Breaking WORLD PHARMA NEWS

Immune cells prevent lung healing after viral infection

Investigators involved in a multicenter study co-led by Cedars-Sinai discovered a pathway by which immune cells prevent the lungs' protective barrier from healing after viral infections like COVID-19. The findings, published in Nature may lead to new therapeutic treatment options.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how viral infections can cause long-lasting effects - a condition called long COVID. Also known as post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2, long COVID has left a devastating trail of people who continue to live with long-term debilitation after infection.

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Newly discovered antibody protects against all COVID-19 variants

Researchers have discovered an antibody able to neutralize all known variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as well as distantly related SARS-like coronaviruses that infect other animals.

As part of a new study on hybrid immunity to the virus, the large, multi-institution research team led by The University of Texas at Austin discovered and isolated a broadly neutralizing plasma antibody, called SC27, from a single patient.

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New pharmaceutically active substances from billions of newly combined molecules

Nowadays, there's lots of buzz about spectacular new medical treatments such as personalised cancer therapy with modified immune cells or antibodies. Such treatments, however, are very complex and expensive and so find only limited application. Most medical therapies are still based on small chemical compounds that can be produced in large quantities and thus at low cost.

The bottleneck in the development of new molecular therapies is the limited number of new active substances that can be found using current techniques. A method developed in the 2000s at Harvard and ETH Zurich promises to provide a remedy: DNA-encoded chemical libraries (DEL).

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Bayer and NextRNA Therapeutics enter strategic collaboration to develop small molecules targeting long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in oncology

Bayer and NextRNA Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on developing transformative medicines to address long non-coding RNA (lncRNA)-driven diseases, have entered into a collaboration and license agreement to develop small molecule therapeutics targeting lncRNAs in oncology. lncRNAs represent a vast class of therapeutic targets that recruit RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) to drive pathological processes across diseases. Disrupting lncRNA-RBP interactions with small molecules represents an innovative approach to develop a new class of therapeutic agents.

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Pfizer launches PfizerForAll™, a digital platform that helps simplify access to healthcare

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) introduced PfizerForAll, a user-friendly digital platform designed to make access to healthcare and managing health and wellness more seamless for people across the U.S. The new, end-to-end experience will support the millions of Americans affected annually by common illnesses like migraine, COVID-19 or flu, and those seeking to protect themselves with adult vaccinations. By bringing together critical resources and services into a single destination, PfizerForAll helps individuals and their families cut down on the time and steps needed to take important health actions like getting care, filling prescriptions, and finding potential savings on Pfizer medicines.

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A discovery to set your heart a-knocking

In the late 1960s, three Weizmann Institute of Science researchers developed several protein-like molecules, called copolymers, that they believed would produce a disease similar to multiple sclerosis in laboratory animals. The scientists - Prof. Michael Sela, Prof. Ruth Arnon and Dr. Dvora Teitelbaum - were surprised to discover that, instead of causing the disease, the copolymers cured it; one of these molecules became the widely-used drug Copaxone. More than half a century later, in a new study being published in Nature Cardiovascular Research,

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Common salt activates anti-tumor cells

Sodium chloride, commonly known as "table salt", was a valuable commodity in history. Today, table salt is cheap and indispensable in the kitchen. It is therefore not surprising that it has long since found its way into our everyday language - although not all expressions always bode well. However, the phrase “rubbing salt into the wound” could soon be given a positive twist, namely in cancer therapy.

In the past, cancer was usually a death sentence, but research has made considerable progress in recent decades and has significantly increased the survival time with a high quality of life for many types of cancer.

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Game-changing needle-free COVID-19 intranasal vaccine

A next-generation COVID-19 mucosal vaccine is set to be a gamechanger not only when delivering the vaccine itself, but also for people who are needle-phobic.

New Griffith University research, published in Nature Communications, has been testing the efficacy of delivering a COVID-19 vaccine via the nasal passages.

Professor Suresh Mahalingam from Griffith's Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics has been working on this research for the past four years.

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Deadly sea snail toxin could be key to making better medicines

Scientists are finding clues for how to treat diabetes and hormone disorders in an unexpected place: a toxin from one of the most venomous animals on the planet.

A multinational research team led by University of Utah scientists has identified a component within the venom of a deadly marine cone snail, the geography cone, that mimics a human hormone called somatostatin, which regulates the levels of blood sugar and various hormones in the body.

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AI can speed up drug development

Artificial intelligence (AI) can help identify molecules that could serve as new drugs for mental health disorders. AI can be used to predict the three-dimensional structures of important receptors and thereby speed up the development of potential drugs. This is the result of a new study from Uppsala University published in Science Advances.

In drug development, experimental methods are often used to determine the three-dimensional structures of target proteins and to understand how molecules bind to them.

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