Rapamycin is a decades-old drug, but it is still learning – or rather, still teaching scientists – new tricks. This week, researchers reported new insights into how the drug affects aging and metabolism – and most saliently, that its effects on the two can be separated.

At the 2011 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, MD Anderson professor Lee Ellis, in a talk about improving academic drug discovery, said that industrial researchers were unable to replicate half of the results published by their academic colleagues. (See BioWorld Today, June 8, 2011.)

Cancer biomarkers have high hopes riding on them, but, so far, low success rates. Of 150,000 biomarkers described in the literature, only about 100 have made it into clinical practice.

As far as bacteria go, tales of the heroic struggle between man and microbe – complete with warnings of coming plagues – may make for the most riveting stories.

Researchers have reported that knockout mice lacking either two specific types of major histocompatibility complex molecules or their receptor fared better after a stroke than their wild-type cousins.

Researchers at Rockefeller University have identified a new way in which some influenza virus strains fight off the host immune response. In the H3N2 strain, a common seasonal flu strain, the tail of the NS1 protein has striking sequence similarities to a protein that also happens to be named H3 – the host protein histone H3.

Researchers reported this week that in a mouse model of Rett syndrome, they were able to improve many of the symptoms of the disorder by giving the animals a bone marrow transplant of healthy cells.

Resveratrol, it seems, is turning into the duct tape of the biopharmaceutical industry. The compound is a much-touted anti-aging ingredient of red wine and dark chocolate, a metabolism health food supplement and experimental therapy – and now a possible chemotherapy drug.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia have identified a new set of mutations that make tumor cells vulnerable to Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase, or PARP, inhibitors. The genes in question, for cohesins, join BRCA and RAD51D as possible biomarkers for tumors that are sensitive to PARP inhibitors.

With big pharma's flight from central nervous system (CNS) drug discovery, one conclusion of a recent Tufts report seems surprising on first read: The CNS new product pipeline is among the richest in the research-based drug industry.