Researchers from Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT's research enterprise in Singapore, and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have designed an antimicrobial polymer that can kill bacteria resistant to commonly used antibiotics, including the superbug Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

Chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, such as Crohn's Disease and ulcerative colitis, are linked to abnormalities of the gut microbiota in humans and in animals. Patients generally present reduced bacterial diversity in their intestinal flora along with excessive levels of bacteria that express a protein called flagellin, which favors their mobility.

A team of scientists from Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) together with their colleagues developed a method of targeted drug delivery to cancer cells. The discovery is based on the use of mesenchymal stem cells and microcapsules made of polymeric compounds.

UT Health San Antonio researchers, working with collaborators at the University of Florida, have discovered a safe and potent next generation of drugs to fight multiple types of leukemia and lymphoma in adults and children. The journal Nature Medicine reported the findings Dec. 2.

Patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a chronic liver disease and a leading cause for liver transplantation in the U.S., currently lack an approved drug therapy, but this may soon change. A large Phase III clinical trial designed in collaboration with Virginia Commonwealth University is the first to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of an oral medication to treat the disease.

It is incompletely understood which factors in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) act as a trigger for the immune system to attack the brain and spinal cord. A potential factor is described by a research team in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS. The medical researchers used an animal model to show that the protein Smad7 mobilises immune cells in the intestines which, in turn, trigger inflammation in the central nervous system.

A pioneering precision medicine already licensed for breast and ovarian cancer can also slow or stop tumour growth in some men with advanced prostate cancer, a new clinical trial shows. The phase II trial found that over 80 per cent of men with prostate cancer whose tumours had mutations in the BRCA genes responded well to treatment with the targeted drug olaparib.