For decades, researchers have tried to duplicate the function of beta cells, the tiny insulin-producing entities that don't work properly in patients with diabetes. Insulin injections provide painful and often imperfect substitutes. Transplants of normal beta cells carry the risk of rejection or side effects from immunosuppressive therapies.

Millions of people today take statins to help lower their cholesterol level. Currently statins are prescribed to patients based on their future risk of cardiovascular disease - mainly driven by age - which excludes many individuals who may benefit from them. A new study led by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) in Montreal, with collaborators from the United-States, is changing the way we think about prescribing statins.

Two widely used targeted therapy drugs approved by the FDA for the treatment of metastatic kidney cancer - sorafenib and sunitinib - are no more effective than a placebo in preventing return of the disease to increase life spans of patients suffering from advanced kidney cancer after surgery, according to a new multi-institutional study in the Lancet led by a researcher at the Abramson Cancer Center (ACC) of the University of Pennsylvania.

A group of the Lomonosov Moscow State University scientists, together with their colleagues from the Institute of Molecular Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences and the King's College London, succeeded in sorting out the mechanism of Alzheimer's disease development and possibly distinguished its key trigger. Their article was published in Scientific Reports.

The Health division of Wolters Kluwer, a leading global provider of information and point of care solutions for the healthcare industry, is aiding clinicians in the battle against the rapidly spreading Zika virus through free online access to a number of its industry leading medical content and clinical decision support resources.

A computer program that can predict whether or not a given pharmaceutical will have worrying side effects has been developed by researchers in the USA. Jamiul Jahid and Jianhua Ruan of the Department of Computer Science, at the University of Texas at San Antonio, have developed the "in silico" testing system for drugs in the early stage of drug development.

Rhesus monkeys were completely protected from Ebola virus when treated three days after infection with a compound that blocks the virus's ability to replicate. These encouraging preclinical results suggest the compound, known as GS-5734, should be further developed as a potential treatment, according to research findings published online this week in the journal Nature.