The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson announced results from the ECLIPSE study demonstrating that Tremfya® (guselkumab) was superior to Cosentyx® (secukinumab)* in treating adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis for the primary endpoint assessed at week 48. Data from the multicentre, randomised, double-blind head-to-head Phase 3 study demonstrated that 84.5…
New research from the University of Adelaide’s Robinson Research Institute supports the need for dietary and lifestyle interventions before overweight and obese women become pregnant. The researchers have reported the results of a large study of birth outcomes in more than 500 overweight or obese women from three public maternity units in Adelaide, Australia.
Taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, or statins, as a preventive measure can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. A study by the University of Zurich now shows that this measure is recommended too often, as current guidelines fail to take into account the risks of side effects. Even healthy people who don't suffer from a cardiovascular disease are prescribed statins if they meet certain risk…
Although traditionally an imaging modality, ultrasound also has applications as a measurement tool. An innovative application is to assess ear infections. Otitis Media (OM), a middle ear infection, is the number one indication for antibiotic prescriptions for children and the leading cause for surgery. This problem is global. Nearly every child will suffer at least one middle ear infection severe…
The selection of a first-line chemotherapy drug to treat many types of cancer is often a clear-cut decision governed by standard-of-care protocols, but what drug should be used next if the first one fails? That’s where Georgia Institute of Technology researchers believe their new open source decision support tool could come in. Using machine learning to analyze RNA expression tied to…
To simulate the blood circulation and the organs of animals or humans, engineers from Fraunhofer in Dresden have developed a so-called "multi-organ chip". This microsystem from the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS Dresden has now received an "EARTO Innovation Award" in Brussels. The "lab-on-a-chip" will help industry to develop new drugs and…
The most common form of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB) originated in Europe and spread to Asia, Africa and the Americas with European explorers and colonialists, reveals a new study led by UCL and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
Enthusiasm for an emerging digital health tool, the smart pill, is on the rise but researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have published a paper in the American Journal of Bioethics that cautions health care providers and policymakers to slow down when it comes to allowing this technology in patient care settings.
An international collaboration between Imperial College London, Singapore's Duke-NUS Medical School and Belgium-based pharmaceutical company UCB led to the discovery of a new anti-epileptic drug target and a whole new approach that promises to speed up the discovery of future drugs to treat debilitating diseases, such as epilepsy.
Using a new approach called 'reinforced learning', researchers have taught an artificial intelligence (AI) to responsibly choose the right amount of chemo- and radiotherapy for glioblastoma patients. The technique, which is insprired by behavioural psychology, has given the AI the ability to master the tightrope walk between effective tumor shrinkage and the medications' severe side effects.
A multidisciplinary team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) technology platform that could potentially change the way drug combinations are being designed, hence enabling doctors to determine the most effective drug combination for a patient quickly. Applying the platform towards drug resistant multiple myeloma, a type of…
Researchers Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center report that they figured out why air sacs in the lungs clog up with a thick substance called surfactant in a brutal disease called Pulmonary Alveolar Proteinosis (PAP), and they show taking cholesterol-busting pills called statins can effectively treat the disease.
For the first time, a team of international researchers have mapped the family trees of cancer cells in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) to understand how this blood cancer responds to a new drug, enasidenib. The work also explains what happens when a patient stops responding to the treatment, providing important clues about how to combine enasidenib with other anti-cancer drugs to produce…
Adopting new guidelines for high blood pressure (hypertension) would dramatically increase the number of people labeled as having the condition and being recommended for drug treatment, finds a study published by The BMJ today. The findings show that, if the guidelines were introduced in the US and China, more than half of those aged 45-75 years in both countries would be considered hypertensive.
An existing malaria drug could improve the effectiveness of a new class of cancer therapies, called glutaminase inhibitors, if used in combination, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q) discovered in a new study.
Researchers at the Kennedy Institute and Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences, University of Oxford, working with clinicians at NHS Lothian, have found that injection of the anti-TNF drug adalimumab into Dupuytren's disease nodules results in the reduction of the cell characteristics responsible for progression of Dupuytren's disease.
Medicines given to household pets to kill fleas and ticks might be effective for preventing outbreaks of malaria, Zika fever and other dangerous insect-borne diseases that infect millions of people worldwide, according to a new study led by scientists at Calibr, a non-profit drug discovery institute closely affiliated with Scripps Research and TropIQ Health Sciences, a Dutch social enterprise.
New methods of studying the evolution of treatment resistance in head and neck cancer are being developed by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. The scientists wanted to examine how cancers acquire resistance to treatment over time and whether those changes could be modeled computationally to determine patient-specific timelines of resistance.
Until now ulcers inside the mouth have been treated using creams or mouthwashes for the whole mouth. A new biodegradable patch administers steroids directly to oral ulcers and forms a protective barrier. Scientists from the University of Sheffield’s School of Clinical Dentistry, working in close collaboration with Dermtreat A/S from Copenhagen, have developed a unique patch using special…
FDA approves first drug comprised of an active ingredient derived from marijuana to treat rare, severe forms of epilepsy.
A new SLAS Discovery original research article available now for free ahead-of-print, researchers from the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) highlights a diversity of approaches that their automated high-throughput flow cytometry has enabled for phenotypic drug discovery. Flow cytometry is a very powerful tool that has been used for decades and allows for…
Clinical trial enrolment favours men, according to a study presented at Heart Failure 2018 and the World Congress on Acute Heart Failure, a European Society of Cardiology congress.1 The study found that fewer women meet eligibility criteria for trials of heart failure medication. Helena Norberg, author of the study, junior lecturer and PhD student, Umeå University, Sweden, said: “One of the…
Pediatric researchers have found that children and adults treated with some oral antibiotics have a significantly higher risk of developing kidney stones. This is the first time that these medicines have been linked to this condition. The strongest risks appeared at younger ages and among patients most recently exposed to antibiotics. “The overall prevalence of kidney stones has risen by 70…
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a global and growing problem in health care. To be able to prevent further development of resistance developing, it is important to understand where and how antibiotic resistance in bacteria arises. New research from Uppsala University shows that low concentrations of antibiotics, too, can cause high antibiotic resistance to develop in bacteria. In the present…
Partners who could hardly be further apart – yet have a lot in common – have united to fight resistant pathogens. The International Consortium for Anti-Infective Research (iCAIR) is based in Germany and Australia – separated by nearly 16,000 km as the crow flies. This has not stopped the research cooperation from achieving its objectives: the development of new agents against infections.