Breaking WORLD PHARMA NEWS

Can AI find drugs to fight infection?

Streptococcus pneumoniae is a bacterial pathogen that causes life-threatening infections, including pneumonia and meningitis. These infections are commonly treated with antibiotics, but antibiotics are becoming less effective against S. pneumoniae over time due to changes in the pathogen that cause drug resistance. This phenomenon, called antimicrobial resistance, is resulting in significant healthcare costs and deaths around the world.

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How interferon changes cancerous blood stem cells

The biologic drug interferon-alpha can benefit patients with blood cancers called myeloproliferative neoplasms by forcing mutant blood stem cells to become shorter-lived white blood cells, according to a study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. Because the broad activity of interferon-alpha can induce significant side effects,

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New US Medicare pricing policies could reshape global pharmaceutical markets

New US Medicare pricing policies could reshape global pharmaceutical markets, potentially driving up prices and delaying medicine launches worldwide, study suggests. A new modelling study published in The Lancet suggests that US Medicare's new 'Most-Favoured-Nation' pricing policy [1], which ties what Medicare pays for medicines to prices charged in other high-income countries,

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Pfizer advances today's cancer care and tomorrow's potential breakthroughs at ESMO

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) will present data from 45 company-sponsored, investigator-sponsored, and collaborative research abstracts at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, taking place October 23-27, 2026 in Madrid, Spain. The presentations include 11 oral presentations spanning Pfizer’s established medicines and late-stage pipeline across its disease areas of focus, including breast cancer, genitourinary cancers, and lung cancer.

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Experimental study points to systemic sclerosis treatment

Investigators at Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University used an experimental drug to reverse the effects of systemic sclerosis, a serious autoimmune disease. The study, conducted in a laboratory, was published in JCI Insight.

Systemic sclerosis, also called scleroderma, is a chronic, life-threatening condition that scars the skin, lungs, heart and other organs.

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An open letter from the Chairs of AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Chiesi Group, Ipsen, GSK, Novo, Novartis, Roche, and Sanofi

We are proud Europeans. We serve as Chairs of companies born from European science, rooted in laboratories across Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and beyond. Our duty is to safeguard our companies’ future so that we can continue to discover and develop life-changing medicines for patients.

The pharmaceutical sector is one of our continent's great post-war achievements. Built on investment in science, world-class universities, and the determination to discover medicines that change lives.

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New method causes cancer cells to burn out

Pushing the accelerator and the brake at the same time is rarely a good idea. But researchers at the University of Gothenburg are using this approach to treat leukemia. A new drug forces cancer cells to keep working hard even though they have run out of energy. The first study in mice shows very promising results.

A team led by Leif Eriksson at the University of Gothenburg and Boaz Tirosh at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland has developed a new treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

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Tiny molecular rings open new ways for designing better medicines

Cyclopropanes are organic chemistry’s smallest rings. Three carbon atoms are joined in a triangle, creating a compact and unusually strained structure. Despite - or partly because of - this unusual geometry, cyclopropanes are found in many biologically active natural products and have important applications in medicines and drug discovery, from antidepressants to antibiotics and antiviral research.

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Mini-tumors reveal new drug combinations for liver cancer

Liver cancer is difficult to treat because tumors vary greatly from patient to patient. Researchers at the University of Basel have captured this diversity by creating a collection of mini-tumors, which they use to systematically search for new treatment options. They tested more than 1,600 compounds using these organoids and used the results to develop promising drug combinations.

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AI-informed AdaptiveFlow redefines large-scale cloud computing for drug discovery

Researchers today announce AdaptiveFlow, an AI-informed platform that can virtually screen billions of drug-like molecules with a 1,000-fold reduction in computational costs over existing methods. Developed and validated by scientists from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, University of Pavia, Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, AdaptiveFlow allows prohibitively expensive ultra-large virtual drug screens to be done routinely. The open-source platform was published in Nature Biotechnology.

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