Combination treatment with Bactericidal/Permeability-Increasing protein (BPI) and an antibiotic that is the veterinary equivalent of Cipro (ciprofloxacin, Bayer AG) – was able to save three-quarters of mice subjected to radiation levels that almost unfailingly killed their untreated cousins.
Recombinant proteins are some of the biggest blockbusters around. They are anything but trivial to produce, as issues from shortages to tainted heparin have shown over the past few years.
Caloric restriction doesn't just extend the life span of people. Bacteria can become all-but-impervious to antibiotics when nutrients are limited – a phenomenon that is known as tolerance, to distinguish it from resistance, which is caused by mutations. Tolerance is particularly pronounced in biofilms, bacterial films, which are a problem on medical devices from catheters to hip implants.
Women suffering from recurrent urinary tract infections (UTI) may soon finally be able to limit the cranberry juice to Thanksgiving. Scientists have described a series of compounds this week that, in animal studies, fight the bacterium that is behind 85 percent to 90 percent of UTIs.
With 230 million prescriptions written annually, opioid drugs are "the drug of choice for addressing severe pain," session moderator Allan Basbaum, from the University of California at San Francisco, told reporters this week at a press conference on new approaches to pain relief at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
One consequence of understanding the molecular underpinnings of cancer is that the disease has become increasingly fragmented. What was once a monolithic disorder is becoming, in one sense, a group of orphan diseases – a fact that has brought spectacular successes in the form of molecularly targeted therapies for some patients, but also brings obvious challenges for an industry still used to, or at least still pining for, blockbusters.
Results from a study published this week suggest a way to get the benefits of one class of diabetes drugs - thiazolidinediones, or TZDs, such Actos (pioglitazone, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.) and Avandia (rosiglitazone, GlaxoSmithKline plc) - without their side effects.
SAN FRANCISCO – Good science, it is said, brings more questions along with its answers. And by that standard, too, the results from Pharmasset Inc.'s ELECTRON Phase II trial of PSI-7977 presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease (AASLD) last week were impressive.
This week, researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center showed that they have achieved fairly remarkable fat loss – and have done so in monkeys, which are far more similar to humans in their metabolism than rats and mice are – by treating them with a peptide that cuts off the blood supply specifically to their fat cells.
SAN FRANCISCO - Hepatitis C treatment is in a strange space right now. The approval earlier this year of the first two direct-acting antiviral drugs, Incivek (telaprevir, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.) and Victrelis (boceprevir, Merck & Co. Inc.) has brought new options to hepatitis C patients.The approval of telaprevir and boceprevir has already prompted the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases to release new treatment guidelines for hepatitis C.
