The NHS could prevent thousands more heart attacks and strokes every year by offering everyone in the UK aged 50 and over a single "polypill" combining a statin and three blood pressure lowering drugs, according to academics from UCL.

In an opinion piece for The BMJ, the authors argued that a polypill programme could be a "flagship strategy" in Labour's commitment to preventing disease rather than treating sickness.

A naturally occurring molecule identified by Stanford Medicine researchers appears similar to semaglutide - also known as Ozempic - in suppressing appetite and reducing body weight. Notably, testing in animals also showed that it worked without some of the drug's side effects such as nausea, constipation and significant loss of muscle mass.

The newly discovered molecule, BRP, acts through a separate but similar metabolic pathway and activates different neurons in the brain - seemingly offering a more targeted approach to body weight reduction.

Cancer cells have an insatiable appetite for energy as they multiply more rapidly than normal cells. Greedy cancer cells hijack various cellular functions to find and exploit energy and other resources, including a group of enzymes that help normal cells maintain a balance of energy.

These enzymes, called creatine kinases (CK), allow cells to transport energy produced at the mitochondria to where it is needed throughout the cell.

A research team led by Prof. LIU Chenli from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Prof. XIAO Yichuan from the Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health of CAS elucidated the mechanism behind bacterial cancer therapy using a genetically engineered bacterial strain.

Exploring the use of antitumor bacteria in cancer therapy dates back to the 1860s.

Can a drug that's used to treat malaria be repurposed to fight cancer? Researchers at The University of Texas at El Paso have secured a patent for the anti-malarial drug pyronaridine to do just that. Pyronaridine has been used to treat the mosquito-borne infectious disease for over 30 years.

The discovery is the result of a serendipitous encounter at UTEP.

LMU researchers have shown that a particular type of immune cell acts more flexibly than previously thought - with potential for new therapeutic approaches.

As part of the innate immune system, dendritic cells are in the body's first line of defense against infections. They detect pathogens and coordinate the immune response.

Working toward more effective tuberculosis (TB) vaccines, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have developed two strains of mycobacteria with "kill switches" that can be triggered to stop the bacteria after they activate an immune response. Two preclinical studies, published, Jan. 10 in Nature Microbiology, tackle the challenge of engineering bacteria that are safe for use in controlled human infection trials or as better vaccines.