Scientists in Japan are reporting an advance toward using a natural disease-fighting protein in pills or syrups that patients can take by mouth rather than injection.

I wrote about Bristol Palin's soon-to-be mother-in-law earlier. Sherry Johnston (pictured) was arrested on drug charges. More details have emerged about the arrest, including the fact that it was oxycontin, rather than the expected meth, that she was arrested for.

A large proteomics study on the brains of newborn mice provides more evidence that numbing drugs often used in obstetric or pediatric medicine can have profound and long-term negative effects, even after minimal exposure.

Physicians and policy-makers know that drugs are frequently prescribed to treat certain diseases despite a lack of FDA approval — a practice known as off-label prescribing. Yet they say the problem is so big they don't know how to begin tackling it.

If we want to fully understand the allure of pharmaceuticals, we need to look beyond both medical efficacy and profit motives. A new study in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics shows that when we use claims about drugs in arguments about racial identity, the meaning of both the pharmaceuticals and of race remain unsettled.

Researchers are on the verge of unleashing the power of the element boron in a new generation of drugs and therapies, as decades of research begins to bear fruit.

A new study led by North Carolina State University's Dr. Scott Fitzpatrick is the first to show physical evidence that the people who colonized the Caribbean from South America brought with them heirloom drug paraphernalia that had been passed down from generation to generation as the colonists traveled through the islands.

In a finding that could speed the development of new protein-based drugs for fighting diabetes, hepatitis, and other diseases, researchers are reporting progress toward preventing or destroying an unusual structure that reduces the production yield of bioengineered drugs.

OHSU will lead an NIH-funded project to explore the biodiversity of Philippine marine mollusks and associated microbes that offer clues to potential central nervous system, cancer and antimicrobial drugs as well as enzymes for biofuels production

Free prescription drug samples distributed to children may be unsafe, according to a study by physicians from Cambridge Health Alliance and Hasbro Children's Hospital. The national study, the first to look at free drug sample use among children, appears in the October 2008 issue of Pediatrics.

A technology which provides high quality images of the crystallisation process marks the next step towards a 'right first time' approach to drug manufacture, according to engineers at the University of Leeds.

Costly drugs to treat conditions such as cancer and arthritis could be manufactured more cheaply with a new technique developed by scientists