Patients with a rare bone cancer of the skull and spine - chordoma - could be helped by existing drugs, suggest scientists from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University College London Cancer Institute and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust. In the largest genomics study of chordoma to date, published today in Nature Communications, scientists show that a group of chordoma patients have mutations in genes that are the target of existing drugs, known as PI3K inhibitors.

In a remarkably rapid translation of laboratory research findings into a treatment with the potential to benefit patients, UC San Francisco scientists have successfully completed a Phase II clinical trial showing that an FDA-approved antihistamine restores nervous system function in patients with chronic multiple sclerosis (MS).

In India, the sale of antibiotics requiring the tightest control and regulation is rising the fastest, according to an analysis by researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and Newcastle University. The correspondence published in The Lancet Global Health highlights serious hurdles for controlling antimicrobial resistance in the country.

Stroke patients with dementia treated with intravenous thrombolysis using powerful clot-busting drugs are at no higher risk of brain haemorrhage or death than other patients receiving the same treatment, a study from Karolinska Institutet published in the journal Neurology reports.

Bananas and avocados - foods that are rich in potassium - may help protect against pathogenic vascular calcification, also known as hardening of the arteries. University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers have shown, for the first time, that reduced dietary potassium promotes elevated aortic stiffness in a mouse model, as compared with normal-potassium-fed mice.

A technology that can print pure, ultra-precise doses of drugs onto a wide variety of surfaces could one day enable on-site printing of custom-dosed medications at pharmacies, hospitals and other locations. The technique, which was developed at the University of Michigan, can print multiple medications into a single dose on a dissolvable strip, microneedle patch or other dosing device.

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed and demonstrated a promising new strategy for the discovery of novel anti-cancer therapies. The TSRI scientists, collaborating with scientists at Pfizer, used their new approach to find small-molecule inhibitors of a protein that is important for the growth of non-small-cell lung cancers (NSCLCs). These cancers represent about 85 percent of lung cancers and are relatively insensitive to drug treatment.