To design drugs that stall the growth of aggressive cancers, it helps to know the structures of the proteins that are revving the cancers' engines.

In a series of three papers published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Scripps Research scientists have illuminated the three-dimensional structure of phosphoinositide 3-kinase alpha (PI3Kα), a protein often mutated in cancer cells.

Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have developed a drug that potently neutralizes SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 coronavirus, and is equally effective against the Omicron variant and every other tested variant. The drug is designed in such a way that natural selection to maintain infectiousness of the virus should also maintain the drug’s activity against future variants.

An international team of researchers has uncovered a new mechanism that enables cancer cells to move throughout the body, providing a potential new target to stop metastasis, which is responsible for 90 per cent of cancer deaths.

In findings published in Nature, the team identifies that cancer cells move faster when they are surrounded by thicker fluids, a change that occurs when lymph drainage is compromised by a primary tumour.

Scientists at Scripps Research have reported success in initial tests of a new, nanotech-based strategy against autoimmune diseases.

The scientists, who reported their results on November 23, 2022, in the journal ACS Nano, engineered cell-like "nanoparticles" that target only the immune cells driving an autoimmune reaction, leaving the rest of the immune system intact and healthy.

Inhibition of the COQ8 protein could be beneficial in the treatment of diseases such as cancer. COQ8 is needed for the biosynthesis of coenzyme Q, also known as ubiquinone. A new collaborative study from the University of Eastern Finland, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Promega Corporation discloses the discovery and application of a new chemical probe to selectively inhibit human COQ8A in cells.

With the help of an AI, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have succeeded in designing synthetic DNA that controls the cells' protein production. The technology can contribute to the development and production of vaccines, drugs for severe diseases, as well as alternative food proteins much faster and at significantly lower costs than today.

Scientists have discovered why some coronaviruses are more likely to cause severe disease, which has remained a mystery, until now. Researchers of the University of Bristol-led study, published in Science Advances today, say their findings could lead to the development of a pan-coronavirus treatment to defeat all coronaviruses - from the 2002 SARS-CoV outbreak to Omicron, the current variant of SARS-CoV-2, as well as dangerous variants that may emerge in future.