The natural world is rich in chemical compounds with remarkable medicinal properties. A notable example is penicillin, discovered by chance from the Penicillium mold. This discovery revolutionized the treatment of bacterial infections and highlighted the potential of natural compounds in medicine. Since then, the identification, isolation, and synthesis of novel bioactive compounds from plants, fungi, and bacteria have become fundamental to drug development.

By recruiting the immune system to combat tumor cells, immunotherapy has improved survival rates, offering hope to millions of cancer patients. However, only about one in five people responds favorably to these treatments.

With a goal of understanding and addressing immunotherapy's limitations, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis have found that the immune system can be its own worst enemy in the fight against cancer.

Vorasidenib has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for patients with Grade 2 gliomas with IDH1 or IDH2 mutations.

Based on evidence from the INDIGO clinical trial, a global phase 3, double-blinded, randomized clinical trial, vorasidenib more than doubled progression-free survival and delayed the need for treatment with radiation and chemotherapy for patients with Grade 2 IDH-mutant glioma after surgery to remove the tumor.

Northwestern University scientists have developed a new bioactive material that successfully regenerated high-quality cartilage in the knee joints of a large-animal model.

Although it looks like a rubbery goo, the material is actually a complex network of molecular components, which work together to mimic cartilage's natural environment in the body.

Fewer side effects, improved chances of healing: the goal of precision medicine is to provide patients with the most individualized treatment possible. This requires a precise understanding of what is happening at the cellular level. For the first time, researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now succeeded in mapping the interactions of 144 active substances with around 8,000 proteins. The results could help to identify previously unknown potential benefits of existing drugs.

In a hopeful sign for demand for more safe, effective antibiotics for humans, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have leveraged artificial intelligence (AI) to develop a new drug that already is showing promise in animal trials.

Publishing their results in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the scientists describe using a large language model - an AI tool like the one that powers ChatGPT - to engineer a version of a bacteria-killing drug that was previously toxic in humans, so that it would be safe to use.

A new study from the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center finds that giving a fatty acid inhibitor alongside chemotherapy could improve the treatment efficacy for patients with brain metastases from triple negative breast cancer. The findings appear in npj Breast Cancer.

Previous work has shown that the brain microenvironment has very limited lipids available for cancer cells, making it critical for cancer cells to generate their own lipids to survive.