A groundbreaking discovery led by the University of St Andrews has found a way to turn ordinary household plastic waste into the building block for anti-cancer drugs.

Household PET (polyethylene terephthalate) waste, such as plastic bottles and textiles, can be recycled in two main ways: mechanically or chemically.

Early access to new cancer drugs, granted accelerated approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has provided mixed benefits for patients while costing Medicare billions of dollars, reveals new research published in the journal BMJ Medicine.

Researchers found that between 2012 and 2020, 178,000 Medicare beneficiaries received early access to cancer drugs through the FDA’s accelerated approval pathway.

A new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reveals how viruses that infect bacteria, called bacteriophages or “phages,” use a tiny piece of genetic material to hijack bacterial cells and make more copies of themselves.

The research shows that a very small RNA molecule, called PreS, acts like a hidden “switch” inside the bacterial cell. By flipping this switch, the virus can change how the bacterial cell works and push the infection forward.

An experimental drug developed at Northwestern University has demonstrated further promise as an early intervention for Alzheimer’s disease.

In a new study, Northwestern scientists identified a previously unknown highly toxic sub-species of amyloid beta oligomers - toxic clusters of peptides - that appear to drive several of the brain’s earliest changes, including neuronal dysfunction, inflammation and activation of immune cells.

A study led by researchers at the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP) shows, in an experimental laboratory model, that delafloxacin inhibits the intracellular replication of Legionella more effectively than one of the current standard treatments. The findings provide new evidence of its potential therapeutic value and support the need for future clinical studies in patients with Legionnaires' disease.

Discovering effective drug combinations may now be easier thanks to a screening platform made public today by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists. Many diseases, including cancers, require combinations of drugs whose effects are more than the sum of their parts to create effective treatment regimens. However, the number of new drugs and potential combinations has exploded, making classical screening methods impractical.

A study from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), published in Nature Communications, reveals how enteroviruses - including pathogens that cause polio, encephalitis, myocarditis, and the common cold - initiate replication by hijacking host-cell machinery. Led by senior author Deepak Koirala, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and recent Ph.D. graduate Naba Krishna Das, the research fills a knowledge gap on this critical step and could pave the way for a new class of antiviral drugs that are effective against multiple viruses.

From small ions to large molecules, cellular gates control what can pass in and out of cells. But how one such gate, called pannexin-1 (PANX1), can handle vastly different cargo sizes has remained a long-standing mystery.

In a new study, Northwestern University scientists uncovered the molecular trick behind PANX1’s versatility.

A new multi-site study led by researchers at CU Anschutz shows that people with cystic fibrosis (CF) who start the triple-drug therapy elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor (ETI) can safely reduce many of their daily lung treatments while maintaining good health for years.

The study was published in the Journal of Cystic Fibrosis.

For the first time, MIT chemists have synthesized a fungal compound known as verticillin A, which was discovered more than 50 years ago and has shown potential as an anticancer agent.

The compound has a complex structure that made it more difficult to synthesize than related compounds, even though it differed by only a couple of atoms.

MA-5 is a therapeutic intervention for mitochondrial disease that has been demonstrated to ameliorate severe symptoms such as neurological disorders, renal dysfunction, hepatic dysfunction and motor disorders in animal disease models, which are induced by mitochondrial dysfunction. Crucially, it also improved survival rates.

Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have identified a specific protein, RASH3D19, that is responsible for activation of RAS signaling pathways involved in aggressive tumor growth and resistance to KRAS inhibitors in patients with KRAS-mutant cancers. Blocking RASH3D19 in combination with KRAS inhibitors improved outcomes in preclinical models, suggesting this combination as a potential therapeutic strategy for patients with KRAS-mutant cancers.

Cedars-Sinai scientists have developed an experimental drug that repairs DNA and serves as a prototype for a new class of medications that fix tissue damage caused by heart attack, inflammatory disease or other conditions.

Investigators describe the workings of the drug, called TY1, in a paper published in Science Translational Medicine.

Finland was the first country to offer the zoonotic avian influenza A(H5N8) vaccine manufactured by Seqirus to at-risk occupational groups following the extensive clade 2.3.4.4b A(H5N1) outbreak affecting wild birds and fur farms in Finland in 2023.

A new study published in Nature Microbiology shows that the MF59-adjuvanted A(H5N8) vaccine induced strong immune responses, including both functional antibodies and memory T-cell responses,

The human P2X4 receptor plays an important role in chronic pain, inflammation and some types of cancer. Researchers at the University of Bonn and the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) have now discovered a mechanism that can inhibit this receptor. The results were recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications and open up a pathway for the development of new drugs.

After a spinal cord injury, cells in the brain and spinal cord change to cope with stress and repair tissue. A new study from Karolinska Institutet, published in Nature Neuroscience, shows that this response is controlled by specific DNA sequences. This knowledge could help develop more targeted treatments.

When the central nervous system is damaged - for example, in a spinal cord injury - many cells become reactive.

Protein kinases are the molecular switches of the cell. They control growth, division, communication, and survival by attaching phosphate groups to other proteins. When these switches are stuck in the "on" position, they can drive cancer and other diseases. Not surprisingly, kinases have become one of the most important drug target families in modern medicine: today, more than 80 kinase inhibitors are FDA-approved, and nearly twice as many are in clinical development.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced the deployment of agentic AI capabilities for all agency employees. Agentic AI capabilities will enable the creation of more complex AI workflows - harnessing various AI models - to assist with multi-step tasks.

Agentic AI refers to advanced artificial intelligence systems designed to achieve specific goals by planning, reasoning, and executing multi-step actions.

Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and collaborators have reported early success with a novel mRNA-based therapy designed to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The findings, published in the November 26 online issue of Nature Biotechnology, show that in preclinical studies in mice and human lung tissue in the lab, the therapy slowed bacterial growth, strengthened immune cell activity, and reduced lung tissue damage in models of multidrug-resistant pneumonia.

A Garvan-led clinical trial has found that using a common and inexpensive type 2 diabetes drug reduces insulin needs in type 1 diabetes, opening doors for improved management of the condition.

For years doctors have prescribed metformin, an old but common type 2 diabetes medication, to treat insulin resistance in type 1 diabetes. This has been largely based on anecdotal evidence.