Many countries are using too many powerful and inappropriate antibiotics, fuelling antibiotic resistance concerns, while millions lack access to the specific drugs they need. That is according to a major international study of antibiotic use published in The Lancet Public Health.

Research led by City St George's, University of London and University of Oxford developed the first global framework that estimates how many and which type of antibiotics each country needs to treat their infections.

Use of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity are associated with an increased risk of hair loss (alopecia) in adults with type 2 diabetes, finds a study published by The BMJ.

Although the absolute risk is low, awareness of this potential effect may help to inform shared treatment decisions, say the researchers.

Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have uncovered the first high-resolution structure of NBCn2, a brain protein linked to epilepsy, autism spectrum disorder, and other neurological conditions, and developed the first compounds capable of inhibiting its activity. The findings provide a new framework for studying how altered brain signaling contributes to disease and may help advance future therapeutic research.

Antibiotic resistance has quietly become one of the greatest threats to global healthcare. Each year, drug-resistant bacteria claim lives by rendering once-reliable antibiotics ineffective, turning routine surgeries, cancer treatments, and even common infections into potentially life-threatening events.

Scientists around the world are racing to find new ways to stay ahead of these evolving pathogens. The answer may not lie in discovering an entirely new antibiotic, but in reinventing the chemistry behind the ones we already have.

In a promising development for cancer treatment, a collaborative research team has overcome two issues that have prevented photo thermal therapy, a much less invasive treatment option than surgery and/or radiation, from becoming more common.

Photothermal therapy uses near-infrared laser light to selectively heat and destroy cancer cells. However, when the immune system senses the nanoparticles carrying therapeutic agents it often begins clearing them before they can reach the tumors.

Penn Engineers have developed PeptiVerse, an AI-powered platform that predicts key chemical and biological properties of peptides, the strings of amino acids whose medical potential has been demonstrated by the success of GLP-1 drugs, the widely used weight-loss treatments.

In Nature Communications, the researchers describe how they trained PeptiVerse using a wide range of data sets, allowing it to predict properties that can help determine whether a peptide is worth pursuing as a potential drug,

Like all living cells, bacteria need vitamins to survive and cause infection. Unlike humans, many bacteria rely on specialized membrane transporters - called energy-coupling factor transporters, or ECF transporters - to actively and efficiently import vitamins from their surroundings into the cell. Block these transporters, and the bacteria run out of essential nutrients and die. What makes ECF transporters particularly attractive as a drug target is that human cells do not have them.