#Advances in PET Scanning Technology Helps Reduce Radiation Dosage Researchers in Manchester have used recent advances in PET scanning technology to reduce the radiation dose for both patients
#First 3d printed pill approved in US In a world first, the US Food and Drug Administration has given the go-ahead for a 3d printed pill to be produced.
The FDA has approved previously medical devices-including prosthetics-that have been 3d printed. The new drug, dubbed Spritam,
was developed by Aprecia Pharmaceuticals to control seizures brought on by epilepsy. The company said that it planned to develop other medications using its 3d platform.
Printing the drugs allows layers of medication to be packaged more tightly in precise dosages. A separate technology developed by the firm
Printing the drug meant it could package up to 1, 000 milligrams into individual tablets. The 3d printed pill dissolves in the same manner as other oral medicines.
Being able to 3d print a tablet offers the potential to create bespoke drugs based on the specific needs of patients,
rather than having a one product fits all approach, according to experts.""For the last 50 years we have manufactured tablets in factories
Beyond their importance to our understanding of basic cell biology, microtubules are a major target for anticancer drugs, such as Taxol,
"A better understanding of how microtubule dynamic instability is regulated could open new opportunities for improving the potency and selectivity of existing anticancer drugs,
The method opens up unexpected possibilities for understanding diseases and drug mechanisms. The study's findings are reported in the September 7 issue of Nature Methods.
when a person stops taking anti-HIV drugs. Further studies in animals and people are needed to determine the viability of this approach.
Scientists predict that this finding might lead to a new class of antiviral drugs capable of targeting a range of different infections, The british Science Festival heard last week.
Early signs are that drugs that increase the activity of IFIT3 may be effective treatments for other viral diseases as well.'
'By understanding genetic variants like this we can start to think about broad-spectrum antivirals that hit a whole range of viruses,
'We have broad-spectrum antibiotics that work against a range of bacteria...This could lead to a broad-spectrum antiviral,
though it would work by altering human cells rather than targeting the virus directly, 'he added.
The effects of high drug prices and bad press are said nsustainable he and as recent coverage shows
The effects of high drug prices and bad press are said nsustainable he and as recent coverage shows,
These candidate drugs should have a high potential to pass through clinical trials and could ultimately save lives,
#Researchers Find New Target for Anti-Malaria Drugs A new target for drug development in the fight against the deadly disease malaria has been discovered by researchers at MIT.
the researchers describe how they identified the drug target while studying the way in which the parasites Toxoplasma gondii,
they could be used as a drug target against the diseases they cause, including malaria, he said. his very strongly suggests that you could find small-molecule drugs to target these pores,
and are treated best with antibiotics. But antibiotics are unhelpful and can be counterproductive when a patient has an outwardly similar but infection-free syndrome called sterile inflammation, an intense, systemic inflammatory response to traumatic injuries, surgery,
blood clots or other noninfectious causes. t critical for clinicians to diagnose sepsis accurately and quickly,
As a result, hospital clinicians are pressured to treat anybody showing signs of systemic inflammation with antibiotics.
That can encourage bacterial drug resistance and, by killing off harmless bacteria in the gut, lead to colonization by pathogenic bacteria, such as Clostridium difficile.
The inability to easily distinguish sepsis from sterile inflammation makes it tough for pharmaceutical companies to conduct clinical trials of drugs aimed at treating sepsis;
MIT researchers used Kamm's microfluidics technology to screen several drugs that aim to prevent tumors from breaking up
Results indicated that the level of drugs needed was often two orders of magnitude higher than predictions based on traditional assaid. o there no way to effectively predict, from the 2-D assaid,
what the efficacy of a particular drug was, Kamm said. If pharmaceutical companies were to winnow potential drugs from,
say, 1, 000 to 100 for testing, Kamm said, e could test those drugs out in a more realistic setting.
#Researchers Uncover New Pathways for Diabetes Research A new Florida State university study is changing how scientists look at diabetes research
and the drugs used to treat the disease. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Associate professor of Chemistry Brian Miller and postdoctoral researcher Carl Whittington report that a key enzyme involved in the body response to glucose can essentially be corrupted by a new mechanism that scientists
researchers uncovered drugs that activate the enzyme, which offered hope for treating type 2 diabetes.
inhaled anesthetics like nitrous oxide and halothane have made modern surgery possible. Now, in experiments in mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere have added to evidence that certain so-called"volatile"anesthetics--commonly used during surgeries--may also possess powerful effects on the immune system that can combat viral and bacterial infections in the lung,
including influenza and pneumonia. A report on the experiments is published in the September 1 issue of the journal Anesthesiology.
To examine just how some inhaled anesthetic drugs affect viral and bacterial infections, Krishnan Chakravarthy, M d.,Ph d.,a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Institute of Nanobiotechnology and a resident physician in the department of anesthesiology and critical
The team discovered that giving the animals volatile anesthetics, such as halothane, led to decreased bacterial burden and lung injury following infection.
The researchers report that the anesthetics augmented the antibacterial immune response after influenza viral infection by blocking chemical signaling that involves type I interferon,
"Our study is giving us more information about how volatile anesthetics work with respect to the immune system,
"Given that these drugs are the most common anesthetics used in the operating room, "there is a serious need to understand how they work
suggest that volatile anesthetics may someday be helpful for combatting seasonal and pandemic influenza, particularly when there are flu vaccine shortages or limitations."
"A therapy based on these inhaled drugs may help deal with new viral and bacterial strains that are resistant to conventional vaccines
"We hope our study opens the door to the development of new drugs and therapies that could change the infectious disease landscape."
"The investigators say they are currently testing an oral small molecule immune modulator in phase 2 clinical trials that acts like volatile anesthetics to help reduce secondary infections after someone becomes sick with the flu.
The discovery and exploitation of this new drug target was made possible by an earlier discovery by Ball lab. That finding enabled researchers to identify, on a molecular level,
the target of action for drug molecules by using rhodium-based inorganic complexes that recognize specific folds in a protein chain
There a large surface area with weak interactions for which we have failed typically to find good drugs, he said.
with limited success. here no evidence people have tried to go after the coiled coil as a drug target,
Such knowledge could pave the way for new drugs for a myriad of diseases, including cancer.
therefore, of particular interest. he ability to produce kinases for study should be useful in learning how these proteins function and in developing new types of drugs,
and the University of Michigan claiming novel reagents used for screening small-molecule chemical libraries for new drug leads.
and neurodegenerative diseases, validating histone methyltransferases (HMTS) as an important class of drug targets among biomedical researchers.
Director of Drug Discovery Chemistry at Cayman Chemical. e are going after drug compounds that have a specific mechanism of action
#3d Barcode May Prevent Drug Counterfeiting A specialized barcode unveiled at The british Science Festival on Wednesday may play an important role in combating the global proliferation of fake medications.
Packing and labeling may look similar to real brand-name drugs, but these false pills could cause serious harm.
During the manufacturing process, each individual tablet would be imprinted with tiny pinpricks, reports The Guardian.
As long as the scanner detects the appropriate barcode that corresponds to that pill, it safe for the patient to take the drug.
Sofmat managing director Dr. Phil Harrison told The Guardian this system llows more complexity than existing anti-counterfeit systems.
while they were initially designing photosensitive polymers for drug delivery applications. Once they came up with a polymer that responded to UV LIGHT,
meaning more absorption occurs on small nanoparticles. his is an important consideration for drug delivery
because it could explain what happens with nanoparticles with high drug encapsulation and extensive burst release.
or drugs inside a man-made biodegradable nanoparticle rapperthat patients inhale could penetrate the mucus barrier
we can develop insights into how Alzheimer disease naturally progresses and potential drug targets, said principal investigator Michael Rafii, M d.,Ph d.,assistant professor of neurosciences and interim co-director of the Alzheimer Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS) at UC San diego. The 3-year study
M d.,a world leader in Alzheimer research, to promote the discovery, development and testing of new drugs for the treatment of AD.
The discovery provides a new platform for drug delivery systems and an entirely different view of cellular functions.
Chilkoti lab has designed self-assembling proteins for drug delivery systems for several years. Simply by adding heat,
and when drugs are released inside the body through non-temperature-related mechanisms such as changes in acidity levels.
however, drugs could be encapsulated in protein cages that accumulate inside of a tumor and dissolve once heated.
Not only would this provide a more accurate way of delivering drugs, but the cages themselves could be used therapeutically. hese packaging systems have always been inert,
This would represent a quantum leap in antiviral therapy, said Fussenegger, who was involved not in the study.
This enzyme activates a harmless drug precursor called CB 1954 which the researchers added to the petri dish where the cells were growing.
and not the type that the drug Herceptin targets. Each year, more than 100,000 women in the United states alone are diagnosed with this.
The usual treatment is followed surgery by years of a hormone-blocking drug. But many women also are urged to have chemo,
and hormone-blocking drugs. Women in the middle group were assigned randomly to get hormone therapy alone or to add chemo.
#Pseudo-platelet Drug Delivery System Targets Cancer Researchers are using patients own platelet membranes to coat drugs and use as nanovehicles for anticancer treatments.
Corresponding author Zhen Gu, an assistant professor in the joint biomedical engineering program at North carolina State university and the University of North carolina Chapel hill, said there are two significant benefits in using platelet membranes to coat anticancer drugs.
comparted to about six hours for nanoscale vehicles without the coating. his combination of features means that the drugs can
which are placed then in a solution with a nanoscale gel containing the anticancer drug doxorubicin (Dox).
The surface of the spheres are coated then with the anticancer drug TRAIL, which attacks the cell membrane of cancer cells.
Studies on mice found that using the combination drug delivery system in the form of a pseudo-platelet was significantly more effective against large tumors
and circulating tumor cells than using the drugs in a nanogel delivery system without the platelet membrane. e like to do additional preclinical testing on this technique,
Gu said. nd we think it could be used to deliver other drugs, such as those targeting cardiovascular diseases, in
#An Accessible Approach to Making a Mini-brain If you need a working miniature brain say for drug testing, to test neural tissue transplants,
and that could eventually lead to the development of a drug to enhance recovery from strokes.
#Scientists Work on the Drug Building Process One Block at a time, University of Illinois Reveals Molecule-Making Machine Simplifies Complex Chemistrychampaign, Ill.
and enable new drug development and other technologies that rely on small molecules. We wanted to take a very complex process, chemical synthesis,
Drug Application for alectinib, which has been granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation--2015 ASCO Annual Meeting SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--BUSINESS WIRE)--Genentech,
Alectinib was granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation by the U s. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in June 2013 for people with ALK-positive NSCLC
#New Test Detects Drug Use From A Single Fingerprint, University of Surrey Study Research published today in the journal Analyst has demonstrated a new,
used different types of an analytical chemistry technique known as mass spectrometry to analyse the fingerprints of patients attending drug treatment services.
a drug often used to treat anxiety disorders. Researchers placed electrodes at strategic points on the skin
The achievement was made possible by a new generation of drug-containing coating applied to the inner surface of the vessel.
The team managed to synthesize a thin film made of densely packed aluminum oxide nanorods blended with molecules of a thrombolytic enzyme (urokinase-type plasminogen activator.
The lifetime of such grafts is determined often by the amount of drug stored within the graft,
The system, developed by the researchers, is based on the entrapment of the drug inside a porous protective shell,
You just need to take the right kind of drug. For example, after the implantation of an artificial ureter, urease crystals often start to grow inside
It is possible to apply a similar drug-containing coating that dissolves urease. The same approach may be used for kidney or liver surgery,
Hydrocodone and its chemical relatives such as morphine and oxycodone are opioids, members of a family of painkilling drugs sourced from the opium poppy.
It can take more than a year to produce a batch of medicine, starting from the farms in Australia,
where the active drug molecules are extracted and refined into medicines. hen we started work a decade ago,
or later refined into pills using chemical processes to extract and concentrate their active ingredients. Smolke team is modernizing the process by inserting precisely engineered snippets of DNA into cells, such as yeast,
Current drug treatments have to be taken for a lifetime, which causes side effects and many other issues,
Some promising experimental Alzheimer drugs require early determination of how the disease is likely to progress,
electrical devices (pacemakers or defibrillators) or drugs (eg beta blockers. However, these methods are relatively crude: they can stop
"says research supervisor Dr James St john, from Griffith's Eskitis Institute for Drug Discovery. The technique was developed
"In light of the overwhelming impact of spinal cord injury, new therapeutic interventions for drug discovery and cell therapy are needed urgently."
and drug responses and personalizing treatments in a rapid, cost-effective manner. The findings are reported currently in the Advance Online issue of the journal Nature Medicine."
and validation of new drugs and targets and modeling resistance to therapy,"says Muthuswamy.""By using a cohort of patient samples from
which we can screen for drugs and mutations, we can begin to understand why some patients respond to a treatment
and for drug screening to identify precision therapy strategies
#New lab-on-chip device promises faster TB diagnosis Singapore: US researchers have developed a new low-cost lab-on-a-chip device to aid analysis of sputum from patients with pulmonary diseases such as tuberculosis and asthma.
Jay z has admitted also dealing drugs as a teenager. Here's what he told Vanity fair magazine in 2013:
I was a drug dealer. To be in a drug deal, you need to know what you can spend,
what you need to re-up. Or if you want to start some sort of barbershop or car wash those were the businesses back then.
Horse poop yields antibiotic-laced mushrooms European biologists have discovered a bacteria-killing compound in common mushrooms that grow in horse dung.
Unusually for an antibiotic, copsin is a protein; but laboratory trials showed it to have the same effect on bacteria as traditional antibiotics.
Chemists around the world are involved in a race against time to find a solution to the growing problem of bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics.
It's a major threat to the health of the global population, which had assumed long that antibiotics would always be available to cure bacterial illness.
The scientific community hopes to be able to develop a new range of antibiotics to replace those that are increasingly losing their ability to work against infections like tuberculosis.
A research team led by Markus Aebi Professor of Mycology at ETH Zurich (The swiss Federal Institute of technology in Zurich), believes it may have found the answer.
Copsin promotes antibiotic effect"Horse dung is a very rich substrate that harbours a diversity of microorganisms,
therefore very likely to find potent antibiotics in such an environment, which are used by the different organisms to inhibit the growth of the competitors."
Further research demonstrated that the copsin produced by the mushroom was responsible for this antibiotic effect."
and therefore copsin is active against bacteria resistant to conventional antibiotics.""Copsin is a protein,
whereas traditional antibiotics are often non-protein organic compounds. It belongs to the group of defensins,
Patent pending To yield larger amounts of the antibiotic, copsin is produced in liquid culture via a methylotrophic yeast called Pichia pastoris.
whether copsin could be used in an antibiotic, but that even if it cannot it remains important research.
and other naturally antibiotic substances for millions of years to protect themselves against bacteria, while antibiotics used in medicine by humans have developed resistance in just 70 years.
The team has registered copsin for patent approval l
#Ubisoft offers new video game it says can treat lazy eye The Montreal-based gaming company Ubisoft has developed a video game it says could be used to treat amblyopia, also known as lazy eye.
said Ferland. hink of it as pills, but those are intelligent pills. Daniel Doyon participated in the clinical tests for Dig Rush.
He said he noticed a big difference in his recreational volleyball games after finishing the treatment. hen
and Drug Administration in the United states to market this therapy. The company says it will look to receive approval from Health Canada once Dig Rush has been approved by the FDA g
and didn't involve drugs or ear-plugs.''EEG or Electroencephalography measures electrical activity in the brain using pads on the scalp,
and is aimed at people who suffer with poor episodic memory-one of the main side effects of schizophrenia drugs.
but slow progress is being made towards developing a drug treatment.''So this proof-of-concept study is important
because it demonstrates that the memory game can help where drugs have failed so far.''Because the game is interesting,
He said his team is now working on developing drugs that will specifically inhibit PDE4B. The drugs will be tested first in animals to see
whether any of them might be suitable to go forward into clinical trials in humans. In the experiments, published on today in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology,
and understanding the effect of genes can be a key early step on the road to developing new drugs.'
and fibres will prove to be a valuable research tool for non-animal testing of new drugs and investigating brain disorders such as Alzheimer's.
#Scientists brew cannabis chemical THC for better drugs for cancer sufferers An active ingredient typically found in cannabis has been engineered genetically in the lab for the first time.
Synthetic THC already exists in pill form and is sold under brand names such as Cesamet. It's often used to treat nausea associated with HIV or cancer therapies
Synthetic THC already exists in pill form and is sold under brand names such as Cesamet. It's often used to treat nausea associated with HIV or cancer therapies,
Drone aircraft could also be used to deliver antibiotics or blood to front-line units to keep them in the fight,
drug development, code-breaking and encryption, and exploring the fundamental nature of the universe
#HIV breakthrough could lead to a CURE as markers on immune cells identified The way a patient's immune system responds to HIV infection could offer clues as to
But the drug treatment is not a cure. The infection persists in latent cells,'hidden'reservoirs,
'We want to be able to predict how the virus will behave before we take patients of anti-retroviral therapy to test drug therapies aimed at eradicating HIV,
Immune cells with the PD1 biomarker have already been identified as a target for drugs to treat stage-four melanoma
'In the 1980s we saw the first wide scale use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (antidepressants), such as Prozac, Paxil and others.'
'Hundreds of studies have shown that these antidepressants have side effects that include violent thoughts.''A few minutes of research will tell us that 8%of the US population is taking antidepressants,
yet a known 30%of all mass murderers since 1980 were taking antidepressants, and it is suspected highly that the real number approaches 90%a statistical anomaly of egregious proportions.''
''But it is much easier to disprove a cause (as we did with guns above) than it is to prove a cause.''
endorphins, and through prescribed opiates such as morphine. The researchers believe that if we can find out how the body increases the number of opiate receptors,
and designing smart molecules or simple non-drug interventions to do a similar thing is potentially attractive. rof Jones said that as well as drug treatments,
we may find ways of naturally increasing resilience to pain without the side effects associated with many pain killing drugs. al Derbyshire,
due to the addictive nature of these drugs. he notion of enhancing the natural opiates in the brain, such as endorphins,
me to be infinitely preferable to long term medication with opiate drugs. nything that can reduce reliance on strong medication must be worth pursuing. piate receptors were discovered first in the brain in 1973.
By borrowing an antiviral mechanism called CRISPR-Cas9 from bacteria, they created an easy way to tweak the genetic information in a cell nucleus. This has implications for medicine and agriculture.
It might also be used to produce new classes of antiviral treatment, and thus curb infectious disease.
#A drug used to rid people of worms is a new weapon against malaria IVERMECTIN,
a drug employed for the treatment of worm infections, has a side effect. It has been known since the 1980s that it kills arthropods (lice, mites,
when they bite people who have taken the drug. Moreover, even if a mosquito does not succumb
Dr Foy and his colleagues ran a small clinical trial in Burkina faso that is the first to measure the effect of the drug on rates of malaria.
themselves, receiving the drug. That equates to about one episode per child being averted over the course of two years.
Dr Kobylinski and his colleagues fed mosquitoes malaria-infected human blood mixed with the drug.
the drug cut the number of parasites in half. In Thailand, a country well on its way to eliminating the scourge of malaria,
If ivermectin can be pressed into service as an antimalarial agent, too, it will increase the chance that the disease can be knocked on the head once and for all r
electrical devices (pacemakers or defibrillators) or drugs (eg beta blockers. However, these methods are relatively crude: they can stop
#Sensing small molecules may revolutionize drug design Most pharmaceutical drugs consist of tiny molecules, which target a class of proteins found on the surfaces of cell membranes.
Studying these subtle interactions is essential for the design of effective drugs, but the task is extremely challenging.
The new work has broad implications for basic research into biological function at the cellular level as well as providing an efficient platform for new drug design
Targeted approach"Most drugs are small molecules and most drug targets are membrane proteins, "says Tao,
who directs the Biodesign Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors, which focuses on developing new detection technologies."
"Accurate drug design requires an understanding not only of the small molecule drugs and the membrane proteins they bind to,
The rates at which drugs bind with and dissociate from receptors have a direct impact on drug efficacy and safety.
The optimization of binding kinetics allows drug designers to precisely control two critical parameters known as Kon and Koff.
Small molecules used for most drugs are on the order of a few hundred Daltons in size,
This fact has made the process of drug screening an arduous and costly affair. The path from drug discovery to eventual commercialization often requires 10-12 years of research and close to $1 billion for development of a single new drug.
In addition to examining binding kinetics for membrane proteins immobilized on a surface, animal testing is used often to attempt to validate new drugs,
though the costs are high, the methods are inefficient and ethical concerns come into play. Further, even successful results are not always applicable for human patients.
the field of drug discovery is moving toward cell-based, high-throughput screening methods, where interactions of small molecules and membrane proteins are examined in their native environment.
cheaper and more precise drug design while yielding new insights into foundational issues in cellular biology."
But when it came to derivatives of the natural painkiller morphine, the new xylochemical synthesis turned out to be significantly more efficient than any previously known route based on petrochemistry."
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