Using a novel high-throughput screening process, scientists have for the first time identified molecules with the potential to block the accumulation of a toxic eye protein that can lead to early onset of glaucoma. Researchers have implicated a mutant form of a protein called myocilin as a possible root cause of this increased eye pressure. Mutant myocilin is toxic to the cells in the part of the eye that regulates pressure.

A team of scientists from the University of Leicester has demonstrated a novel treatment for Hairy Cell Leukaemia (HCL), a rare type of blood cancer, using a drug administered to combat skin cancer. The research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, indicates Vemurafenib, a BRAF inhibitor that has been approved as a treatment for advanced melanomas, is also successful in treating leukaemia.

For patients in the early stages of multiple sclerosis (MS), low levels of vitamin D were found to strongly predict disease severity and hasten its progression, according to a new study led by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) investigators in collaboration with Bayer HealthCare. The findings suggest that patients in the early stages of MS could stave off disease symptoms by increasing their vitamin D intake.

As concerns about bacterial resistance to antibiotics grow, researchers are racing to find new kinds of drugs to replace ones that are no longer effective. One promising new class of molecules called acyldepsipeptides - ADEPs - kills bacteria in a way that no marketed antibacterial drug does - by altering the pathway through which cells rid themselves of harmful proteins.

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have demonstrated the power of a new drug discovery technique, which allows them to find - relatively quickly and cheaply - antibodies that have a desired effect on cells. The TSRI scientists used the technique to discover two antibodies that protect human cells from a cold virus.

Reservoirs of pharmaceuticals could be manufactured to bind specifically to infected tissue such as cancer cells for slow, concentrated delivery of drug treatments, according to new research published in ACS Macro Letters. The findings, from the University of Copenhagen and the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), came as a result of neutron reflectometry studies at the world's leading neutron source in Grenoble, France.

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have described a pair of drug candidates that advance the search for new treatments for pain, addiction and other disorders. The two new drug scaffolds, described in a recent edition of The Journal of Biological Chemistry, offer researchers novel tools that act on a demonstrated therapeutic target, the kappa opioid receptor (KOR), which is located on nerve cells and plays a role in the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine.