TITANIUM PROFESSIONALS

A Monash University-led study has found that an unusual pairing of two commonly used antibiotics can kill and stop the spread of resistance in a highly drug-resistant bacterium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can cause life-threatening bloodstream infections, pneumonia and meningitis.

Published in The Lancet Microbe, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) researchers used a validated laboratory infection system in which they were able to expose bacterial samples from infected patients to simulated antibiotic dosing regimens, as would actually occur in hospitalised patients.

Cholesterol-related heart disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide, and while doctors have more tools than ever to treat it, many patients still can't achieve safe cholesterol levels, or can't tolerate the side effects of available medications. Now, researchers from University of California San Diego School of Medicine have uncovered a hidden biological pathway that explains why high-cholesterol diets steadily chip away at our body's ability to clear harmful low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol from the blood,

Developing new medicines can require thousands of chemistry experiments to identify the right recipe for a safe, effective and ideally affordable drug.

The process is slow and labor-intensive, and many of the reactions depend on hard-to-source metals that act as essential catalysts.

Researchers at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed a new platform that combines 3D bioprinting, advanced imaging and artificial intelligence to better monitor how cancer responds to treatment. The technology could help researchers identify promising cancer therapies more rapidly and provide a way to test treatments on a patient's own tumor cells, helping guide more personalized treatment decisions.

For the 18 million people living with rheumatoid arthritis, disease management currently means a lifetime of injections - a reality that new research from Tsinghua University may soon begin to change. Current first-line biologics targeting tumor necrosis factor (TNF) - including adalimumab (Humira), long among the world’s best-selling drugs - require injections every two weeks, potentially for decades. Prolonged use drives anti-drug antibody (ADA) formation in many patients, eroding therapeutic benefit and causing secondary treatment failure.

New antibiotic candidates for drug-resistant bacteria may reside inside prions, mis-folded protein in the brain best known for rare and fatal degenerative brain diseases. Prion and prion-like proteins may hide short peptides, named “prionins,” that can kill bacteria, suggesting proteins best known for their role in neurodegeneration may contain molecular features linked to immune defense, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

For some people, cancer immunotherapies are life-changing. These treatments can turn the body’s own immune system against a tumor, either eliminating it or shrinking it enough to make surgery possible. But these therapies don’t work for everyone, can gradually stop working or can come with a host of side effects, including severe inflammation.

The Sanofi Foundation is opening a new chapter with a strengthened commitment to children and young people, particularly those living with serious diseases. Through the Foundation, Sanofi extends its commitment to improving people's lives beyond healthcare by supporting younger generations facing some of today's most pressing health, climate, and humanitarian challenges.

Central nervous system arteriovenous malformations, or CNS-AVMs, are abnormal tangles of blood vessels in the brain or spinal cord. They form direct high-flow connections between arteries and veins and can cause hemorrhagic stroke, seizures, headache, neurological deficits, or progressive disability, especially in children and young adults. Current treatments, including microsurgery, embolization, and stereotactic radiosurgery, can be effective but are invasive and may carry substantial risks for patients with complex lesions.

Researchers at the University of Houston’s College of Pharmacy have discovered an unexpected simple strategy to improve the performance of mRNA vaccines and gene therapeutics: adding salt. The findings, published in Small, address one of the biggest challenges facing modern gene medicine - getting fragile therapeutic material to the right place inside cells.

MUSC researchers are tackling MASH, or metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, a liver disease affecting hundreds of millions worldwide. It is also a leading cause of liver transplantation, yet treatment options remain limited.

A new paper published in Nature partner journal (npj) Metabolic Health and Disease suggests that a widely used asthma medication, formoterol, could potentially offer a different therapeutic pathway altogether. Formoterol is a beta-2 adrenergic receptor agonist that has been prescribed for decades to open airways in conditions like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Cancer cells frequently develop the ability to expel anticancer drugs before they can work - a phenomenon called multidrug resistance (MDR) - which is one of the leading reasons why chemotherapy fails in patients. This research addresses that problem with a fundamentally new strategy: instead of simply increasing drug doses or switching drugs, researchers engineered nanoparticles that first disable the cancer cell's drug-expulsion mechanism, and only then release the anticancer drug.

Published in Science Advances, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists used a mix of genetic cancer dependency data, artificial intelligence (AI) and naturally occurring mutations to prioritize safer cancer drug targets. They focused their efforts on targets most likely to be effective while limiting unwanted toxicity, identifying IRS4 as a potential dependency across multiple tumor types. The work provides a proof of principle for evaluating potential toxicity early in the search for novel therapeutics.

Every year, antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, commonly known as “staph,” causes serious infections and outbreaks in hospitals and community settings, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations, including the elderly and those with weakened immune systems. Methicillin-resistant strains, known as MRSA, are a leading contributor to deaths associated with antimicrobial resistance globally.

Cancer cells survive by repairing damage to their DNA - even damage that would normally be fatal. One of their most important defense systems is homologous recombination, a high-precision repair pathway that fixes broken DNA using key proteins such as RAD51 and CHK1. While therapies such as PARP inhibitors have successfully targeted this vulnerability, many tumors eventually regain their DNA repair ability and become resistant to treatment.

A team led by metabolism researcher Prof Timo D. Müller at Helmholtz Munich has developed a new approach for treating obesity and type 2 diabetes: a hybrid molecule uses the well-known GLP-1/GIP signalling pathway as a “door opener” and delivers an additional metabolic modulator specifically into the target cells. In laboratory experiments, mice subsequently ate less, lost more weight and showed improved blood-glucose values compared with reference treatments.

A first-of-its-kind pilot program in Utah developed by a health-technology startup company uses artificial intelligence to automatically renew certain prescriptions for patients with chronic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes. But according to a new paper co-written by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign expert in legal issues surrounding cutting-edge medical technology, autonomous AI-based drug prescribing raises important clinical and legal issues.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is one of the deadliest cancer types, with a five-year survival rate of 13%. There are only two treatment regimens available with limited efficacy. Pancreatic cancers do not respond to immunotherapy where the body’s immune system attacks tumor cells. The effectiveness of these treatments is limited due to immunotherapy resistance.

A first-in-human clinical trial led by an international team of researchers and published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that setidegrasib, an investigational targeted therapy drug designed to eliminate a key cancer-driving protein called KRAS G12D, shows encouraging early activity in patients with advanced lung and pancreatic cancers. The therapy shrank tumors in some patients and delayed disease progression, marking a potential step forward for cancers with few targeted treatment options.

An experimental drug targeting triple-negative breast cancer overwhelms cancer cells with toxic fats, according to new tests on human-derived tumors in mice. Triple-negative breast cancer lacks three common drug targets, making it one of the most aggressive forms of the disease.

The compound, known as DH20931, appears to push cancer cells past their limits by triggering a surge in fat-like molecules called ceramides.