The pharmaceutical industry stands at a transformative crossroads as artificial intelligence reshapes the landscape of drug development. In a Correspondence published in the KeAi journal Current Molecular Pharmacology, a group of researchers from China illuminate how large language models (LLMs) - the sophisticated AI systems powering advanced chatbots - are delivering unprecedented breakthroughs across the entire drug discovery pipeline.

Over the past 20 years, a class of cancer drugs called CD40 agonist antibodies have shown great promise - and induced great disappointment. While effective at activating the immune system to kill cancer cells in animal models, the drugs had limited impact on patients in clinical trials and caused dangerously systemic inflammatory responses, low platelet counts, and liver toxicity, among other adverse reactions - even at a low dose.

Following a heart attack, blood flow to the heart is interrupted and the resulting lack of oxygen can cause heart damage. The heart wall can rupture in severe cases, requiring immediate surgical intervention. Today, bovine pericardial patches are used to repair such heart defects owing to their stability, permeability, and ease of implantation.

Do you have a meditation app on your smartphone, computer or wearable device? Well, you're not alone.

There are now thousands of meditation apps available worldwide, the top 10 of which have been collectively downloaded more than 300 million times. What’s more, early work on these digital meditation platforms shows that even relatively brief usage can lead to benefits, from reduced depression, anxiety, and stress to improved insomnia symptoms.

McGill University researchers have developed and are licensing a digital tool to help safely reduce patients’ use of medications that may be unnecessary or even harmful to them.

When clinicians review a patient’s file, MedSafer flags potentially inappropriate medications. In a new clinical trial, the software helped deprescribe such medications in 36 per cent of long-term care residents, nearly triple as many as when reviews were done without the tool.

Opioids like morphine are widely used in medical practice due to their powerful pain-relieving effects. However, they carry the risk of serious adverse effects such as respiratory depression and drug dependence. For this reason, Japan has strict regulations in place to ensure that these medications are prescribed only by authorized physicians.

In the United States, however, the opioid OxyContin was once prescribed frequently triggering a surge in the misuse of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

More than a decade ago, researchers found that an acute complication of type 1 diabetes, diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), can be resolved with the hormone leptin, even in the absence of insulin.

An analysis published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation explains how leptin affects the brain and how it might be used in future therapeutics.