Multispecific drugs are designed to engage two or more entities to exert their pharmacological effect. This Perspective discusses how a new wave of FDA-approved multispecific molecules have been transformative in overcoming barriers to drug development such as toxicity, rapid clearance, undruggable protein features, and functional redundancy.
Wang and colleagues present a phenotypic brain organoid atlas for neurodevelopmental disorders, revealing disease-specific cellular and molecular alterations that illuminate NDD pathogenesis. Integrating patient brain organoids, imaging, and exome sequencing, this resource provides a powerful platform to advance research and therapeutic discovery.
Use of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP1RA) in adults with type 2 diabetes was associated with an increased risk of new chronic cough compared with other second-line diabetes medications.
Question Is the use of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) associated with increased risk of chronic cough?
Findings In this cohort study of 427 555 individuals who were prescribed a GLP-1RA and 1 614 495 matched individuals who were prescribed a different second-line diabetes medication, GLP-1RA treatment was associated with a higher adjusted hazard ratio of new chronic cough. This association was independent of gastroesophageal reflux disease diagnosis.
Meaning The study findings suggest that patients who use GLP-1RAs have an increased risk of chronic cough, suggesting further exploration of the strength of this association and pharmacologic mechanisms.
For the first time, MIT chemists have synthesized a fungal compound known as verticillin A, which was discovered more than 50 years ago and has shown potential as an anticancer agent.
The compound has a complex structure that made it more difficult to synthesize than related compounds, even though it differed by only a couple of atoms.
“We have a much better appreciation for how those subtle structural changes can significantly increase the synthetic challenge,” says Mohammad Movassaghi, an MIT professor of chemistry. “Now we have the technology where we can not only access them for the first time, more than 50 years after they were isolated, but also we can make many designed variants, which can enable further detailed studies.”
In tests in human cancer cells, a derivative of verticillin A showed particular promise against a type of pediatric brain cancer called diffuse midline glioma. More tests will be needed to evaluate its potential for clinical use, the researchers say.
Movassaghi and Jun Qi, an associate professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and Harvard Medical School, are the senior authors of the study, which appears today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Walker Knauss PhD ’24 is the lead author of the paper. Xiuqi Wang, a medicinal chemist and chemical biologist at Dana-Farber, and Mariella Filbin, research director in the Pediatric Neurology-Oncology Program at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, are also authors of the study.
EPFL scientists have integrated discarded crustacean shells into robotic devices, leveraging the strength and flexibility of natural materials for robotic applications.
Although many roboticists today turn to nature to inspire their designs, even bioinspired robots are usually fabricated from non-biological materials like metal, plastic and composites. But a new experimental robotic manipulator from the Computational Robot Design and Fabrication Lab (CREATE Lab) in EPFL’s School of Engineering turns this trend on its head: its main feature is a pair of langoustine abdomen exoskeletons.
Although it may look unusual, CREATE Lab head Josie Hughes explains that combining biological elements with synthetic components holds significant potential not only to enhance robotics, but also to support sustainable technology systems.
Antibiotics are no longer able to treat infections as effectively as they once did because many pathogens have developed resistance to these drugs. This phenomenon, known as antimicrobial resistance (AMR), claims over a million lives worldwide each year.
Scientists have long been searching for treatments to overcome AMR, and a discovery by researchers at the University of California takes a significant step forward. The team has developed a new type of silver nanoparticle (AgNP) that is much more effective against harmful bacteria and significantly slows the rise of antibiotic resistance.
The AgNP was designed with M13 phage—a rod-shaped virus that infects E. coli bacteria—as the biological template for particle growth, resulting in a potency 30 times higher than that of commercially purchased silver nanoparticles.