While searching for mechanisms of resistance to one targeted cancer therapy, researchers have identified a signaling mechanism that can lead to resistance to multiple targeted and chemotherapy cancer drugs alike.

Vaccines are among the greatest public health triumphs ever. But they do not work equally well for all infectious diseases. "There are certain diseases which we have had a hard time controlling," Nimalan Arinaminpathy told BioWorld Today.

The reason a highly effective HIV vaccine has eluded medical researchers to date is the speed with which the virus evolves. HIV, it appears, can find ways around any antigen that has been thrown at it to date.

Scientists reported on a new innate immune system-signaling pathway this week. Specifically targeting that pathway may make it possible to stop the tissue damage that cytokine signaling can cause without suppressing the immune system.

Multiple sclerosis is perhaps the best known of the demyelinating disorders, where loss of the insulating sheath surrounding neurons makes high-speed communication impossible.

By chemically linking two hormones that affect metabolism, scientists have managed to "turbocharge" the effects of one while getting rid of the toxicities that have plagued the other.

As far as the relationship between Alzheimer's disease and amyloid plaques is concerned, the mystery continues.

Gene therapy has certainly had its share of drama even by the standards of the biotech world, where life-and-death situations are, in many indications, par for the course. But with improved safety, it is now being tested even in indications that are more about quality of life, not life or death.

To many people, intellectual disability and developmental delay are synonymous. The Latin root of "retarded," in fact, means to delay, or slow down.