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.
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
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.
#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,
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."
However, some patients cannot tolerate these drugs or develop resistance. Moreover, over the long term, corticosteroids increase the risk of osteoporosis and vulnerability to infection.
and other drugs within one to three months after receiving sirolimus. Over a median follow-up of two years, there were few adverse side effects
But drugs designed to block Notch have caused serious side effects such as severe diarrhea or skin cancers. Now a team from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center offers a potential new target to block Notch without the toxic effects.
"Our goal is to develop a drug to sit right between Notch and Zmiz1 that could break apart the bond.
This would allow them to design a drug to separate the two proteins s
#Bottlebrush design enhances cellular imaging The bottle brush, with its long stalk and dense spray of plastic bristles, is the unsung hero of kitchens everywhere,
#Researchers want to turn acid-loving microbes into safe drug-carriers Usually the microbe S. islandicus is found in hot and acidic volcanic springs,
Here researchers have showed for the first time that the exotic microbe is capable of delivering drugs to the human body.
and this makes the microbe interesting for scientists working with delivering drugs to the human body."
and protect drugs on their passage through the stomach. Many drugs may be absorbed through the intestines,
so it would be a great help to be able to transport drugs safely through the stomach to the intestines,
"explains Sara Munk Jensen, Ph d. student at both the Nordic Center for Earth Evolution (Nordcee), Department of biology and the Department of physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy, University of Southern Denmark (SDU).
Transport and protect drugs Jensen has completed just her Ph d. work on how to use lipids from the cell membranes of extremophilic microorganisms to design drug carriers that transport
and protect drugs in the human body. This is relevant for different drugs as growth hormones, vaccines and insulin.
Many diabetics need to daily inject insulin directly into their body, and they would benefit greatly by taking insulin in a tablet instead.
"Praziquantel, a drug developed over 40 years ago, is the only effective treatment available for schistosomiasis.
However, re-infection frequently occurs following drug treatment. An effective vaccine is critical toward providing long-term treatment.
because it eliminates the instances of re-infection common with the current chemotherapeutic drug, is easier and less expensive to distribute
"Despite mass treatment with drugs, infection rates continue to rise. An additional 800 million people are at risk of contracting schistosomiasis.
from patients treated with different drug agents.""In our new study, we wanted to determine
#Massive screen of drug combinations may find treatment for resistant, BRAF-mutant melanoma A team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators has discovered a new combination of drugs that may be effective against one of the deadliest cancers, malignant melanoma.
The combination-pairing a drug targeted against mutations in the BRAF gene with a second drug that targets another important signaling pathway-was discovered through one of the largest screens of cancer drug combinations conducted to date.
whether very-large-scale screening across a diverse collection of cancer cell lines and a large number of drugs could yield new combinations for patients with cancer,
even with the increasing number of drugs targeting specific molecular abnormalities that drive tumor growth,
Most of those treated with targeted-therapy drugs will relapse within a year, often because their tumors have become resistant,
and some tumors never respond to the targeted drugs. While combining anticancer drugs appears a promising strategy, the sheer volume of drugs currently in use or in development-more than 500,
which could make up more than 100,000 two-drug combinations-makes testing each potential combination in clinical trials challenging.
Previous efforts to screen potential drug combinations only analyzed use of a few drugs against a limited number of cell lines
or lines in which genomic variations were understood poorly. This study utilized 36 well-characterized melanoma cell lines assembled by the MGH Center for Molecular Therapeutics to test all possible combinations of more than 100 oncology drugs,
two-thirds of which are currently in clinical use. More than 5, 775 potential drug combinations, as well as each single drug, were screened against each cell line,
looking for effects on the number and viability of tumor cells. While several combinations showed synergistic effects-with some drugs sensitizing the cells against several other drugs-most combinations increased the response of only one or two cell lines
implying that the vulnerability of an individual patient's tumor to these combinations depends on its unique genetic signature.
Since around half the cases of malignant melanoma are driven by mutation in the BRAF gene, the team focused on combinations that might address intrinsic resistance to the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib.
They found that combining that drug with the cediranib, an investigational drug that targets a group of proteins known to be involved in blood vessel formation,
had synergistic effects against cell lines that were resistant to treatment with vemurafenib alone but not those sensitive to single-agent therapy.
"What is really exciting is that these drugs are already in the clinic; in fact a clinical trial for a similar combination is already underway at another research center.
"This study was actually a pilot project for a much larger effort within the Center for Molecular Therapeutics to map responses against drug combinations across hundreds of cancer cell lines, not just melanoma,
No less important is the search for new drugs:""In the future, we envisage the development of molecules to block combinations of integrins specifically in tumour tissues,"states Peinado.
we believe that the enzyme might serve as a potential drug target in KRAS-dependent lung adenocarcinoma,
but it also suggests that these physical channels might be exploitable to deliver drug therapies."
and by the pharmaceutical industry in the quest for novel anticancer drugs that block tumor-organ communication,
"Mexican drug lords are not the only ones who use secret tunnels to move material across seemingly impenetrable borders,
and, until now, scientists have not managed to create drugs that can target this pathway.""As the RAS pathway is highly dysregulated in cancer,
Efstathios Karathanasis, a biomedical engineer at Case School of engineering, has developed chainlike nanoparticles that can carry drugs across the blood-brain barrier that keeps standard medicines from reaching their target--a highly aggressive brain cancer called
preventing drugs from crossing from the blood stream into the diseased tissue. And"surgeons can't go in
and drugs--if they get in--do nothing because of resistance that develops.""To reach inside tumors, Karathanasis'lab developed a short chain of magnetic nanoparticles made of iron oxide
releasing their drug cargo into the brain tumors. In testing with mouse models of aggressive brain tumors, the technology took out far more cancer cells, inhibited tumor growth better and extended life longer than traditional chemotherapy delivery.
they'll optimize the drug delivery system and mix of chemotherapy drug and inhibitor, study their effects
opening the way for the development of new drugs targeting this copper binding site, and thus for new potential treatments".
#UGR scientists patent an effective drug for treating breast, colon, and skin cancers Scientists from the University of Granada (UGR) have patented an effective drug for treating cancer stem cells (CSCS) in breast, colon, and skin cancers.
The researchers have proved the anti-tumor effects of the drug on immunodeficient mice. The new compound and its derivatives enabled the researchers to reduce tumor activity by 50 percent after 41 days of treatment with the drug,
administered twice a week, to mice with induced tumors. They have managed also to successfully describe the mechanisms by which the drug acts on the cancer stem cells (CSCS.
This crucial scientific breakthrough has been made by the UGR research groups"Research and development of Pharmaceutical Drugs, "directed by Professor Joaquín Campos Rosa, and"Advanced Therapies:
Differentiation, Regeneration and Cancer",directedby Professor Juan Antonio Marchal Corrales. The Córdoba-based company Canvax Biotech has participated also in the development of the patent.
A nontoxic drug One of the major advantages of the drug is that it is nontoxic.
Despite being administered to the mice in high concentrations (150 milligrams per kilo), no adverse effects were observed in the healthy cells.
Moreover, from a pharmaceutical perspective this anti-tumor drug can be produced successfully in large quantities. The researchers were able to obtain the required amount of the synthesis in just five days.
the scientists had managed already to create an effective drug (called Bozepinib) for treating cancer stem cells,
and a great deal of time to produce very small quantities of the drug. Having completed structural modifications of the drug--Bozepinib (by making changes to its molecular architecture),
they have created successfully a compound which maintains the biological activity of its predecessor as an effective anti-tumor drug,
but which can also be synthesized and produced on a grand scale--a fundamental condition for the drug's commercial development. 22 years of research The two UGR groups behind this key scientific breakthrough have been working in this line of research since 1993.
In order to be able to test the new drug on mice and gauge its effectiveness on human tumors,
first of all they had to inject human tumor cells into immunodeficient mice (to ensure they did not reject these cancerous cells).
considerably diminishing the likelihood of metastasis. The drug directly targets CSCS without affecting the healthy cells,
Lungs and pancreas Having proved the preclinical effectiveness of the new drug in treating cancer stem cells in breast, colon,
and skin cancers, the scientists will proceed now to study the drug's effect on lung and pancreas cancers, two of the most aggressive types.
"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."
#New drug candidate is promising therapeutic option for angiogenic retinal diseases A research team led by scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical center (BIDMC)
"Although a few other anti-VEGF drugs have been approved for therapy of AMD, they must be delivered directly into the eye through monthly intravitreal injections."
"This is a very exciting development in that it has the potential to allow the self-administration of a sight-saving drug to patients with AMD,
After six months, those who benefited from the drug were allowed to continue treatment with continued follow-up appointments to monitor toxicities.
The study has identified also many new potential targets for the next generation of drugs to treat prostate cancer.
The drug worked by bypassing the defective steps in the protein complex pathway, explains Garbincius, the lead study author.
Drugs tested by the U-M appear to correct the signaling pathway that is disrupted in muscular dystrophy at an earlier step than the phosphodiesterase inhibitors s
or drug targeting. The study by researchers Cheulhee Jung, Peter B. Allen and Andrew Ellington, published this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology,
and Ear/Harvard Medical school and Boston University have prevented successfully the development of Parkinson's disease in a mouse using new techniques to deliver drugs across the naturally impenetrable blood-brain barrier.
lend hope to patients around the world with neurological conditions that are difficult to treat due to a barrier mechanism that prevents approximately 98 percent of drugs from reaching the brain and central nervous system."
"We are developing a platform that may eventually be used to deliver a variety of drugs to the brain,
and histological data capture that their delivery method was equivalent to direct injection of GDNF-the current gold standard for delivering this drug in Parkinson's disease despite its traumatic nature and high complication rates-in diffusing drugs to the brain.
Dr. Bleier saw an opportunity to apply these techniques to the widespread clinical dilemma of delivering drugs across the barrier to the brain and central nervous system.
surgeons may create a"screen door"to allow for drug delivery to the brain and central nervous system. The technique has the potential to benefit a large population of patients with neurodegenerative disorders,
This form of the drug, called Spritam, wouldn work with conventional production methods. Traditional 3d printing with plastics is done by heating a polymer,
the pharmacy of the future could simply 3d print a single pill that has all those drugs in a single dose.
rather than relying on drug makers to provide a pill in one dose or another.
I point out this seems like a great way to tweak a non-patented drug with proprietary technology and sell it for a higher price.
the quantity of red tape institutions like the FDA foist upon anyone seeking to develop a new drug.
A report published by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (CSDD) pegs the cost of developing a prescription drug that gains market approval at $2. 6 billion.
a study from the US Department of health and human services examining barriers to drug development cited mprovements in FDA review process efficiencyas one of the main ways to bring down the soaring cost of drug development.
If ever there was a case for reforming the regulatory model governing drug development, this discovery of potential broad spectrum cancer cure would seem to make it r
#Ready To Get Your Drugs By Drone? Amazon Plan Could Be Game-Changer Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos knew skeptics would pan his drone-delivery plan. know this looks like science fiction.
But Americans don always take the drugs they need: About half of prescriptions aren followed, as CDC has reported.
The company already playing a major role in drug delivery, by sending prescriptions through the mail.
and other dangerous drugs.)But if Amazon can get its act together, get federal approval, and get its technology to work,
Drugs are already being delivered by drone illegal drugs, that is. Various cartels are using drones to send methamphetamine and other narcotics over the heads of authorities.
One drug-toting drone infamously crashed in a parking lot in January. And legal drugs are being delivered in other countries,
which have been more permissive. German packaging company DHL last year spent a month testing drug delivery-by-drone to a remote island off the country coast.
But the test was plagued with problems; two of the first ten drone flights were scrapped because of bad weather.
And a San francisco startup called Quiqui got considerable attention for its plans to use drones to deliver drugs last year,
The program will target illegal trafficking of the drugs in areas that have been particularly hard hit by the epidemic
many prescription opioid addicts first try to obtain the drugs through pharmacies. Easy access to prescription opioids is largely behind this surge in use,
but then they like the way the drugs make them feel. rescription opioid addicts use a variety of methods to access the drugs,
or accident. f we know the patient has a history of addiction we can prescribe drugs in a different class,
They say the mini-kidneys offer a ways to develop and test drugs for kidney disease.
and Women Hospital in Boston and is now an assistant professor of medicine in the nephrology division at the University of Washington. nswering this question was important for understanding the potential of mini-kidneys for clinical kidney regeneration and drug discovery.
better ways to perform linical trials in a dishto test drugs and therapies that might work in humans.
since they can be generated from individual patients suffering from illnesses involving the neurotransmitter. hese patient-specific serotonin neurons will be very useful to the discovery of new drugs for diseases ranging from depression
#Drug combo shows promise for skin cancer n transitnew melanoma research finds a combination therapy is highly effective at treating patients with skin metastases.
This could lead to the production of new drugs and next-generation biomaterials and to a better understanding of how ribosomes function.
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, Europe,
where the active drug molecules are extracted and refined into medicines. hen we started work a decade ago,
The technique should speed the development of drug and diagnostic compounds that would not have been possible
and drug therapeutics. Now, researchers at the University of Chicago have developed what they believe is a novel approach to control the activity of enzymes through the use of synthetic,
called VAR2CSA, could be used to target anticancer drugs and carry them to tumors expressing the specific carbohydrate residue."
and affordability means the technology could also find applications in drug development, food safety, environmental monitoring and veterinary medicine.
A team of Australian scientists has developed a new approach that sees the drugs carried safely inside a nanocapsule, opening up the treatment to more patients and lessening the chance of side effects.
and sets the drug free, allowing it go about its clot-destroying business. And because thrombin is only heavily present in young clots
"The intention is to give the drug as soon as possible. It could be given in a heart attack straight away,
which involved loading the drug into nanoparticles to improve the speed at which is destroys clots.
and has better potential as a drug for immediate treatment.""We prefer it to tpa
describing the capsule's ability to release the drugs and dissolve clots as"very responsive."
and for drug testing, as artificial tissue grown on them would respond realistically. And they could help scientists learn more about how cells in the body respond to different stimuli
virtually designing a new drug by choosing among quadrillions of possible combinations, or simulating the behavior of every single atom in your right toe.
virtually designing a new drug by choosing among quadrillions of possible combinations, or simulating the behavior of every single atom in your right toe.
A five-year study at the University of California at Los angeles found that coupling chemotherapy with an experimental drug called Birinapant greatly improved survivability in laboratory tissue.
and the drugs that are available can have unwanted side effects, such as shakiness, weight gain and decreased libido.
and vegetables and drug use. These are drawn from 79 biological, behavioural, environmental and occupational factors.
or where drug use was a greater problem in the southwest, southeast and the east of England than elsewhere.
romidepsin-a drug currently being used to treat cancer-to be the most potent, and thus successful, inhibitor trialled so far.
because it shows the effects of a more potent drug, which can activate or kick the virus out of hiding,
Researchers also found romidepsin coaxed the virus out of its reservoir without suppressing the body broader immune response. here been some concern that these drugs will suppress an immune response to the virus
#Drug Treats Protein That May Cause Alzheimer's disease The drug salsalate has been found to prevent and even reverse the development of tau protein tangles in mice with a condition similar to Alzheimer's disease.
Drugs with promise have been identified but progress has been slowed in part by debates over the disease's main culprit.
Currently, available drugs treat the symptoms but not the causes, and have limited benefits. Potential medications at different stages of development exist.
Gan sought a drug that would prevent acetylization from occurring.""We identified for the first time a pharmacological approach that reverses all aspects of tau toxicity,
However, these have been assessed as low enough to justify the drug's use against pain from both osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis
researchers could also begin to look for drug-resistant mutations, and mutations in regions that would indicate
#FDA approves first 3d printed drug Aprecia Pharmaceuticals owns Spritam (levetiracetam), a solid oral pill to treat epileptic seizures.
The drug is manufactured using a three-dimensional printer which creates a porous formulation that helps bioavailability and patient uptake,
The 3d printer lets the company create a pill with a high drug load up to 1, 000mg of levetiracetam, in a single dose.
This allows patients to take the largest strengths of the drug ith just a sip of liquid, helping children,
and it will soon be applied to other drugs. his is the first in a line of central nervous system products Aprecia plans to introduce as part of our commitment to transform the way patients experience taking medication,
The oral drug delivery market was worth over $64bn last year, according to Frost & Sullivan.
but this is the first FDA approval of a drug product. Aprecia formulation platform, which it calls Zipdose technology,
Translation is keyhis team saw translation as key to their strategy. ften macromolecular drugs are very hard to translate
The new drug was developed by Queens University Belfast, UK, and its efficacy in sepsis models was shown in collaboration with Trinity college Dublin, Ireland t
#Doctors can now put drugs straight into brains Doctors can now inject drugs straight into people brains,
and has proven a stumbling block for doctorsaim to get drugs straight to where they are needed.
because the impact of the drugs would be so much more immediate and powerful if it went straight into the brain.
They are special drugs based on protein and grown in a lab. Those drugs can eventually be used to treat brain diseases, doctors hope,
which are likely to become more prevalent as the population ages. The discovery has already been tested on animals, through a noninvasive procedure that put the molecules into rats.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011