Almost 50 percent of drugs that are currently on the market target G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). But Stuart Maudsley, head of the receptor pharmacology unit at the National Institute of Aging's Laboratory of Neurosciences, thinks that medical research has only scratched the surface of their therapeutic possibilities.
Researchers from Sangamo BioSciences Inc. and colleagues from the Italian San Raffaele Biosciences Institute have used Sangamo's zinc finger nuclease technology to create leukemia-fighting T cells. They described their approach in the April 1, 2012, online issue of Nature Medicine, as well as at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation earlier this month.
Scientists from the University of California, Davis, have gained new insights into the initial phase of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which kills about 3 million people a year in the U.S.
By treating mice with an inhibitor of one type of glutamate receptor, scientists from Roche AG have been able to reverse most symptoms of Fragile X disease in young adult animals. The findings add to the evidence that Fragile X, like a number of other neurodevelopmental disorders, remains treatable even after symptoms have developed.
In findings that run directly counter to prevailing wisdom, researchers have found that proinflammatory responses may be protective against the progression of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which is the leading cause of blindness in the developed world.
Targeted therapies and immunotherapies are in one sense opposites. Targeted therapies have high response rates and spectacular remissions, but those remissions are all too often short-lived, leading ultimately to a rather slim survival advantage.
Two papers have identified a receptor pair that links the circadian rhythm to metabolism – a finding that might lead to new approaches to treating both sleep and metabolic disorders.
Scientists from BIND Biosciences Inc., with colleagues from both academia and industry, reported data Wednesday on a targeted therapy, BIND-014, that is able to specifically deliver chemotherapy docetaxel to prostate tumor cells and the vasculature of many different types of solid tumors.
Buoyed by ever-faster sequencing abilities, scientists are making headway in understanding cancer genomics. But, William Sellers told the audience at the American Association of Cancer Research meeting this week, as impressive as genomic advances have been, "most known genetic alterations have not led directly to drug candidates."
At last year's annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology, Pharmacyclics Inc.'s PCI-32765 wowed with its ability to fight chronic lymphocytic leukemia. This week at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, the drug – now named ibrutinib and partnered with of Johnson & Johnson unit Janssen Research and Development LLC, in a deal that could ultimately be worth nearly $1 billion – showed its qualities in another type of cancer.
