Topic description and stories

Synthetic organs, nanobots and DNA ‘scissors’: the future of medicine

12 Oct 2017

Nanobots that patrol our bodies, killer immune cells hunting and destroying cancer cells, biological scissors that cut out defective genes: these are...

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Silk “micrococoons” could be used in biotechnology and medicine

19 Jul 2017

Researchers have manufactured microscopic versions of the cocoons spun by silkworms, which could be used to store sensitive proteins and other...

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Drugs: how to pick a winner in clinical trials

26 Jun 2017

When a drug fails late on in clinical trials it’s a major setback for launching new medicines. It can cost millions, even billions, of research and...

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Take your medicine: how research into supply chains will help you take care of yourself

14 Jun 2017

Researchers are working with pharmaceutical companies to make improvements across the whole supply chain, from how a pill is made to the moment it is...

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Future therapeutics: the hundred-year horizon scan

13 Jun 2017

How will precision medicine define 21st-century therapeutics? What will future healthcare look like? And what actually lies ‘beyond the pill’...

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Life and death

Questions of life and death

04 Nov 2016

An ambitious seminar series began last week with a discussion of a remarkable documentary. Filmed in a pioneering hospice, The Time to Die addresses...

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Measurement of brain activity in a patient with phantom limb pain

Cause of phantom limb pain in amputees, and potential treatment, identified

27 Oct 2016

Researchers have identified the cause of chronic, and currently untreatable, pain in those with amputations and severe nerve damage, as well as a...

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Diabetes

Genetic approach could help identify side-effects at early stages of drug development

01 Jun 2016

An approach that could reduce the chances of drugs failing during the later stages of clinical trials has been demonstrated by a collaboration...

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Pills

Opinion: More accountability needed in how drugs are priced and reimbursed

23 May 2016

Lawrence King (Department of Sociology) and Piotr Ozieranski (University of Bath) discuss how EU member states use complex policy instruments to...

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Diabetes 2/4

Surprise finding suggests diabetes drug could release rather than prevent blood sugar

21 Sep 2015

Graham Ladds, lecturer in pharmacology, discusses the controversy around a group of drugs used to treat Type 2 diabetes.

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GLP-1 Agonists are injectable drugs that regulate blood sugar levels and have also been shown to promote weight loss, making them an attractive form of treatment for Type 2 diabetes, which is often linked to obesity.

Study highlights possible knowledge gap over effects of some diabetes drugs

18 Sep 2015

Scientists have found that some drugs from a group of anti-diabetic treatments may, in certain circumstances, act on glucagon receptors in the body...

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First of new generation of cancer drugs granted European approval

18 Dec 2014

A new drug for ovarian cancer, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge and AstraZeneca, has today become the first of new class of...

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