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The field of nanomedicine has grown rapidly in recent years, but several issues are emerging that could constrain its future evolution, particularly if they are not appropriately acknowledged and the potential of nanomedicine is oversold.
Seven pharmaceutical companies and the Innovative Medicines Initiative have launched a €196 million project in a bid to boost academic and industry lead discovery.
Chris Austin, Director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, discusses his plans to tackle the “tragedy of the commons” drug discovery problems.
Products based on stem cells show promise in diverse therapeutic areas, including cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases. This article analyses the late-stage pipeline of stem cell therapies and provides a market overview.
The therapeutic outcome of a drug or procedure is influenced by the placebo response in both drug development and clinical practice. Enck and colleagues examine how the placebo response can be utilized in these settings to ensure that the most desirable outcome is attained.
Biased ligands of seven-transmembrane receptors (also known as GPCRs), which preferentially activate specific signalling pathways associated with a given seven-transmembrane receptor (GPCR), could have novel therapeutic profiles. Here, the authors discuss which methods may be most appropriate to quantify bias in a drug discovery setting.
In recent years it has become apparent that the tumour microenvironment has a large effect on tumour cell signalling, proliferation, survival and, importantly, responses to drugs. Here, Mitsiades and colleagues discuss how these considerations can inform anticancer drug discovery and provide an overview of advances in preclinical models that allow better assessment of the impact of the tumour microenvironment on therapeutic efficacy.
The B cell receptor (BCR) activates numerous survival and proliferation pathways, and can signal in an antigen-dependent or antigen-independent (tonic) fashion. Here, Young and Staudt discuss the signalling cascades involved, examine recent evidence for a role of BCR signalling in different subtypes of B cell lymphomas and provide an overview of pipeline candidates that target components of the BCR signalling cascade.
