news 2021

A new drug has shown promise in slowing the regrowth of tumours among some bowel cancer patients, according to new findings of a major trial run by researchers at UCL in collaboration with Oxford, Leeds and Cardiff universities. The results of the FOCUS4-C trial, which was funded by Cancer Research UK, the EME Programme - an MRC/NIHR partnership - and AstraZeneca, will be presented on Saturday (18 September) at the European Society of Medical Oncology and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology .

A new Covid-19 treatment for people with diabetes has shown promising results in a trial led by UCL researchers. The trial was conducted by St George Street Capital (SGSc) - a medical research charity - with the the goal to find new purposes, where there is a real clinical need, for drugs that have already passed safety checks Professors John Martin (UCL Division of Medicine) and Pete Coffey (UCL Institute of Ophthalmology) founded the charity along with an American philanthropist to trial new medicines four years ago.

New research from the Addiction and Mental Health Group at the University of Bath highlights challenges for people trying to give up the drug 'Spice'. Last updated on Friday 17 September 2021 Research published today by psychologists at the University of Bath suggests that 'Spice' - which contains synthetic drugs originally designed to mimic the effects of cannabis - is more harmful than cannabis and that users are likely to experience more severe withdrawal symptoms when attempting to quit.

Research provides new insight into fundamental workings of the immune system in response to therapy to treat skin cancer New research led by the University of Birmingham suggests that skin cancer patients could have a better prognosis if their T cells send messages from five specific genes in their immune response to drugs given to treat the disease.

A drug already used to treat high blood pressure could be re-purposed as the first treatment to tackle a type of vascular dementia caused by damaged and 'leaky' small blood vessels in the brain, according to research part-funded by the British Heart Foundation and published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation .

PIC SNIPE/Shutterstock Sheena Cruickshank , University of Manchester Several countries - including the UK - are now offering third COVID-19 shots amid reports of vaccines proving less effective over time. But do these countries really need to embark on widespread booster campaigns? Here's what research tells us so far about how vaccines are performing.

Leading scientists at the University of Birmingham have discovered a previously unknown pathway that prevents specific drugs from working in patients with bowel cancer. The research findings pave the way for increasing the number of bowel cancer patients who can be successfully treated, say the scientists.

An in vitro study of drugs already approved by the regulatory authority in the United States to treat a range of conditions, has shown eight of them are also effective in slowing SARS-CoV-2 replication in infected human cells. The team led by University of Manchester scientists used the drugs to treat liver and kidney cells, which are commonly targeted by the virus in patients with severe disease.

The review funded by Cancer Research UK, in which academics at the Universities of Manchester and Leeds, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust screened 2,197 articles is published in the journal Frontiers in Oncology this week (9/09/21). Despite advances in radiation treatment for prostate cancer, an established technique, it can reoccur in some patients most often within the prostate gland itself.

Common medications can accumulate in gut bacteria, a new study has found, altering bacterial function and potentially reducing the medications' effectiveness. If we can characterise how people respond depending on the composition of their microbiome, then drug treatments could be individualised Kiran Patil These interactions - seen for many drugs including those used to treat depression, diabetes, and asthma - could help researchers to better understand how drug effectiveness and side-effects differ between individuals.

Unwell COVID-19 patients may be treated just as effectively with oxygen through a mask rather than the sometimes difficult to tolerate therapy known as Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP), according to a new study. The patients in the study, whose frailty and other medical conditions meant they were unlikely to benefit from invasive mechanical ventilation and intensive care treatment, received treatment with either an oxygen mask or CPAP.

A new technology that can study which therapies will work on patients with solid cancerous tumours has been developed by scientists at UCL. Researchers say the tool, which can rapidly test tumorous tissue against different treatments, such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy or radiotherapy, could be used by clinicians to pinpoint the best therapy for a particular patient.

Findings suggest infection control measures against variants will need to continue in the post-vaccination era. By combining lab-based experiments and epidemiology of vaccine breakthrough infections, we've shown that the Delta variant is better at replicating and spreading than other commonly-observed variants Ravi Gupta The Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, which has become the dominant variant in countries including India and the UK, has most likely spread through its ability to evade neutralising antibodies and its increased infectivity, say an international team of researchers.

Research from the University of Oxford and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research has shown that the technology behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine has potential in treating cancer. Scientists from the University of Oxford and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research are building on the success of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 to develop a vaccine to treat cancer.

The drug Viagra, used to treat sexual impotence, can strongly suppress abnormal heart rhythms known as arrythmias in sheep according to University of Manchester scientists. The British Heart Foundation funded study, published today(2/09/21) in Circulation Researchthe leading journal in its field - could have important implications on the management of the condition on humans.

Achieving remission for people with type 2 diabetes through dietary approaches and weight loss should be the primary treatment goal of GPs and healthcare practitioners, concludes a large-scale review of clinical evidence led by researchers at UCL and Aston University. Type 2 diabetes (T2DM) is a serious condition caused when the body resists the insulin produced in the pancreas, and not enough insulin is made.

A study has revealed that 232 people could have died from taking an accidental overdose of prescription opioids in England between 2000 and 2015. Led by Dr Teng-Chou Chen from The University of Manchester, it is the first to study the medication history for opioid related death using half a million electronic health records.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a new way to identify which patients with heart failure will benefit from treatment with beta-blockers. Heart failure is one of the most common heart conditions, with substantial impact on patient quality of life, and a major driver of hospital admissions and healthcare cost.

Largest study to date analysing more than 40,000 COVID-19 cases (including a combination of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals) confirmed by virus genome sequencing finds a two-fold increased risk of hospitalisation from delta versus alpha variant infections.

A national study has found that a significant proportion of clinically at-risk patients with certain immunocompromised or immunosuppressed conditions, mount a low, or undetectable, immune response after two doses of the same COVID-19 vaccine. The ongoing multi-centre OCTAVE study is evaluating the immune responses following COVID-19 vaccination in patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases such as cancer, inflammatory arthritis, diseases of the kidney or liver, or patients who are having a stem cell transplant.