Tobacco use triggers a number of common diseases in humans including heart disease and lung cancer. However, a group of scientists from Europe may be tobacco's saving grace. They successfully used genetically modified tobacco plants to generate medicines for a number of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The study was part of the Pharma-Planta project, which was funded under the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) to the tune of EUR 12 million.

More than 60% of U.S. adults turn to the Internet as a decision support tool in healthcare and disease management, and certain condition groups are more likely to use online health resources than others, according to pharmaceutical and healthcare market research company Manhattan Research. Acne, restless leg syndrome, and cancer patients are among the top ten therapeutic categories adopting eHealth activities, which can range from reading a health-related blog to joining an online patient community.

Scientists in the UK have incorporated artificial intelligence (AI) and a sophisticated set of algorithms into a robot, named Adam, that can develop hypotheses and carry out a whole scientific experimentation cycle. The research, published in the journal Science, paves the way for dramatically increasing the rate of scientific progress.

CAST PHARMA, a premier European 3D pharmaceutical and biomedical animation production company, has announced the opening of the new office in Ballerup, Denmark. This new office will allow Cast Pharma to meet the growing demand in the Northern Europe pharmaceutical market and to improve services to existing clients.

Transinsight announced today that the consortium formed with RESprotect, Antikörper-Online, and the Bioinformatics group of Prof. Dr. Michael Schroeder at TU Dresden, has won the Theseus-Mittelstand for R&D project GoOn. Over the next two years, the project - based on the results of Theseus One - will develop praxis-relevant semantic technologies for information handling in the biomedical domain.

Connectivity and community are key components of the growing population of cancer patients using innovative resources to take more of an empowered role in their condition and treatment management. According to Manhattan Research's Cybercitizen Health™ study, more than sixty percent of cancer patients are eHealth Consumers, reporting to go online for health information.

A health insurance protocol intended to promote the use of effective, cheaper medications may create barriers that lead people to receive less of needed medications, according to a Thomson Reuters study. As a result, patients ultimately require more - and more costly - medical care.