pharmaceuticals

When it comes to eluding detection, HIV and cancer cells are at the top of the class. As such, the few treatments currently available to sufferers of HIV or prostate cancer are generally expensive, often hard to manufacture, and come packaged with a smattering of unpleasant side effects. But Yale researchers have now developed synthetic molecules that help the body recognize HIV and prostate cancer cells as threats, tricking the body into initiating an immune response that it normally would not.

A new refrigerated cargo box for moving pharmaceutical products has attracted the likes of delivery giant UPS, but its inventor may go out of business first because of a lengthy review process by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Animal rights activists, take note: when it comes to experimental cancer treatments, American pet dogs are now in line in front of humans, participating in trials that in several cases have destroyed cancers completely.

Dogs experience cancer in ways similar to humans, making them preferable research subjects to lab rats and mice, whose experimental settings are too regimented to reflect a human reaction to cancers. Those human-like reactions have granted dying dogs access to treatments ahead of dying humans in some cases, allaying some ethical fears while stirring up others.

Researchers have shown for the first time today that a vaccine can help reduce drug abuse. There's currently no FDA-approved treatment to get people off of cocaine (or crack), so this could really help out the 2.5 million Americans dependent on cocaine.

Thirty-eight percent of drug abusers who were given the vaccine produced anti-cocaine antibodies. Over the course of seven weeks, these subjects were 45 percent likely to have a cocaine-free pee test, as opposed to 35 percent for those who got placebo vaccine instead.

Antibiotic resistance is a huge problem, not to mention an economic drain, for doctors and pharmaceutical makers trying to fight bacterial infections. Many antibiotics in our arsenal are becoming practically useless, as bacteria breed resistance to them. But researchers at Texas Tech University and Baylor University have developed a chemical additive that could make old drugs useful again.

It seems as though pharmaceutical giant Merck (best known for the deadly painkiller Vioxx), has teamed up with science publishing titan Elsevier (who, not long ago, got caught producing a rather questionable math journal) to put out a fake peer-reviewed medical journal.

It's miserable enough to be under the weather in the comfort of your home, but imagine coming down with a bad cold when you're stuck inside a small crew module 200,000 miles from Earth. You're coughing on your fellow astronauts and that space food you ate half an hour ago is now floating around your zero-gravity spacecraft.

Luckily, mission control packed some antibiotics into your survival pack... but will they work in space?

Legal-ish alternatives to marijuana exist, you just need to know where to look…er, smell. Apparently that’s what someone learned when they put the herbal incense brand “Spice” in their pipe and smoked it. The results were, like, totally rad, dude. It turns out Spice contains the synthetic substance JWH-018, which is incredibly similar to the main active component of marijuana. Although sold legally in many countries, governments around the world are lining up to put the kibosh on the Spice party.

As magic little pills go, the weight-loss drug rimonabant was destined to be huge. It was supposed to put a dent in the obesity epidemic and help people quit smoking and improve their cholesterol along the way. Pharmaceutical execs expected it to usher in a new class of drugs bigger than cholesterol-controlling statins, like Lipitor, Pfizer’s $1-billion-a-month blockbuster.