Antibiotics are crucial in modern medicine, but their widespread use has led to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, posing a serious public health threat. A new study highlights the potential of random antimicrobial peptide mixtures to significantly reduce the risk of resistance evolution compared to single peptides. These findings support the development of new antimicrobial strategies, emphasizing the need for innovative solutions to outpace bacterial resistance and safeguard public health.

Relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a so-called blood cancer, has an extremely poor prognosis because of resistance to anti-cancer drugs and frailty of the patient’s organ functions. A type of anti-tumor immunotherapy called allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation, which can exert anti-cancer effect accompanied by severe toxicity, is often performed for patients who are hard to treat with chemotherapy, but relapse still remains.

Peek inside the human genome and, among the 20,000 or so genes that serve as building blocks of life, you’ll also find flecks of DNA left behind by viruses that infected primate ancestors tens of millions of years ago.

These ancient hitchhikers, known as endogenous retroviruses, were long considered inert or 'junk' DNA, defanged of any ability to do damage. New CU Boulder research published July 17 in the journal Science Advances shows that, when reawakened, they can play a critical role in helping cancer survive and thrive.

Proteins have evolved to excel at everything from contracting muscles to digesting food to recognizing viruses. To engineer better proteins, including antibodies, scientists often iteratively mutate the amino acids - the units that are arranged in a sequence to make up proteins - in different positions until the resulting protein has an improved function, like eliciting a stronger immune response or capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere more efficiently.

A method to screen a wide variety of drug candidates without laborious purification steps could advance the fight against drug-resistant bacteria.

Efforts to combat the increasing threat of drug-resistant bacteria are being assisted by a new approach for streamlining the search for antimicrobial drug candidates, pioneered by researchers at Hokkaido University, led by Assistant Professor Kazuki Yamamoto and Professor Satoshi Ichikawa of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Individuals diagnosed with prediabetes can reduce their long-term risk of death and diabetes-related health complications if they delay the onset of diabetes for just four years through diet and exercise. Guangwei Li of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital and colleagues report these findings in a new study published July 9th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine.

Type 2 diabetes is associated with an increased risk of death and disability, and imposes a significant economic burden on individuals and societies worldwide.

Certain types of light have proven to be an effective, minimally invasive treatment for cancers located on or near the skin when combined with a light-activated drug. But deep-seated cancers, surrounded by tissue, blood and bone, have been beyond the reach of light's therapeutic effects.

To bring light's benefits to these harder-to-access cancers, engineers and scientists at the University of Notre Dame have devised a wireless LED device that can be implanted.