Feature Channels: Drug Resistance

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Researchers have discovered a new way to attack fungal infections. The key is to block fungi from being able to make fatty acids, the major component of fats.

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Researchers in UNC School of Medicine’s Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery and collaborators at Yale Cancer Center and ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group have identified two subtypes of human papillomavirus positive head and neck cancers, giving them a better glimpse into why some patients respond better to treatment than others.

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The Association for Diagnostics and Laboratory Medicine (ADLM), formerly AACC, welcomed thousands of laboratory experts to the 2023 AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo from July 23-27. At this year’s special meeting celebrating ADLM’s 75th anniversary, the organization officially rolled out a new name that reflects the association’s role as advocate and champion for a larger community specializing in diagnostics and laboratory medicine, as well as its global reach.

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Penicillin allergy affects more than 25 million people in the United States (up to 1 in 10 Americans) and has been shown to lead to particularly poor health outcomes in pregnant women and surgical patients. It is also a public health threat, leading to antibiotic resistance and infections in hospitalized patients that can be life threatening.

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Prostate cancer is resistant to one of the most powerful chemotherapy medications — cisplatin. Now, researchers in ACS Central Science have developed the first therapy of its kind that disrupts prostate cancer cells’ metabolism and releases cisplatin into the weakened cells, causing them to die.

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Though antibiotics can treat leprosy, researchers are concerned about the increase in drug-resistant strains. Now, a team reporting in ACS Central Science has begun to understand the role certain immune receptors play in leprosy, which could lead to new types of treatments for this disease.

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Scientists at McMaster University and India’s University of Delhi have discovered and isolated the first live culture of the drug-resistant pathogen Candida auris from an animal, specifically from the ear canals of stray dogs.

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A roundup of the latest medical discoveries and faculty news at Cedars-Sinai for June 2023.

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Graham Hatfull has pioneered the use of bacteriophages, or just “phages,” to combat antibiotic resistant infections. He was honored with the Gardner Middlebrook Lifetime Achievement award for his research.

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Therapy of the dangerous infectious disease of tuberculosis faces the challenge of pathogens frequently being resistant to several common antibiotics. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have now developed nanoparticles to deliver new antibiotics directly to the lungs in future. Surfactants ensure that the highly fat-soluble antibiotics disperse very finely in water and can be inhaled. First tests at the Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Lung Center, reveal a high effectiveness and good compatibility of the nanocarriers of antibiotics. The researchers report in ACS Nano. (DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.3c01664)

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For many patients with hypertension—an elevated blood pressure that can lead to stroke or heart attack—medication keeps the condition at bay. But what happens when medication that physicians usually prescribe doesn’t work? Known as apparent resistant hypertension (aRH), this form of high blood pressure requires more medication and medical management.

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A genetic marker discovered by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers could help physicians predict which patients with hepatocellular carcinoma are most likely to develop resistance to the drug lenvatinib. The finding, published in the journal Gastroenterology, may lead to alternative treatments for the most common form of liver cancer.

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New McMaster research has found that a disease-causing fungus — collected from one of the most remote regions in the world — is resistant to a common antifungal medicine used to treat infections.

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Researchers at the University of Birmingham have demonstrated that silver retains antimicrobial activity for longer when it is impregnated into ‘bioactive glass’, and shown for the first time how this promising combination delivers more long-lasting antimicrobial wound protection than conventional alternatives.