Currently available therapies to treat multiple sclerosis (MS) lack precision and can lead to serious side effects. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now developed a method for identifying the immune cells involved in autoimmune diseases, and have identified four new target molecules of potential significance for future personalised treatment of MS.

Pharmaceutical companies are using artificial intelligence to streamline the process of discovering new medicines. Machine-learning models can propose new molecules that have specific properties which could fight certain diseases, doing in minutes what might take humans months to achieve manually.

A drug used to treat asthma and allergies can bind to and block a crucial protein produced by the virus SARS-CoV-2, and reduce viral replication in human immune cells, according to a new study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

Approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the drug, called montelukast, has been around for more than 20 years and is usually prescribed to reduce inflammation caused by conditions like asthma, hay fever and hives.

Therapies based on engineered immune cells have recently emerged as a promising approach in the treatment of cancer. Compared to traditional drugs, engineered immune cells are more precise and sophisticated in their ability to detect and eliminate cancer cells.

New UCLA research finds that 30% of people treated for COVID-19 developed Post Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), most commonly known as “Long COVID.” People with a history of hospitalization, diabetes, and higher body mass index were most likely to develop the condition, while those covered by Medicaid, as opposed to commercial health insurance, or had undergone an organ transplant were less likely to develop it.

Results of a new multicenter study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that vaccination with a primary series of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccine reduced the risk of COVID-19-associated hospitalizations in children ages 5-11 years by two-thirds during the Omicron period.

Cancer cells can disrupt a metabolic pathway that breaks down fats and proteins to boost the levels of a byproduct called methylmalonic acid, thereby driving metastasis, according to research led by scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine. The findings open a new lead for understanding how tumors metastasize, or spread to other tissues, and hints at novel ways to block the spread of cancer by targeting the process.