A new method for labeling molecules with radioactive elements could let chemists more easily track how drugs under development are metabolized in the body. Chemists consider thousands of compounds in the search for a new drug, and a candidate's metabolism is a key factor that must be evaluated carefully and quickly.

From horny goat weed to ginseng and maca, over-the-counter dietary supplements sold to improve male sexual health contain a wide variety of "natural" ingredients. Researchers from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center reviewed the scientific evidence for the most common ingredients to determine if they are effective - and most importantly - safe.

The first issue of Elsevier's new open access journal Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications features a new method to make cancer clinical trials more effective, a better way of determining whether a trial was successful and a dashboard that helps patients enroll in trials. The journal is a spin-off of the well-established title Contemporary Clinical Trials.

Palbociclib, a new oral drug whose efficacy in combating breast cancer has been demonstrated alone and in combination with endocrine therapy, also has potential to combat other types of cancer, according to a literature review and additional original research conducted by experts at the Abramson Cancer Center (ACC) in the University of Pennsylvania published this month in JAMA Oncology.

To create treatments for a disease without any, scientists need to study and understand the driving forces behind the faulty biology. Today, researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine announced the first-ever evidence-based description of the neuronal protein clumps thought to be important in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, a fatal neurodegenerative condition.

A clinical trial to test the effectiveness of a stem cell therapy among adults with difficult to treat Crohn's disease has found it is not significantly better than conventional treatment in producing sustained disease remission after one year. Crohn's disease is a chronic inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract causing pain and diarrhoea that can mean life-long ill health, impaired quality of life and reduced life expectancy.

Researchers have been working for years to develop an artificial pancreas in the lab to help the millions of people with type 1 diabetes. But what if the answer is to "recycle" the more than 300 human pancreata from organ donors that aren't currently being used? Online ahead of print in the Annals of Surgery, regenerative medicine researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine and colleagues report on the potential to use human pancreata as the "hardware" of a new-generation, bio-artificial pancreas.