Pain is considered a reaction to damage to the body but recent research carried out by the Technische Universität München (TUM) shows that it is a mental phenomenon as well. TUM’s scientists have shown that during a few minutes of pain, the underlying brain activity shifts from being sensory to emotional.
The Brussels-based Innovative Medicines Initiative is launching three new projects around Alzheimer’s disease that will review current nomenclature, create a new network of patient data and test novel treatments in patients with early-stage disease.
Scientists at the University of Southern California have developed an engineered protein that shows promise in overcoming leukaemia’s resistance to radiation treatment.
14M Genomics Ltd of the UK, which is a portfolio company of Syncona Partners LLP, is to collaborate with the UK Haematological Malignancy Research Network to improve diagnostic and clinical care pathways for patients with blood and lymphatic cancers.
Enrolment has stopped in a Wellcome Trust-funded trial of an experimental treatment for the Ebola virus in Liberia following a significant fall in new cases of the infection, the Trust announced on 3 February. The drug’s producer, Chimerix Inc, had previously said it would no longer support the trial.
AstraZeneca Plc is to work with four research institutes in the UK and the US to apply a genome editing technology known as CRISPR across its drug discovery platform. The collaborations are expected to yield new drug targets in preclinical models of disease.
About 70% of the targets for approved medicinal products are proteins that are either secreted from cells or directed to the membranes cells while 30% of these proteins are widely distributed in the body, something that could explain the incidence of drug side effects, according to a Swedish study.
A new technique for culturing human liver and pancreatic stem cells could pave the way for improved therapies for treating both liver disease and pancreatic cancer. This is one of the conclusions from two studies published in the journal Cell on 15 January.
Autolus Ltd, an oncology spin-out from University College (UCL) London, has raised £30 million in a Series A financing from Syncona LLP in order to develop a new generation of engineered T cell therapies. The funding, which is significant for a start-up, reflects the expectations of the founders that the new T cell technology will revolutionise the treatment of cancer. Besides Syncona, the other founder is UCL Business Plc, the technology transfer arm of UCL.
Research supported by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute has described how mutations in a group of genes of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum work in concert to enable the parasite to resist artemisinin, the standard treatment for the disease. The findings were reported in Nature Genetics on 19 January 2015.