Fueled in part by an inclination to speed new treatments to patients, research studies for cancer therapies tend to be smaller and less robust than for other diseases. This raises some questions about how cancer therapies will work in practice, according to researchers at Duke Medicine, who published an analysis of nearly 9,000 oncology clinical research studies online April 29, 2013, in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

In an advance toward coping with bacteria that shrug off existing antibiotics and sterilization methods, scientists are reporting development of a new family of selective antimicrobial agents that do not rely on traditional antibiotics. Their report on these synthetic colloid particles, which can be custom-designed to recognize the shape of specific kinds of bacteria and inactivate them, appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Researchers have long known that cancerous tumors grow collections of abnormal blood cells, the fuel that feeds this disease and keeps it growing. Now, new evidence in an animal model suggests that blood vessels in the fat tissue of obese individuals could provide the same purpose - and could provide the key to a new way for people to lose weight.

Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have developed a therapy for pancreatic cancer that uses Listeria bacteria to selectively infect tumor cells and deliver radioisotopes into them. The experimental treatment dramatically decreased the number of metastases (cancers that have spread to other parts of the body) in a mouse model of highly aggressive pancreatic cancer without harming healthy tissue.

Children can get five to 10 colds each year, so it's not surprising that adults often turn to over-the-counter cough and cold medicines to relieve their little ones' symptoms. But a new University of Michigan poll shows that many are giving young kids medicines that they should not use.

A massive study analyzing gene expression data from 22 tumor types has identified multiple metabolic expression changes associated with cancer. The analysis, conducted by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center, also identified hundreds of potential drug targets that could cut off a tumor's fuel supply or interfere with its ability to synthesize essential building blocks.

Nearly 30 percent of women failed to pick up their bisphosphonate prescriptions, a medication that is most commonly used to treat osteoporosis and similar bone diseases, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published this week in the journal Osteoporosis International. The failure to pick up these newly prescribed medications, called primary nonadherence, can lead to an increased risk of fractures for these patients.