News by Subject Medicine & Health

A team of University of Houston pharmaceutical researchers is reporting a newly recognized process of drug metabolism in the intestines - followed by recycling through the liver - that could have important implications for developing treatments for intestinal diseases and for taking multiple medications at the same time.

More doesn't necessarily mean better - including in cancer treatment. University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists report today in Science Translational Medicine that combining targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy with immunotherapy significantly boosts eradication of metastatic cancer in mice, even when the radiation is given in doses too low to destroy the cancer outright.

Researchers in the University of Arizona Health Sciences Comprehensive Pain and Addiction Center have found that terpenes mimic cannabinoids and produce similar pain-relieving effects, which are amplified when the two are used together.

Dmitri Simberg, PhD, associate professor in the University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy, released the results of a study of the effectiveness of different types of fluorescent labels used to monitor the accumulation of liposomes in tumors. The study, titled "Liposomal Extravasation and Accumulation in Tumors as Studied by Fluorescence Microscopy and Imaging Depend on the Fluorescent Label," was published on July 1, 2021, in the journal of the American Chemical Society, ACS Nano.

The body is filled with mucus that keeps track of the bacteria. Now, researchers from the University of Copenhagen present the first method for producing artificial mucus. They hope that the artificial mucus, which consists of sugary molecules, may help to develop completely new, medical treatments.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is able to recognise the biological activity of natural products in a targeted manner, as researchers at ETH Zurich have demonstrated. Moreover, AI helps to find molecules that have the same effect as a natural substance but are easier to manufacture. This opens up huge possibilities for drug discovery, which also have potential to rewrite the rulebook for pharmaceutical research.