Medications

Opioid overdoses are a major public health issue in the U.S., killing tens of thousands of people every year. The medicine naloxone, which is available as an over-the-counter nasal spray or given by injection, has saved countless lives by rapidly reversing opioid overdoses. But in blocking opioid receptors in the brain, naloxone causes severe withdrawal symptoms, including pain, vomiting and agitation.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has ordered a fresh safety review of mifepristone, a drug commonly used in medication abortions.

A drug already approved by the FDA to treat menopause symptoms may also help prevent invasive breast cancer, according to new findings from a multi-center phase 2 clinical trial led by Northwestern Medicine.

A lab-designed molecule developed and extensively studied by scientists with Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC could represent a breakthrough in slowing tumor recurrence in glioblastoma, an aggressive and deadly form of brain cancer.

People who have been taking antidepressants for more than two years are substantially more likely to experience withdrawal symptoms compared to short-term users when they come off the medication, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the humanized monoclonal antibody Zynyz (retifanlimab-dlwr) as the first first-line treatment for advanced anal cancer.

A new study finds that CivicaScript, a not-for-profit drug manufacturer in the US, can reliably supply essential generic medicines at a price that saves patients over 60%, and public and private insurers over 90%, demonstrating the potential of the nonprofit health care utility (HCU) model to deliver a scalable solution to generic drug affordability.

A Ludwig Cancer Research study has uncovered a surprising link between diet, intestinal microbes and the efficacy of cancer therapy.

A new drug for pulmonary fibrosis has reduced disease progression by more than 50% over a 52-week treatment in two clinical trials. Pulmonary fibrosis is a very serious disease, with a life prognosis of 3 to 5 years after diagnosis. But the new drug, nerandomilast (Boehringer Ingelheim), could revolutionize the treatment of the disease after several failures of all potential new drugs tested for this disease in the last decade that have failed in phase 2 or phase 3 studies.

Researchers at Sutter’s California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) in San Francisco, Calif. have discovered early signs of clinical benefit while testing niraparib, a PARP inhibitor, in patients with advanced melanoma whose tumors had specific genetic changes impacting DNA repair.