Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) - such as ibuprofen and aspirin - increase one's risk of upper gastrointestinal bleeding. When taken in combination with other drugs, this risk is significantly higher, according to new research appearing in the October issue of Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association.

Given a choice, most patients would prefer to take a drug orally instead of getting an injection. Unfortunately, many drugs, especially those made from large proteins, cannot be given as a pill because they get broken down in the stomach before they can be absorbed. To help overcome that obstacle, researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have devised a novel drug capsule coated with tiny needles that can inject drugs directly into the lining of the stomach after the capsule is swallowed.

Every day, organ transplant patients around the world take a drug called rapamycin to keep their immune systems from rejecting their new kidneys and hearts. New research suggests that the same drug could help brain tumor patients by boosting the effect of new immune-based therapies.

Two recently published studies by a research team at University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center Seidman Cancer Center have the potential to advance treatments for small cell lung cell cancer (SCLC). This aggressive form of lung cancer has seen no treatment advances in 30 years and "is a disease in urgent need of new drug therapies," write the study's authors.

Access to potentially life-extending cancer drugs varies significantly in different regions of the world, two new studies show at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid, Spain. Researchers say the results demonstrate the need for better collaboration between doctors and health authorities on an international scale, to ensure patients have access to the best treatments.

A team of Stanford researchers has developed a protein therapy that disrupts the process that causes cancer cells to break away from original tumor sites, travel through the blood stream and start aggressive new growths elsewhere in the body. This process, known as metastasis, can cause cancer to spread with deadly effect.

A single dose of antidepressant is enough to produce dramatic changes in the functional architecture of the human brain. Brain scans taken of people before and after an acute dose of a commonly prescribed SSRI (serotonin reuptake inhibitor) reveal changes in connectivity within three hours, say researchers who report their observations in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on September 18.