Bisphosphonates have been used since the early 1990s in two indications. They are most famous as osteoporosis drugs, where even off-patent, Fosamax (alendronate sodium, Merck & Co. Inc.) – only one of several bisphosphonates – raked in more than $700 million in sales in 2013, according to Thomson Reuters Cortellis.

Human antibodies produced by transchromosomal cows protected hamsters from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, suggesting that passive vaccination could be a useful strategy against hantavirus.

Twenty-four years after the NIH established the Office of Research on Women's Health, and 21 years after the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993 first required that women be included in clinical trials, certainly the letter of the law has been achieved. Women are now the majority of participants in NIH-funded trials.

A group of five papers published in the Nov. 27, 2014, issue of Nature has deepened the understanding of how immuno-oncology works, and what might improve it, in several ways.

A class of HIV drugs could potentially be repurposed to treat dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), as well as used as a research tool and possibly a therapeutic option, for diseases that are due to activation of the inflammasome.

In humans, norovirus is known to many a traveler as the cruise ship virus which causes gastrointestinal disease. In mice, however, it is a harmless denizen of the gut that does not usually cause overt disease in the animals.

In principle, RNA interference is the next big thing in medicine. In practice, though it's mostly been another matter, due in large part to delivery issues.

One way to prevent or get rid of viral infections may be to up the body's antibacterial defenses. That is the unexpected upshot of work published in the Nov. 14, 2014, issue of Science.

Researchers at Medimmune Inc. have reported that a bispecific antibody, MEDI3902, could protect mice from infection with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that causes hospital-acquired pneumonia and is responsible for about 10 percent of all hospital-acquired infections in the U.S.

Microbicides become far less effective at preventing HIV infection in the presence of semen, a fact that may account for the discrepancy between their ability to kill HIV in vitro and their underwhelming performance in field trials.