The pressing need for new antibiotics is highlighted by the recent report of the first case of a hospital 'superbug', Staphylococcus aureus, that was fully resistant to vancomycin, one of the last lines of defence against multiply drug-resistant bacteria. In their Review, Coates and colleagues focus primarily on targeting non-multiplying latent bacteria, a novel strategy that could potentially help slow the rising tide of antibiotic resistance. Continuing with the theme of infectious disease, Sonenberg and colleagues discuss strategies to target hepatitis C, which has been increasingly recognized as a serious public health problem in recent years. The lack of efficient cell-culture systems for hepatitis C has hampered drug development, an issue that has recently been addressed by the development of a replicon system, which is highlighted by Bartenschlager in his Innovation article. New drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease are also in great demand, and Wolfe summarizes the current therapeutic approaches for this neurodegenerative disorder. Peptide–macromolecular interactions constitute the main physico-chemical mechanisms by which living processes are controlled and modulated, and in his Review, Hruby describes strategies that have been developed for the design of peptides as potential drugs and biological tools. And completing the Reviews section, Bajorath considers the integration of two key technologies for drug discovery — high-throughput screening and virtual screening — which are more complementary to each other than often thought. In the second Perspective, Levitt and Brodie's Outlook article presents the views of both consumers and physicians on direct-to-consumer drug advertising. And finally, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the approval of the first biotechnology drug, recombinant human insulin, our From the Analyst's Couch feature looks at what the future holds for biotechnology drug developers.