Feature Channels: Drug Resistance

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Artificial intelligence could help doctors dynamically determine safe and effective medication dosing for unstable ICU patients. Predicting the right dose of medication that a critically ill child in the ICU will require in the future is a huge challenge for clinicians. FDA prescribing guidelines generally assume that patients are stable enough so that dosing for a given group is usually unchanged during treatment, but this ‘one size fits all’ approach to medication dosing does not accurately target the condition of each individual patient over time.

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Testing the contents of a simple sample of wastewater can reveal a lot about what it carries, but fails to tell the whole story, according to Rice University engineers.

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Antibiotic resistant bacteria pose of the greatest threats to global public health. New research has the potential to reduce the amount of antibiotics used in the clinic and may pave the way for the discovery of new antibiotics that change growth rate and energy levels in bacteria.

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Antibiotic resistance, when infection-causing bacteria evolve so they are no longer affected by typical antibiotics, is a global concern.

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A small molecule inhibitor that attacks the difficult to target, cancer-causing gene mutation KRAS, found in nearly 30 percent of all human tumors, successfully shrunk tumors or stopped cancer growth in preclinical models of pancreatic cancer, researchers from Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center showed.

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CRISPR, the Nobel Prize-winning gene editing technology, is poised to have a profound impact on the fields of microbiology and medicine yet again. A team led by CRISPR pioneers Jennifer Doudna and Jill Banfield has developed a tool to edit the genomes of bacteria-infecting viruses called bacteriophages using a rare form of CRISPR. The ability to easily engineer custom-designed phages will help researchers treat dangerous drug-resistant infections and control microbiomes without antibiotics or harsh chemicals.

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A new tool under development by University at Buffalo researchers could one day help clinicians better predict resistance to immunoglobulin therapy among children with Kawasaki disease in the United States.

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With a new $3 million-plus grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Case Western Reserve University researchers are examining the next level of treatment for Candida auris (C.auris), a multidrug-resistant yeast that causes serious infection and, in some cases, death.

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An international team of scientists investigating transmission of a deadly drug resistant bacteria that rivals MRSA, has found that whilst the bugs are found in livestock, pets and the wider environment, they are rarely transmitted to humans through this route.

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A dietary change could be a key to enhancing colon cancer treatment, a new study from the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center finds. Researchers found in cells and in mice that a low-protein diet blocked the nutrient signaling pathway that fires up a master regulator of cancer growth.

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UC San Diego researchers expand and deepen understanding of how genetic aberrations fuel human papilloma virus-negative head and neck cancers and, potentially, provide paths to further refinement and improvement of immune checkpoint inhibitors for HPV-negative head and neck cancers.

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In a new study in Nature, researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have found that Enterococcus – an antibiotic-resistant, opportunistic pathogen – works together with C. difficile, reshaping and enhancing the metabolic environment in the gut so that C. difficile can thrive.

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A combination of two types of cancer-fighting treatments – the immunotherapy agent pembrolizumab and a nanoparticle-bound form of the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel – may provide an urgently needed new treatment approach for patients who do not respond to or can't receive standard chemotherapy for advanced urothelial cancers, reports a preliminary study in The Journal of Urology®, an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

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The medical profession is in the midst of losing an arms race.

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Physicists at McMaster University have identified a natural delivery system which can safely carry potent antibiotics throughout the body to selectively attack and kill bacteria by using red blood cells as a vehicle.

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Researchers say hydroquinine could be an effective weapon against a germ that can cause serious infections in humans, mostly hospital patients.

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Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancers. Its treatment is mainly based on chemotherapy.

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Researchers have found a small molecule enzyme inhibitor capable of manipulating an immune process that plays an important role in cancers and autoimmune diseases.

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Researchers at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub (CZ Biohub), the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), and UC San Francisco (UCSF) have developed a new diagnostic method that applies machine learning to advanced genomics data from both microbe and host – to identify and predict sepsis cases.

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Significant time is needed to determine the drug susceptibility profile of a bacterial infection.

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Researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine have shown that they can circumvent a key mechanism in castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) and possibly make immunotherapies more effective. By infusing nitric oxide (NO) into animal models, the team shrank tumors and paved the way for potential combination therapies. The study was published in Nature Cell Death & Disease.

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Research led by doctors and scientists at UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the UCLA Jane & Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior has identified a gene that may provide a therapeutic target for the deadly, treatment-resistant brain cancer glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).

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Victor Nizet, MD, Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Pharmacy at Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UC San Diego, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

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Under a four-year $2 million contract awarded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, scientists from RUSH and the Discovery Partners Institute will test wastewater from long-term care facilities to identify antibiotic-resistant organisms.

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Researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute have solved a long-standing mystery about how a cancer-promoting protein causes drug-resistent tumors to grow. They hope the discovery leads to more effective cancer drugs. Ben Myers, PhD, explains how this new science is closing the gap in understanding brain and skin tumors and how to combat them.

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UC San Diego scientists are leading a national early-stage clinical trial to assess the safety and efficacy of using bacteriophages to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections in cystic fibrosis patients.

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In a new study published in Molecular Cancer Research, Mayo Clinic researchers identified critical genomic changes in response to abiraterone acetate/prednisone, a standard treatment option for men with progressive, incurable and castration-resistant prostate cancer.

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Researchers have uncovered a novel pathway that explains how cancer cells become resistant to chemotherapies, which in turn offers a potential solution for preventing chemo-resistance.

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A potential new treatment combining natural manuka honey with a widely used drug has been developed by scientists at Aston University to treat a potentially lethal lung infection and greatly reduce side effects of one of the current drugs used for its treatment.

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Whitney and Bullen, together with colleagues at Imperial College London and the University of Manitoba, have studied this toxin for nearly three years to understand exactly how it functions at a molecular level. The breakthrough, to be published in Molecular Cell, was achieved by Bullen following rigorous experimentation on common targets of toxins, such as protein and DNA molecules, before eventually testing the toxin against RNA. This discovery breaks well-established precedents set by protein-targeting toxins secreted by other bacteria, such as those that cause cholera and diphtheria.

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University researchers have found a naturally occurring compound, known as hydroquinine, has bacterial killing activity against several microorganisms.

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An experimental combination of two drugs halts the progression of small cell lung cancer, the deadliest form of lung cancer, according to a study in mice from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Grenoble Alpes University in Grenoble, France, and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

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The latest research on plants brought to you by Newswise.

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For her most recent project, “Mechanical Mechanisms of Biofilm Survival on Implant Surfaces,” Dr. Martha Grady, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kentucky, is the recipient of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award.

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JSF-2659, developed to be administered orally, could be a game changer in treating Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which is on the World Health Organization’s global list of “priority pathogens” for its resistance to existing drugs.