In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Uppsala University in Sweden present a new drug candidate, which selectively kills dormant cells within a cancer tumour through starvation. These tumour cells, which are found in less oxygenated parts of solid tumours, are resistant to conventional treatments.

Over the past decade, a great clinical focus has been directed at developing new and innovative therapies for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). An analysis of clinical trials evaluating these therapies demonstrates that the cumulative success rate for new agents for advanced NSCLC is lower than the industry-estimated rate. However, biomarker- and receptor-targeted therapies were found to substantially increase clinical trial success.

University of Adelaide research has shown for the first time that grape seed can aid the effectiveness of chemotherapy in killing colon cancer cells as well as reducing the chemotherapy's side effects. Published in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers say that combining grape seed extracts with chemotherapy has potential as a new approach for bowel cancer treatment - to both reduce intestinal damage commonly caused by cancer chemotherapy and to enhance its effect.

A group of researchers at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) of Université de Montréal discovered a promising new approach to treating leukemia by disarming a gene that is responsible for tumor progression. That gene, known as Brg1 is a key regulator of leukemia stem cells that are the root cause of the disease, resistance to treatment and relapse.

The development of drugs to treat acute stroke or aid in stroke recovery is a multibillion-dollar endeavor that only rarely pays off in the form of government-approved pharmaceuticals. Drug companies spend years testing safety and dosage in the clinic, only to find in Phase III clinical efficacy trials that target compounds have little to no benefit.

Two Perelman School of Medicine microbiologists may have found a way to use statins, the well-known blockbuster cholesterol-lowering drugs, to fight the hantavirus, a mysterious and lethal microorganism that appeared suddenly in the US southwest over 20 years ago. That first outbreak led to the deaths of more than a dozen people, most of them in their prime.

Tamoxifen, a drug currently used to treat breast cancer, also kills a fungus that causes a deadly brain infection in immunocompromised patients. The findings, which could lead to new treatments for a disease that kills more HIV/AIDS patients than tuberculosis, appear in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).