Therapeutics has gone underground. From one bag of soil, chemists can now procure millions of microbial molecules. Any one could be tomorrow’s lifesaving medicine.
In many cancer patients who have been treated with immunotherapy, the tumor comes back. New research identifies the cells responsible for thwarting the treatment and offers new insights into how they do it.
Researchers successfully modified immune cells to produce antibodies that fight HIV. This strategy could eventually be used to develop a vaccine against the virus, among other conditions.
Greengard revolutionized our understanding of how brain cells communicate with each other and contributed to major advances in the treatment of a wide range of neurological and psychiatric diseases. He died April 13 at the age of 93.
Recent research has shown that a drug known as MI-2 can kill cells that cause a fatal brain cancer. But only now have scientists been able to explain how the compound works: by targeting cholesterol production in tumors.
Scientists still have a lot to learn about the processes that trigger cell division, partly because they happen so quickly. A new chemical probe will make it possible to capture the workings of one of the key players.