Synopsis: Pharma: Drugs:

#Viagra to prevent transmission of the malaria parasite? By increasing the stiffness of erythrocytes infected by the causal agent of malaria,

Viagra favors their elimination from the blood circulation and may therefore reduce transmission of the parasite from humans to mosquitoes.

better known under its brand name of Viagra. The authors showed that this agent, used at a standard dose, had the potential to increase the stiffness of sexual forms of the parasite

Modifying the active substance in Viagra to block its erectile effect or testing similar agents devoid of this adverse effect, could indeed result in a treatment to prevent transmission of the parasite from humans to mosquitoes e

3-D printed'tissue'to help combat disease A bench-top brain that accurately reflects actual brain tissue would be significant for researching not only the effect of drugs,

Pharmaceutical companies spend millions of dollars testing therapeutic drugs on animals only to discover in human trials that the drug has an altogether different level of effectiveness.

We're not sure why, but the human brain differs distinctly from that of an animal.

A bench-top brain that accurately reflects actual brain tissue would be significant for researching not only the effect of drugs,

in addition to providing an experimental test bed for new drugs and electroceuticals.""We are still a long way from printing a brain

but also for more common problems involving maladaptive daily decisions about drug or alcohol use, gambling or credit card binges.

#Scientists determine how antibiotic gains cancer-killing sulfur atoms In a discovery with implications for future drug design,

scientists have shown an unprecedented mechanism for how a natural antibiotic with antitumor properties incorporates sulfur into its molecular structure, an essential ingredient of its antitumor activity.

that include many drugs such as erythromycin (antibacterial) and lovastatin (cholesterol lowering).""Sulfur is critical not only to human life,

one of the co-first authors of the study and a member of the Shen lab."Since polyketide synthases are a large family of enzymes that have been proven amenable for polyketide structural diversity and drug discovery,

"Whereas traditional pharmaceutical drugs have a transient effect, gene editing could possibly provide a permanent cure for a lot of different diseases,

and antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as Klebsiella pneumonia or Escherichia coli i

#Device may detect urinary tract infections faster Sepsis is a major killer and accounts for about half of the hospital deaths in the US by some estimates.

"The next step will involve implementing antibiotic susceptibility testing and automating the sample pre-treatment steps,

It's a major step forward in creating a quantum computer to solve problems such as designing new drugs

The technique should speed the development of drug and diagnostic compounds that would not have been possible otherwise--including powerful hormone-based therapies."

we are talking about 88 million pills; an ecological damage is avoided with the new process."

with antihypertensive properties and is proven to help reduce levels of glucose in the blood;

and in particular the microencapsulated presentation, is antidiabetic by reducing the levels of sugar in the blood,

The most commonly used tranquilizing drug, benzodiazepine, activates GABA receptors in our brains. There are two kinds of GABA receptors.

a drug that stimulates extra-synaptic GABA receptors.""It's like we got them a little inebriated,

However, when scientists put the mice back on the drug and returned them to the box,

"This establishes when the mice were returned to the same brain state created by the drug,

when the extra-synaptic GABA receptors were activated with the drug, they changed the way the stressful event was encoded.

In the drug-induced state, the brain used completely different molecular pathways and neuronal circuits to store the memory."

The drug rerouted the processing of stress-related memories within the brain circuits so that they couldn't be accessed consciously d

exciting advance that may open up possibilities for targeting new drugs to control neurotransmitter release. Many mental disorders, including depression, schizophrenia and anxiety,

better drugs for autoimmune conditions and new ways to expedite recovery from sepsis. The research

"Transplant patients go on immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives, but if we could safely induce paralysis just prior to surgery,

and Drug Administration, is the first and only recapturable and repositionable device commercially available in the United states. It sets a new standard for transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) in the United states. J. Michael Tuchek,

After the device was approved by the U s. Food and Drug Administration, Loyola became the first Illinois center to offer it outside of a clinical trial.

The materials that pharmaceutical companies use to test drugs'effects on cells don't allow for three-dimensional vascularization, a network of capillaries that carry drugs and other materials throughout the body.

but also aid in drug screening.""The microenvironment actually has a significant effect on how the cells respond to a drug,

"Grolman said.""These companies might have the next big drug, but they might not know it.""

""The long-term vision would be: A patient goes in and finds out they've been diagnosed with some sort of solid tumor,

and building a model of their tissue to use as a personalized drug screening platform.

and do not respond to the drugs or deep brain stimulation used for Parkinson's symptoms.

This multi-device approach, much like multi-drug therapy, may ultimately benefit patients with impaired mobility in a wide variety of rehabilitation settings."

as a result of misdiagnoses can results in new, drug-resistant strains of the disease in addition to increasing costs for malaria medications, Coté notes.

Arraythe 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

as if the animals were infected never with a prior influenza virus. Array"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 u

"Simultaneously employing different drugs to target different cancer subclasses could prevent remission, scientists have proposed. One powerful single-cell analytic technique for exploring CNV is whole genome sequencing.

Targeting pathogens and parasites with medicines like antibiotics, or dealing with the conditions that allow transmission.

and used drugs to block their ability to transport potassium. Blocking potassium efflux created cells that were resistant to E. histolytica."

"There is a clear need for new drugs targeting E. histolytica, "Petri says.""Right now there is a single antibiotic that works against this parasite.

We know that eventually the parasite will develop resistance to the antibiotic and at that point there's no plan B. This could be the plan B--targeting the human genes that enable the parasite to cause disease."

"Marie is pushing forward. She recently learned from a mentor at John's Hopkins how to isolate stem cells from human tissue to grow

#Pancreatic cancer subtypes discovered in largest gene expression analysis of the disease to date Dense surrounding tissue can block drugs from reaching pancreatic cancer tumors,

Each of these products is a potential new drug. One of them has already been identified as an antibiotic.

The researchers report their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Phosphonates are an abundant and diverse class of natural signaling molecules that have already proved useful to medicine and agriculture

because we know they are predisposed strongly to have biological activity--antibiotic activity, antiviral activity, herbicidal activity,

two are used commercially--one as a clinical antibiotic and one as an herbicide--and another one is now in clinical trials to treat malaria,

"This 15 percent drug-development success rate is much higher than the 0. 1 percent average estimated for natural products as a whole."

including those with antibiotic properties and others with previously unknown structures, "Ju said.""In other words, we have doubled essentially the inventory of phosphonate natural products identified to date."

The researchers describe the new findings as a proof of concept that genome mining can be used on a scale that will speed the process of drug discovery,

which are among the most promising new drug leads.""These biologically produced small molecules have been the source of,

Natural products also are needed a much source of new antibiotics.""To this day, natural products make up 75 percent of all of our antibiotics--either the natural products themselves or derivatives thereof,

"van der Donk said.""Our study shows that genome mining is not only a viable route to new natural products,

#New drug-like compounds may improve odds of men battling prostate cancer, researchers find Researchers at Southern Methodist University,

Dallas, have discovered three new drug-like compounds that could ultimately offer better odds of survival to prostate cancer patients.

The drug-like compounds can be modified and developed into medicines that target a protein in the human body that is responsible for chemotherapy resistance in cancers,

So far there's no approved drug on the market that reverses cancer chemotherapy resistance caused by P-glycoprotein

One potential drug, Tariquidar, is currently in clinical trials, but in the past, other potential drugs have failed at that stage."

"The problem when a person has cancer is that the treatment itself is composed of cellular toxins--the chemotherapeutics that prevent the cells from dividing.

who is director of SMU's Center for Drug Discovery, Design, and Delivery.""Sometimes, however, the cancer returns,"she said."

"As a result, P-gp causes resistance of the diseased cells to a majority of drugs currently available for the treatment of cancer,

as well as drugs used for treatment of infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS. Using computer-generated model speeds up the drug discovery process The new drug-like compounds discovered by Vogel

and her co-authors offer hope that using a computer-generated P-gp model, explained here http://bit. ly/1lvmr7a,

chemical and biological functions of the protein in the human body, will speed up the drug discovery process

so that's a pretty good predictor that they may be good candidates for drug development. But we need to do much more work."

so it can eventually be delivered to patients as a therapeutic drug. In the case reported here,

The timeline from drug discovery to development to clinical trials and approval can take a decade or more.

Researchers virtually screened 15 million drug-like compounds via SMU supercomputer The SMU researchers discovered the three hit compounds after virtually screening more than 15 million small drug-like compounds made publically available

including interactions with drug-like compounds while taking on different shapes. The ultra-high throughput computational searches by Maneframe led the researchers to 300 compounds that looked like they may inhibit P-gp.

Also, each was tested on a companion cell line already multi-drug resistant, as if the patient already had undergone chemotherapy using Paclitaxel.

#New drug-like compounds may improve odds of men battling prostate cancer, researchers find Researchers at Southern Methodist University,

Dallas, have discovered three new drug-like compounds that could ultimately offer better odds of survival to prostate cancer patients.

The drug-like compounds can be modified and developed into medicines that target a protein in the human body that is responsible for chemotherapy resistance in cancers,

So far there's no approved drug on the market that reverses cancer chemotherapy resistance caused by P-glycoprotein

One potential drug, Tariquidar, is currently in clinical trials, but in the past, other potential drugs have failed at that stage."

"The problem when a person has cancer is that the treatment itself is composed of cellular toxins--the chemotherapeutics that prevent the cells from dividing.

who is director of SMU's Center for Drug Discovery, Design, and Delivery.""Sometimes, however, the cancer returns,"she said."

"As a result, P-gp causes resistance of the diseased cells to a majority of drugs currently available for the treatment of cancer,

as well as drugs used for treatment of infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS. Using computer-generated model speeds up the drug discovery process The new drug-like compounds discovered by Vogel

and her co-authors offer hope that using a computer-generated P-gp model, explained here http://bit. ly/1lvmr7a,

chemical and biological functions of the protein in the human body, will speed up the drug discovery process

so that's a pretty good predictor that they may be good candidates for drug development. But we need to do much more work."

so it can eventually be delivered to patients as a therapeutic drug. In the case reported here,

The timeline from drug discovery to development to clinical trials and approval can take a decade or more.

Researchers virtually screened 15 million drug-like compounds via SMU supercomputer The SMU researchers discovered the three hit compounds after virtually screening more than 15 million small drug-like compounds made publically available

including interactions with drug-like compounds while taking on different shapes. The ultra-high throughput computational searches by Maneframe led the researchers to 300 compounds that looked like they may inhibit P-gp.

Also, each was tested on a companion cell line already multi-drug resistant, as if the patient already had undergone chemotherapy using Paclitaxel.

#Researchers work to improve antibiotic effectiveness Virginia Tech researchers have discovered a new group of antibiotics that may provide relief to some of the more than 2 million people in the United states affected by antibiotic resistance.

The new antibiotics target the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, or staph, and the antibiotic resistant strains commonly known as MRSA, short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

In 2013, invasive MRSA infections were estimated responsible for an 9, 937 deaths in the U s. Although current infection rates are declining, the majority of these deaths, about 8,

shows that the potential new antibiotics are unlike contemporary antibiotics because they contain iridium, a silvery-white transition metal.

which is important for delivery of antibiotics to where they are needed to fight infections in the body.

"Researchers showed the antibiotics effectively kill the bacteria without inhibiting mammalian cells. A version of the antibiotic was tested for toxicity in mice with no ill effects."

"We are still at the beginning of developing and testing these antibiotics but, so far, our preliminary results show a new group of antibiotics that are effective and safe,

"said Joseph Falkinham, a professor of microbiology in the College of Science and an affiliate of the Virginia Tech Center for Drug Discovery."

"Within the next few years, we hope to identify various characteristics of these antibiotics, such as their stability, their distribution and concentration in animal tissue, their penetration into white blood cells,

and their metabolism in animals.""The team is currently testing the compounds in human cell lines and so far,

the cells have remained normal and healthy. This discovery comes at a time when antibiotic resistance is a significant health concern all over the world, for people and for livestock.

Last September, the U s. federal government issued an executive order to combat the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria,

stating that it"represents a serious threat to public health and the economy.""In March, a National Action Plan outlined critical next steps for key federal agencies and departments.

antibiotic resistance is a problem that adds around $20 billion annually to health care costs in the U s."The biggest question scientists have to ask to tackle antibiotic resistance is,

Fortunately, these new organometallic antibiotics are coming at a time when bacteria have not evolved to resist them,

who is also an affiliate of the Virginia Tech Center for Drug Discovery. In both the U s. and Europe, the spread of MRSA is a major threat to people in hospitals and other health care facilities.

it is possible that EVLP could be used to deliver drugs before the lung is implanted so that the patient's immune system does not recognise the transplanted organ as harmful."

and provides a fresh perspective on the etiology of Alzheimer's disease that could inform novel drug strategies,

so this opens up a brand new pathway to pursue in developing drugs to block the disease,"Dr. Richards,

The research team discovered a new gene involved in muscle wasting that could be a good target for drug development.

The tiny particles can be bound to compounds ranging from calcium tooth building materials to antimicrobials that prevent infection.

and antibacterial compounds to protect them. All we needed to do was find the right way of coating them to get them to their target.

The team that conducted the study now forms the basis of the University's Network for Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Prevention (NAMRIP) Strategic Research Group,

a leading journal in the field of developmental biology, open up new avenues for design of drugs for ataxia, a motor coordination disorder.

a journal in the field of developmental biology, open up new avenues for design of drugs for ataxia, a motor coordination disorder.

This enzyme activates a harmless drug precursor called CB 1954, which the researchers added to the petri dish where the cells were growing.

#Silicone vaginal rings deliver antiviral drugs, protect women against HIV Researchers at University Jean Monnet of Saint-Etienne,

This research is presented at the 55th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC/ICC."

which allowed the drugs to be released from their reservoirs. Vaginal rings with multiple reservoirs present a promising way for preventing sexually transmitted infections (STIS) and notably HIV infection in young women with high risk of exposure.

Some of the rings presented in this study were shown to release concentrations of drugs between 1. 5 and 3. 5 mg/day for acyclovir and 3 to 5 mg/day for tenofovir for as long as 50 days,

These preliminary results demonstrate the ability of silicone rings to continuously deliver hydrophilic antiviral drugs for a long period of time at a concentration that would be effective for neutralizing the viruses present in semen.

but was capable of delivering multiple active antiviral molecules against various STIS including HIV for a long duration,

"Massachusetts institute of technology Professor Robert Langer, a leader in targeted drug delivery research who was connected not to the Stanford experiments,

"Targeted drug delivery is one of the ultimate goals of medicine because it seeks to focus remedies on diseased cells,

The discovery provides a new platform for drug delivery systems and an entirely different view of cellular functions.

Chilkoti's 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."

#Two-drug combination shows promise against one type of pancreatic cancer One form of pancreatic cancer has a new enemy:

a two-drug combination discovered by UF Health researchers that inhibits tumors and kills cancer cells in mouse models.

They also found that pairing a synthetic compound with an existing drug provides a more effective anticancer punch than a single drug.

we looking for drug combinations that would increase efficacy, "he said. Among the substances they tested was a synthetic, small-molecule compound known as PF-04554787.

It did, with the two-drug combination killing off pancreatic cancer cells more effectively than everolimus alone.

In testing on two mouse cell lines, the drug combination reduced the viability of cancer cells by about 50 percent

That an existing drug can be made more effective is especially encouraging because the synthetic compound that was paired with everolimus is already undergoing human clinical trials,

"This is important because we're focused on everolimus, a drug that is already approved, nontoxic and given to patients.

Next, researchers would like to study how the two-drug approach works in humans, although no clinical trials have yet been designed or scheduled h

#Antimicrobial film for future implants The implantation of medical devices is not without risks. Bacterial or fungal infections can occur

Researchers at Unit 1121"Biomaterials and Bioengineering"(Inserm/Strasbourg university) have succeeded in creating a biofilm with antimicrobial, antifungal and anti-inflammatory properties.

Antibiotics are used currently during surgery or to coat certain implants. However, the emergence of multi-resistant bacteria now restricts their effectiveness.

and Biomaterials"Unit 1121 (Inserm/Strasbourg University) with four laboratories1 have developed a biofilm with antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties.

Embedded antimicrobial peptides on a thin silver coating The film is also unique due to the fact that it embeds natural antimicrobial peptides

This is an alternative to the antibiotics that are used currently. As well as having a significant antimicrobial role,

these peptides are not toxic to the body that they are secreted into. They are capable of killing bacteria by creating holes in their cellular wall

This strategy allows us to extend antimicrobial activity in the long term"explains Philippe Lavalle, Research director at Inserm.

and suggest new drugs to track down and disable its deadly seeds. For the most part, modern cancer drugs ignore differences between primary

Insights could lead to targeted therapies The research team performed a proof of principle experiment to demonstrate how valuable information about metastatic gene expression could be for drug development.

a CDK inhibiting drug known to kill off cells with high MYC levels. Whereas 44 percent of control mice (11 of 25) developed secondary tumors within four weeks, researchers could only find metastatic cells in one drug-treated mouse (4 percent.

Werb emphasized that this test was just a proof of principal and that dinaciclib itself may

or may not prove be the ideal drug to target metastases. The key point, she said,

was that the drug managed to nearly eliminate metastases without shrinking the primary tumor.""If this drug had only been tested on primary tumors,

we would have said it doesn't work, "she said.""This tells us you actually have to look at metastases

which there are no effective antibiotics, says Timothy Lu, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and biological engineering."

Customizable viruses The Food and Drug Administration has approved a handful of bacteriophages for treating food products,

which there are few new antibiotics. This group also includes microbes that can cause respiratory, urinary,

One advantage of the engineered phages is that unlike many antibiotics, they are very specific in their targets."

"Antibiotics can kill off a lot of the good flora in your gut, "Lu says.""We aim to create effective and narrow-spectrum methods for targeting pathogens."

a drug that inhibits the action of tyrosine kinases--enzymes that function as an"on

"Although treatment with VEGFR-targeted drugs has been very effective in the first line of therapy for patients with advanced kidney cancer,

in many cases tumour cells find ways to escape control by these drugs. Cabozantinib is a new drug that targets possible escape mechanisms of tumour cells,

including the tyrosine kinases MET, VEGFR and AXL. The results of the METEOR trial indicate that cabozantinib is able to shrink tumours

and slow down tumour growth much better than current standard treatment in patients who previously received VEGFR-targeted drugs.

The incidence of serious side effects was similar for both drugs and discontinuation of treatment due to side effects occurred in 9. 1%of cabozantinib and 10%of everolimus patients.

In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated it as a breakthrough therapy,

which may allow expedited development of the drug. Professor Peter Naredi, the ECCO scientific co-chair of the Congress,

the most serious being BCG infections that need to be treated with antituberculous drugs. A study on the characteristics of a wide group of mycobacteria begun seven years ago by the Mycobacteria Research Group

and with the group Bacterial Infections and Antimicrobial Therapies led by Dr Eduard Torrents, of the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) I

which can be used to design new personalized drug regimens for SS patients based on their unique genetic makeup.

In preliminary drug-mutation matching studies they found that JAK1-mutated SS cells were sensitive to JAK inhibitors,

drugs that are approved currently for treatment of other hematologic cancers such as polycythemia vera and myelofibrosis."

"We knew nano diamonds were of interest for delivering drugs during chemotherapy because they are largely nontoxic and non-reactive,

The finding could be used to develop new drugs to treat cancers such as leukaemia, caused by malfunctioning of the Trib1 protein.

which will provide critical clues for developing drugs that target Trib1 to treat cancers.""Lead investigator Dr Mace said Trib1 acted as a scaffold to bring many proteins together,

#Experimental treatment regimen effective against HIV PROTEASE inhibitors are a class of antiviral drugs that are used commonly to treat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Scientists at the University of Nebraska Medical center designed a new delivery system for these drugs that,

when coupled with a drug developed at the University of Rochester School of medicine and Dentistry, rid immune cells of HIV and kept the virus in check for long periods.

While current HIV treatments involve pills that are taken daily, the new regimens'long-lasting effects suggest that HIV treatment could be administered perhaps once or twice per year.

Nebraska researcher Howard E. Gendelman designed the investigational drug delivery system-a so-called"nanoformulated"protease inhibitor.

The nanoformulation process takes a drug and makes it into a crystal, like an ice cube does to water.

Next, the crystal drug is placed into a fat and protein coat, similar to what is done in making a coated ice-cream bar.

The coating protects the drug from being degraded by the liver and removed by the kidney.

a new drug discovered in the laboratory of UR scientist Harris A.("Handy")Gelbard M d.,Ph d,

URMC-099 boosted the concentration of the nanoformulated drug in immune cells and slowed the rate at

"The chemical marriage between URMC-099 and antiretroviral drug nanoformulations could increase drug longevity, improve patient compliance,

whether the drugs could be administered safely together. Much to Gelbard and Gendelman's surprise, URMC-099 increased the effectiveness of the nanoformulated drug."

"Our ultimate hope is that we're able to create a therapy that could be given much less frequently than the daily therapy that is required today,

"If a drug could be given once every six months or longer that would greatly increase compliance,

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