news 2023

By combining an antibiotic with an anti-cancer agent, an international team has developed a treatment capable of circumventing the antibiotic resistance of the bacterium Enterococcus faecalis. Antibiotic resistance is one of the world's most pressing health challenges: in 2019, nearly 5 million people died from an infection associated with or attributed to antibiotic resistance.

Remdesivir was one of the first medications approved for treatment of COVID-19. Clinical studies evaluated its effectiveness, but did not generate conclusive results. A new analysis of the study data shows that a specific group of patients benefits the most from the drug. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers and medical practitioners have made a massive effort to find effective treatments for the illness.

Scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have used the Swiss X-ray free-electron laser SwissFEL and the Swiss Light Source SLS to make a film that could give a decisive boost to developing a new type of drug. They made the advance in the field of so-called photopharmacology, a discipline that develops active substances which can be specifically activated or deactivated with the help of light.

The autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis can take a variety of courses. Determining the current and future course of the disease is important in order to slow down its course as much as possible. Researchers at the University of Basel have presented a biomarker whose values in the blood allow such predictions.

The Experimental Therapeutics group , directed by Prof. Carlo V. Catapano at the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR, affiliated to USI and member of Bios+), in collaboration with Prof. Jonathan Hall at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH, Zurich) identified a novel mechanism for the treatment of hepatic disorders of abnormal lipid deposition.

Patients in Switzerland with supplementary private health insurance are more likely to undergo cardiac procedures than those with only basic health insurance. This has been demonstrated in a study by researchers from the University of Basel and the Cantonal Hospital of Aarau. Switzerland has one of the most expensive healthcare systems in the world.

By combining a checkpoint inhibitor with a new immunocytokine, scientists at EPFL, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, CHUV and Roche have made a breakthrough in fighting against immunotherapy-resistant cancers. Immunotherapy is a way of treating cancer by reprogramming the patient's immune system to attack their tumor.

Contrary to warnings in the academic literature and public debate, modest financial incentives for vaccination can be used without fear of serious unintended consequences. This is the result of a scientific study, published in "Nature", conducted by the University of Zurich, Lund University and Unisanté.