NEWS

Novartis acquires Selexys Pharmaceuticals Corporation and SelG1 antibody for reduction of pain crises in sickle cell disease (SCD) By: Novartis News Basel, November 21, 2016 Deal followed results of Phase II SUSTAIN study of SelG1 in reduction of vaso-occlusive pain crises, a major complication of SCD with limited treatment options   [..]

Phase III GiACTA Study Shows Genentech’s Actemra® is Superior to Steroids Alone in Maintaining Steroid-Free Remission for People with Giant Cell Arteritis 56 percent of patients treated with Actemra achieved steroid-free disease remission at one year, versus 14 percent with a six-month steroid only taper regimen1 There have been no [..]

A new, rapid screening test identifies potential therapies against drug-resistant bacteria By: Source NIH  News November 17, 2016  Researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), Clinical Center and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have created a new way to identify [..]

Testing of Investigational Inactivated Zika Vaccine in Humans Begins First of Five Planned Clinical Trials to Test ZPIV Vaccine By: Source, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases November 17, 2016  The first of five early stage clinical trials to test the safety and ability of an investigational Zika vaccine [..]

NIH to double funding for chronic fatigue syndrome, but patient distrust remains By Meredith Wadman The most anticipated speaker late last month at an international conference devoted to the mysterious malady commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) was not a scientist with a hot new finding—although there was excitement [..]

Solar cells get boost with integration of water-splitting catalyst onto semiconductor Scientists have found a way to engineer the atomic-scale chemical properties of a water-splitting catalyst for integration with a solar cell, and the result is a big boost to the stability and efficiency of artificial photosynthesis. Led by researchers [..]

Fuel from sewage is the future — and it’s closer than you think It may sound like science fiction, but wastewater treatment plants across the United States may one day turn ordinary sewage into biocrude oil, thanks to new research at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The [..]

Robot surgeon can slice eyes finely enough to remove cataracts By Sally Adee See what it can do. A new surgical robot can make the micro-scale movements needed for a particularly delicate procedure: cataract surgery. Axsis, a system developed by Cambridge Consultants, is a small, teleoperated robot with two arms [..]

The perfect cybercrime: selling fake followers to fake people By Sally Adee Hackers are recruiting the internet of things into a botnet. But this time they’re not trying to take down the internet. They’re just using them to make fake social media accounts – which they can then sell to [..]

Are U.S. schools teaching hands-off science? By Jeffrey Mervis U.S. high school students who regularly handle rocks or minerals in science class did much worse on a recent national science test than those who never engage in such hands-on activities. Students who never mixed chemicals or peered through microscopes in [..]

Why painkillers sometimes make the pain worse By Kelly Servick Mark Hutchinson could read the anguish on the participants’ faces in seconds. As a graduate student at the University of Adelaide in Australia in the late 1990s, he helped with studies in which people taking methadone to treat opioid addiction [..]