McMaster University researchers may have found a novel way to suppress the devastating side effect of statins, one of the worlds' most widely used drugs to lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease. The research team - led by Jonathan Schertzer, assistant professor of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences and Canadian Diabetes Association Scholar - discovered one of the pathways that link statins to diabetes.

Up to 40 percent of lung cancer patients do not respond to a targeted therapy designed to block tumor growth - a puzzling clinical setback that researchers have long tried to solve. Now, scientists at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the National Cancer Institute have discovered why that intrinsic resistance occurs - and they pinpoint a drug they say could potentially reverse it.

A daily supplement of an extract found in tomatoes may improve the function of blood vessels in patients with cardiovascular disease, according to new research from the University of Cambridge. The incidence of cardiovascular disease varies worldwide, but is notably reduced in southern Europe, where a 'Mediterranean diet' consisting of a larger consumption of fruit, vegetables and olive oil predominates.

A route for constructing protein nanomachines engineered for specific applications may be closer to reality. Biological systems produce an incredible array of self-assembling, functional protein tools. Some examples of these nanoscale protein materials are scaffolds to anchor cellular activities, molecular motors to drive physiological events, and capsules for delivering viruses into host cells.

Multiple sclerosis manifests itself in many different ways and different courses. A recent effort to fine-tune descriptions - or phenotypes - of MS was undertaken by an international team of leaders in MS research and clinical care. The results of this effort by the International Advisory Committee on Clinical Trials in MS, including recommendations for more research, has just been published (Neurology 2014;83:1).

A study by Belgian doctoral researcher Wouter De Haes (KU Leuven) and colleagues provides new evidence that metformin, the world's most widely used anti-diabetic drug, slows ageing and increases lifespan. In experiments reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers tease out the mechanism behind metformin's age-slowing effects: the drug causes an increase in the number of toxic oxygen molecules released in the cell and this, surprisingly, increases cell robustness and longevity in the long term.

The first preclinical study of a new Rice University-developed anti-cancer technology found that a novel combination of existing clinical treatments can instantaneously detect and kill only cancer cells - often by blowing them apart - without harming surrounding normal organs. The research, which is available online this week Nature Medicine, reports that Rice's "quadrapeutics" technology was 17 times more efficient than conventional chemoradiation therapy against aggressive, drug-resistant head and neck tumors.