Drug discovery and development

Why ‘epidrugs’ will be the next major focus for precision medicine

It is not just our genes that dictate how our bodies cope with disease and respond to drugs — by identifying the modifications to our DNA strands, and the histone proteins that regulate gene expression, we can uncover a whole new direction for diagnostic biomarkers, therapeutic biomarkers and …

Roger M. Perlmutter: ‘The free flow of scientific talent in and out of the UK is incredibly important’

Roger M. Perlmutter is the executive vice president of Merck Sharp & Dohme, and president of MSD Research Laboratories. On a visit to London, he caught up with Gino Martini, chief scientist at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, for a chat about the future of pharmaceutical research and …

Drugs in space: the pharmacy orbiting the Earth

Researchers are busy developing pharmaceutical solutions for astronauts, but that extraterrestrial research could also have implications for how medicines are delivered on Earth.…

Heparin and zilucoplan added to COVID-19 ACCORD trials platform

The National Institute for Health Research has confirmed that two more drugs will be included in a clinical trial scheme designed to speed up development of new medicines for patients hospitalised with COVID-19.…

Why we need to talk about sex and clinical trials

The under-representation of women in clinical trials is slowly being addressed, but we cannot move towards truly personalised healthcare unless we have an equal balance of the sexes in all new medicine trials.…

Targeting COVID-19: the drugs being fast-tracked through clinical trials and how they work

The NHS is rapidly enrolling patients into studies as part of a focused international effort to find medicines that will interfere with viral replication or help modulate the immune system response.…

The hunt for an effective treatment for COVID-19

As researchers around the globe drop everything to find a treatment for COVID-19, we look at the likely frontrunners for managing this deadly disease.…

Going against type: the new class of cancer therapies targeting mutations rather than tissues

‘Tumour agnostic’ drugs offer a more effective and tolerable therapy for a wide range of people with cancer, so why has the NHS rejected its first one?…

The race to stop COVID-19

As a new strain of coronavirus threatens public health systems across the globe, researchers are racing to develop a vaccine.…

Top ten most popular research briefings of 2019

Our research briefings are concise and informative; they keep readers up to date with the latest developments in science and clinical research — from novel uses for existing drugs, to studies assessing potential new treatments.…