Better understanding of Parkinson’s disease onset during aging is important for improving diagnostics and developing strategies for therapeutic intervention. Scientists from the University Medical Center in Groningen have now identified genes and processes that may underlie what makes some people more susceptible to this disease.

UCLA researchers have developed a feedback control scheme that can search for the most effective drug combinations to treat a variety of conditions, including cancers and infections. The discovery could play a significant role in facilitating new clinical drug-cocktail trials.

The mounting U.S. drug price crisis can be contained and eventually reversed by separating drug discovery from drug marketing and by establishing a non-profit company to oversee funding for new medicines, according to two MIT experts on the pharmaceutical industry.

Researchers in Italy report development of a new group of aspirin-like substances that may be safer and as effective as conventional aspirin for fighting heart disease, the leading cause of death in the developed world. Their study is scheduled for the March 27 issue of the ACS’ Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

The Wellcome Trust will invest £4 million over three years from its Seeding Drug Discovery Initiative into a programme to develop UCL’s patented series of selective DDAH inhibitors for use in treating sepsis.

Bile acid derivatives can turn on the vitamin D receptor (VDR) without causing excess calcium buildup, researchers report, a finding that could lead to vitamin D therapies for conditions beyond just bone and skin disorders.

A new report released by the federal government shows preteens and young teenagers like using inhalants and often move on to more harmful drugs.

In findings with the potential to provide a therapy for Alzheimer’s disease patients where none now exist, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego and colleagues have demonstrated in mice a way to reduce the overproduction of a peptide associated with the disease.

Cocaine addicts often suffer a downward emotional spiral that is a key to their craving and chronic relapse. While researchers have developed animal models of the reward of cocaine, they have not been able to model this emotional impact, until now.

A new class of painkillers that block a receptor called TRPV1 may interfere with brain functions such as learning and memory, a new study suggests. The experiments with rat brain found that the TRPV1 receptor regulates a neural mechanism called long-term depression, which is believed to be central to establishing memory pathways in the brain.

The Food and Drug Administration is highly concerned about Amgen's drug Nplate designed to treat a blood-clotting disorder.

Researchers in Germany report an advance toward the much awaited era in which scientists will discover and design drugs for cancer, arthritis, AIDS and other diseases almost entirely on the computer, instead of relying on the trial-and-error methods of the past.