Researchers gathered in Seattle last week to share their latest progress in fighting HIV and the infectious diseases that come in its wake at the 2015 annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.

Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have developed a biomarker that could be broadly useful to test the effectiveness of many different cancer drugs in many different tumor types.

A class of experimental therapeutics that is being tested in both cancer and wound healing indications may have found another home. Researchers from Karyopharm Therapeutics Inc. and collaborators at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine have reported that treatment with a class of drugs they have termed Selective Inhibitors of Nuclear Export, or SINE compounds, slowed down disease progression in mouse models of multiple sclerosis and axonal damage.

Two independent research teams have used nanotechnology approaches to directly treat atherosclerotic plaques, by preventing their formation and stabilizing them, respectively.

Antioxidants seem to be on a Bill Cosby-like downward spiral from wholesomeness to villainy. The newest accusations can be found in the Feb. 9, 2015, issue of Cancer Cell, where scientists reported that antioxidants drove both the initiation and the progression of tumors, and that blocking antioxidant pathways could destroy tumor cells.

Researchers from the nearly 90 NIH-funded groups that make up the Roadmap Epigenomics Consortium have published more than 100 reference epigenomes, along with insights into the role those epigenomes play in several diseases, and methodological papers describing how to gather, analyze and interpret epigenomics data, and commentaries putting the work into perspective.

As antibiotic resistance grows, it is increasingly recognized as not just a public health issue. Drug-resistant bacteria, like viruses with pandemic potential, have the capacity to overwhelm health care systems and cause broader social disruption. Even now, without such social disruption, their overall impact is shocking.

Researchers have developed a chemically modified form of insulin whose activity depends, to a degree, on blood sugar levels. They hope their "smart" insulin will allow better blood sugar control for diabetes patients.