LONDON – Researchers have worked out how a normal brain protein can reduce levels of the harmful proteins that accumulate during the development of Alzheimer’s disease. The protein, called SORLA, is known to decrease concentrations of amyloid-beta peptides, which build up in Alzheimer’s disease.

LONDON – Treatment with a specific humanized antibody may be able to prevent the formation of blood clots without increasing the risk of bleeding. If the initial promise of the therapy, which has so far been tested only in animals, is fulfilled, the antibody could one day replace heparin as the treatment of choice for prevention of unwanted blood clots.

LONDON – Work on a fly model of Parkinson’s disease has helped researchers to obtain a new understanding of some of the genetic abnormalities that cause this condition, which may one day make it possible to provide patients with personalized therapy to relieve the symptoms.

LONDON – Researchers have for the first time identified some of the bacteria that live within marine sponges, and which have novel ways of synthesising metabolites that could one day provide new antibiotics or drugs to treat cancer.

LONDON – A better understanding of the metabolic pathways affected by mitochondrial defects linked to Parkinson’s disease could lead to new ways of preventing further deterioration in people diagnosed with this condition. The findings may even provide new targets for potential anticancer treatments, as some of the same pathways are also essential in rapidly dividing cancer cells.

LONDON – Sequencing the genomes of cells from patients with childhood leukemia has allowed scientists to pinpoint the sequence and type of mutations that lead to this disease.

LONDON – A candidate vaccine to protect against tuberculosis can protect mice against the disease at least as well as the current vaccine in use, the live bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG).

LONDON – A strategy that uses gene therapy to manipulate the type of host immune response that exists inside a tumor can cause tumors to shrink in a mouse model of breast cancer.

LONDON – A new generation of therapies for malaria, which target a molecule that has a crucial role in the parasite’s life cycle, could enter clinical trials within just a few years, researchers said.

LONDON – It may soon be possible to develop new analgesics that are as good as morphine when it comes to killing pain, yet do not have any of the unpleasant and sometimes dangerous side effects of that drug, such as constipation and respiratory depression.