Feature Channels: Pharmaceuticals

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Researchers in the cancer nanomedicine community debate whether use of tiny structures, called nanoparticles, can best deliver drug therapy to tumors passively — allowing the nanoparticles to diffuse into tumors and become held in place, or actively — adding a targeted anti-cancer molecule to bind to specific cancer cell receptors and, in theory, keep the nanoparticle in the tumor longer. Now, new research on human and mouse tumors in mice by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center suggests the question is even more complicated.

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Chemotherapy has been so unsuccessful against DIPG that researchers have questioned whether chemotherapy drugs are even able to reach the cancer. University of Colorado Cancer Center study shows, "... medicine does reach DIPG tissue in good quantities that have the potential to be effective against the tumor," says lead researcher.

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SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, continues to spread, leading to more than 20,000 deaths worldwide in less than four months. Efforts are progressing to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, but it's still likely 12 to 18 months away.

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Taking a low-dose aspirin once a day does not reduce the risk of thinking and memory problems caused by mild cognitive impairment or probable Alzheimer’s disease, nor does it slow the rate of cognitive decline, according to a large study published in the March 25, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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MD Anderson researchers find that treating T cells with panobinostat and IL-21 re-programs them to a powerful central memory T cell type that persists longer.

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Since the discovery of penicillin in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming, antibiotics have saved millions of lives from fatal infections world-wide. However, with time bacteria have developed mechanisms to escape the effects of antibiotics - they have become resistant.

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In ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology, researchers report that a single pharmaceutical manufacturing facility could be influencing the water quality of one of Europe’s most important rivers.

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Physician-scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) are now enrolling patients in two clinical trials testing treatment options for COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. Two trials, led by infectious disease specialist Kathryn Stephenson, MD, MPH, will test the antiviral drug remdesivir for safety and efficacy against the respiratory infection that has sickened more than 300,000 and killed more than 15,000 around the world to date.

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Researchers at four University of California Health medical centers have begun recruiting participants for a Phase II clinical trial to investigate the safety and efficacy of treating adult patients with COVID-19 with remdesivir, a drug that has shown promising activity against multiple viruses.

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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists are contributing to the global fight against COVID-19 by combining artificial intelligence/machine learning, bioinformatics and supercomputing to help discover candidates for new antibodies and pharmaceutical drugs to combat the disease.

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Breaking research in AACC’s The Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine shows that the fentanyl in epidurals can pass on to babies during labor. While the infants in this study did not experience adverse effects from this fentanyl transfer, this information is crucial to ensuring that new mothers don’t get falsely accused of fentanyl abuse, which can have dire social repercussions for mother and child.

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The following are various story ideas regarding the COVID-19 illness. To interview Johns Hopkins experts on these topics or others, contact [email protected].

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Up until recently, COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) may have been a relatively new phenomena to the general public, but Wichita State University medical chemist Bill Groutas, two virologists from Kansas State University, and a physician/virologist from the University of Iowa have been working on a cure for coronaviruses for more than three years.

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Drug therapies that help older adults maintain their skeletal muscle mass and physical function for longer could be a step closer after researchers at the University of Birmingham identify a key mechanism that drives the clearance of damaged mitochondria.

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A study led by The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has found that myelin is surprisingly dynamic, a discovery that has implications for treatment of multiple sclerosis and a type of myelin damage caused by some chemotherapy drugs, often referred to as “chemobrain.”

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James Diaz, MD, MHA, MPH & TM, Dr PH, Professor and Head of Environmental Health Sciences at LSU Health New Orleans School of Public Health, has proposed a possible explanation for the severe lung complications being seen in some people diagnosed with COVID-19.

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Children with aggressive blood cancers have differences — not just in the DNA code of their blood cells — but also in the heavily twisted protein superstructure that controls access to genes.

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April’s edition of SLAS Discovery features the cover article, “Maximizing the Value of Cancer Drug Screening in Multicellular Tumor Spheroid Cultures: A Case Study in Five Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma Cell Lines.”