●Mood stabilizers converge on IP3 pathway.Coyle, J. T. & Manji, H. K. Nature Medicine June (2002). Lithium and other mood stabilizers have the same end result – a calmer life for people with bipolar disorder. Now, as discussed in this News and Views article, it seems they might also affect the same biochemical pathways in the brain.

●Sweet surrender to chemical genetics.Tan, D. Nature Biotechnology June (2002).

An array of possibilities for multiple sclerosis.Tompkins, S. M. & Miller, S. D. Nature Medicine May (2002). A News and Views article that discusses how microarray analysis was used to compare gene expression in two types of multiple-sclerosis lesion and to point to new therapies for the disease.

●Oestrogen as a neuroprotective hormone.Behl, C. Nature Reviews Neuroscience June (2002).

Interfering with bone remodelling.Alliston, T. & Derynck, R. Nature 18 April (2002). Targeted use of interferon-β might be beneficial for treating diseases in which bone resorption is inappropriately high.

●The future of antigen-targeted immunotherapy of allergy.Valenta, R. Nature Reviews Immunology June (2002).

●Special focus on apoptosis.Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology June (2002). Of particular interest to researchers in drug discovery are the following:

●IAP proteins: blocking the road to death's door.Salvesen, G. S. & Duckett, C. S. Discovered less than a decade ago, the 'inhibitor of apoptosis' ( IAP ) gene family encodes a group of structurally related proteins that, in addition to their ability to suppress apoptotic cell death, are involved in a growing number of seemingly unrelated cellular functions.

●Yeast and apoptosis.Jin, C. & Reed, J. C. Although yeast lack much of the machinery that is responsible for apoptosis in metazoans, they have yielded new insights into cell-death mechanisms, and can also be exploited for identifying drugs that interact with human proteins that are involved in apoptosis control.