Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have created a way to develop personalized gene therapies for patients with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a leading cause of vision loss. The approach, the first of its kind, takes advantage of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology to transform skin cells into retinal cells, which are then used as a patient-specific model for disease study and preclinical testing.

The changing dynamic of health studies driven by "big data" research projects will empower patients to become active participants who provide real-time information such as symptoms, side effects and clinical outcomes, according to researchers at Duke Medicine. The analysis, published in the July 2014 issue of Health Affairs, lays out a new paradigm for health research, particularly comparative effectiveness studies that are designed to assess which therapies work best in routine clinical practice.

Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health have conducted the first-ever analysis of clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease (AD), revealing an urgent need to increase the number of agents entering the AD drug development pipeline and progressing successfully towards new therapy treatments.

University of Utah researchers have discovered that an enzyme involved in intracellular signaling plays a crucial role in developing metabolic syndrome, a finding that has a U of U spinoff company developing a drug to potentially treat the condition. The researchers, led by Jared Rutter, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry, hope to begin human clinical trials of a drug in the next couple of years.

It turns out that the same types of drugs that help reduce watery eyes and runny noses during allergy season might also help ward off tumors too. A new research report appearing in the July 2014 issue of The Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that antihistamines may have significant anti-cancer properties as they interfere with the function of a type of cell that is known to reduce the body's ability to fight tumors (called "myeloid derived suppressor cells").

Nondiabetic obese and overweight people lose more weight, are more likely to reverse prediabetes and are slower to develop type 2 diabetes when they take the diabetes drug liraglutide in addition to dieting and exercising, a new study finds. The results of the multicenter study were presented at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society: ICE/ENDO 2014 in Chicago.

The number of deaths involving commonly prescribed painkillers is higher than the number of deaths by overdose from heroin and cocaine combined, according to researchers at McGill University. In a first-of-its-kind review of existing research, the McGill team has put the spotlight on a major public health problem: the dramatic increase in deaths due to prescribed painkillers, which were involved in more than 16,000 deaths in 2010 in the U.S. alone.