Pretreatment with an experimental focal adhesion kinase inhibitor has been shown to improve chemotherapeutic efficiency and reduce metastasis in preclinical mouse and patient-derived models of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), with this priming regimen soon to enter phase II trials for PDAC using a novel, clinically relevant FAK inhibitor.

PARIS – Teams from the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, the Institute for Research in Development, Sorbonne University and the National Institute of Health and Medical Research are proposing a new technique that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to identify the risk of developing a type of cardiac arrhythmia called Torsades de pointes (TdP) associated with taking certain drugs.

Genome sequencing initiated to investigate how chronic liver disease leads on to hepatocellular carcinoma has instead uncovered mutations that impact fat metabolism and reduce the sensitivity of hepatocytes to insulin.

A novel pharmacologically targetable metabolic mechanism driving resistance to epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-targeting tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) has been identified in preclinical models of lung cancer in a Chinese study led by scientists at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine.

Blocking the interaction between two dengue virus (DENV) nonstructural proteins, NS3 and NS4B, with a newly developed small-molecule inhibitor resulted in potent antiviral activity in mouse models, according to an international collaborative study led by scientists at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), CD3 the Centre for Drug Design and Discovery in Leuven, and Janssen Pharmaceutica in Beerse, Belgium.

On the last day of this year’s Molecular Targets meeting, an annual joint conference of the American Association for Cancer Research, the National Cancer Institute and the European Organization for the Research and Treatment of Cancer, the final plenary went from molecular to macro in a lively discussion of the biggest roadblock in cancer drug development, and what can be done to improve it.

On the last day of this year’s Molecular Targets meeting, an annual joint conference of the American Association for Cancer Research, the National Cancer Institute and the European Organization for the Research and Treatment of Cancer, the final plenary went from molecular to macro in a lively discussion of the biggest roadblock in cancer drug development, and what can be done to improve it.

Targeted therapies are a classical example of a glass that can be seen as half full or half empty.

PARIS – A Russian research consortium has discovered that coating magnetic nanoparticles with a non-magnetic silica shell significantly decreased the viability of cancer cells in a low frequency alternating magnetic field. This discovery may augur new therapeutic prospects for nanotechnology combined with medical imaging.

Despite the identification of the APOE gene as the strongest genetic link to late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD) since 1993 and the subsequent advances in the understanding of AD pathogenesis, the development of effective consensus-directed treatment therapies has yet to be realized.