs at the molecular level

Researchers in the laboratory of Boston College Chemistry Professor John T. Fourkas have demonstrated that gold particles comparable in size to a molecule can be induced to emit light so strongly that it is readily possible to observe a single nanoparticle. Fourkas, in collaboration with postdoctoral researcher Richard Farrer and BC undergraduates Francis Butterfield and Vincent Chen, coaxed the...

New polysaccharide may help combat multidrug resistance in cancer

In a recent study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, scientists report that a molecule previously thought to play a purely structural and inert role in cells is actually involved in multidrug resistance in cancer. Using antagonists for this molecule, the researchers were able to sensitize drug resistant breast cancer cells to chemotherapeutic drug treatment. The research ap...

Researchers develop assay that could be applied to drug screening

Using state of the art imaging technology a team from Yale School of Medicine has glimpsed one of the cell's most important 'nano-machines' in action. The work, performed in collaboration with English and French scientists, provides new insight into the machinery cells use to internalize cell surface receptors. All cells traffic protein cargos across their outer membrane, and one of the mo...

Future diabetes drugs may target new protein interaction

In the March 3 issue of Nature, Johns Hopkins researchers report that two proteins best known for very different activities actually come together to turn the liver into a sugar-producing factory when food is scarce. Because the liver's production of sugar is a damaging problem in people with diabetes, the proteins' interaction might be a target for future drugs to fight the disease, the research...

'Smart drug' targets deadly brain cancer

A study led by Mayo Clinic researchers and conducted by the North Central Cancer Treatment Group (NCCTG) reports that a new "smart" drug treatment for an incurable form of recurrent brain cancer slowed tumor growth in more than one-third of the 65 adult patients who tried it. The same research team also developed a screening technique to help predict which patients will respond best to this treat...

Prescription Drug Patches Gaining Ground, Tackling New Therapies

Created as an alternate route of drug administration to improve patient compliance and reduce drug side effects, prescription skin patches are rapidly becoming an important healthcare product category. While quietly gaining market share for the treatment of chronic conditions such as angina, hypertension and HRT, the technology is set to make further inroads as transdermal patches for a host of n...

Eliminate Data Analysis Bottlenecks in Drug Discovery

In the March 3 issue of Nature, Johns Hopkins researchers report that two proteins best known for very different activities actually come together to turn the liver into a sugar-producing factory when food is scarce. Because the liver's production of sugar is a damaging problem in people with diabetes, the proteins' interaction might be a target for future drugs to fight the disease, the research...

TrueBlue Archive Will Store Raw Life Sciences Data for Proteomics and Drug Testing

A new book, Biological Weapons Defense: Infectious Disease and Counterbioterrorism, deals with the intentional causality of disease. Published by Humana Press, this text is also available in e-Book. Many of the contributors come from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the nation's premier biodefense laboratory. In this 624-page, hardcover text edite...