The right mouse model is crucial for Huntington’s disease drug development

Huntington’s disease (HD) is an incurable and fatal hereditary disease. Developing disease-modifying drugs to treat patients with HD depends on studying them in animal models. Scientists evaluated the mouse models used for developing new treatments for mood disorders in HD and recommended which of these models are most relevant to their studies. Their findings are published in the Journal of […]

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How an AI solution can design new tuberculosis drug regimens

With a shortage of new tuberculosis drugs in the pipeline, a software tool from the University of Michigan can predict how current drugs—including unlikely candidates—can be combined in new ways to create more effective treatments. “This could replace our traditional trial-and-error system for drug development that is comparatively slow and expensive,” said Sriram Chandrasekaran, U-M assistant professor of biomedical engineering, […]

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Drug treats inflammation associated with genetic heart disease that can be deadly in young athletes

When young athletes experiences sudden cardiac death as they run down the playing field, it’s usually due to arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM), an inherited heart disease. Now, Johns Hopkins researchers have shed new light on the role of the immune system in the progression of ACM and, in the process, discovered a new drug that might help prevent ACM disease symptoms […]

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Room for improvement in drug dosage timing in hospitals

Too many hospitals provide medications according to the practicalities of their staffing schedules rather than the ideal dosing times for their patients, according to a new study led by experts at Cincinnati Children’s. The study, published Oct. 1, 2019, in PNAS, was led by David Smith, MD, Ph.D., Divisions of Pediatric Otolaryngology and Pulmonary Medicine; Marc Ruben, Ph.D.; and John […]

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Heart-on-a-chip mimics drug response seen in humans

Researchers from TARA Biosystems, Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) today published data demonstrating that TARA’s engineered heart-on-a-chip system replicated drug responses found in adult humans. The findings, published in the journal Toxicological Sciences, show TARA’s 3-D-cardiac tissue platform can predict how human hearts will respond to a wide range of drugs, something that has been a challenge in pre-clinical models until […]

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New target for drug intervention in Alzheimer’s disease identified

Scientists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have identified an enzyme in the brain that may be an intriguing target for interventions against Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. The researchers suggest that the enzyme, a serine/threonine kinase known as LIMK1, may play an important role in the degradation of dendritic spines, the connections between neurons in the brain. In […]

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Human-on-a-chip model tests cancer drug efficacy and toxicity for therapeutic index

A reconfigurable “body-on-a-chip” model could transform drug development by simultaneously measuring compound efficacy and toxicity, for both target cells and other organs, such as the heart and liver. These findings, published in Science Translational Medicine, demonstrate the ability of a body-on-a-chip model to truly revolutionize biomedical research and personalized medicine through more accurate and efficient preclinical testing without the use […]

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Deadly tick-borne virus cured with experimental flu drug, in mice

Only a few cases of the newly discovered Bourbon virus have been reported, and two of them ended in death, partly because no specific treatments are available for the tick-borne illness. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified an experimental antiviral drug that cures mice infected with the potentially lethal virus. The drug, favipiravir, […]

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Large international study finds diabetes drug cuts cardiovascular and kidney problems

A clinical trial that followed more than 9,900 people in 24 countries has found that the drug dulaglutide reduced cardiovascular events and kidney problems in middle-aged and older people with Type 2 diabetes. During more than five years of follow-up, cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes were reduced by 12% in people taking dulaglutide compared to people taking a […]

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