Earlier this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that over one million African children had received one or more doses of the world’s first malaria vaccine, RTS,S/AS01 (RTS,S).1 If widely deployed, the WHO estimates that the vaccine, which is the result of 30 years of research, could save the lives of an additional 40,000 …

The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has highlighted the substantial threat posed by pathogenic coronaviruses to humans. To date, over six million people have died from COVID-19 across the globe and more than 500 million cases have been reported.1 Although effective COVID-19 vaccines have been developed, variants of SARS-CoV-2 have already emerged for which vaccines are less …

The potential to harness an individual’s immune system to treat cancer has revolutionized the oncology field. Coined immunotherapy, this umbrella term describes several types of treatment, including immune checkpoint inhibitors, immune system modulators, and adoptive cell therapies. Each triggers the immune system in a different way to fight cancer. One approach currently being explored involves …

Neurodegenerative diseases are a heterogeneous group of disorders that are characterized by the progressive degeneration of the structure and function of the central or peripheral nervous system. Millions of people are affected by these conditions across the globe, and with improved life expectancy in many parts of the world, it is likely that incidence will …

In early 2019, no one could have predicted that a novel coronavirus would sweep around the globe and cause one of the most significant health crises of recent times. Fast-forward to today, and thousands of scientists have turned their attention to studying SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the current COVID-19 pandemic. This research pivot led …

A Global Scourge  Around 50 million people worldwide currently suffer from one or more forms of dementia. Of these, around 850,000 live in the United Kingdom (UK) at an annual care cost of £26 billion (US$38 billion). Unless something is done, experts predict these numbers will likely double within the next 20 years.1 To address …

The pharmaceutical industry is under huge pressure to address the high attrition rates in drug development. With around 90% of candidates failing during clinical development,1 the process is not only long and risky, but also expensive for those involved. There are many reasons that promising drug candidates are discontinued, including poor pharmacokinetics, lack of clinical …

G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the largest and most diverse family of membrane receptors in the human genome and are targeted by around one third of drugs currently approved by the FDA. These proteins represent one of the most extensively studied targets for drug discovery, mainly due to their involvement in a plethora of signaling …

Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, researchers around the world have been working tirelessly to discover effective preventive treatments and therapeutic agents. Currently, the FDA has only approved one drug, Veklury (remdesivir), for treatment of COVID-19. However, the antiviral is only recommended …

The speed at which researchers developed effective vaccines to prevent the spread of COVID-19 required unprecedented international cooperation on a scale never seen before. Rollout of approved vaccines is underway in many countries across the globe, giving people hope that the end to the pandemic is finally in sight. Meanwhile, researchers are continuing to investigate …