Even highly antibiotic-resistant bacteria become more vulnerable when their cell wall transport system is disrupted, according to a new study from Umeå University in Sweden. The discovery reveals a previously overlooked weakness that could help researchers develop new strategies to combat antibiotic resistance.

“The search for new antibiotics remains crucial, but we also need smarter ways to extend the lifespan of the antibiotics we already have.

An international team of scientists has found that a lactation drug could reduce the risk of breast cancer in mothers after childbirth.

Cabergoline, a medication used to stop milk production after pregnancy loss or when breastfeeding is not possible, is generally well tolerated by patients with few side effects. But it may also offer unexpected benefits.

A group of scientists led by Joseph Brown, assistant professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, has received $2.3 million USD in funding to develop a database and AI training model to identify peptides with therapeutic potential. The project is funded through the Google.org Impact Challenge: AI for Science initiative.

The newly funded initiative, OpenPep, will lead to an open access database that will allow researchers to use artificial intelligence (AI) to predict which peptides will bind to target proteins.

A team of scientists in Norway has found evidence for a new, previously unknown mechanism for the development of cancer in children: they seem to produce an unusual amount of aberrant antibodies against the building blocks that make up the DNA repair machinery, a diverse set of hundreds of proteins which identify and correct damage or errors in the genome. This important discovery could open the door to the early screening of small children, in the hope of ultimately preventing them from developing such pediatric cancers years in their teenage years.

Aggressive tumors often contain large amounts of exchromosomal DNA. Removing this DNA from the nuclei of cancer cells could improve patient outcomes, an international team led by Anton Henssen of the Experimental and Clinical Research Center reports in Nature Genetics.

Cells from rapidly growing, highly metastatic tumors often contain numerous rings of extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA).

Almost one billion people are projected to be living with osteoarthritis by 2050, up from about 600 million in 2023, and there remains no cure and no drug that can stop or slow the disease, according to a new roadmap published in The Lancet.

A Curtin University-led group of international researchers is calling for stronger health policy action to arrest the growing global disability burden.

Doctors’ prescribing habits are heavily influenced by payments, gifts, and free meals from pharmaceutical companies, leading to more expensive, less appropriate and more drugs being prescribed, a new Cochrane review finds. This can seriously harm both individual patients and health systems.

Pharmaceutical companies use a variety of strategies to market and promote their drugs.