BIOMEDICINE: Fat Busters!

Bye, bye blockbusters, hello niche busters.

time for a great white shark named Bruce. A mechanical beast weighing 1.5 tonnes, Bruce was the star of Jaws, a movie that grossed US$260 million in the United States, ushering Hollywood into the summer blockbuster era. Like the movie industry, the pharmaceutical sector has in recent decades come to rely on annual blockbusters to drive profits. But it appears the blockbuster model is broken. Un...

Tropical Biomedicine

Biomedicine Select

Autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis, are complex disorders characterized by an inflammatory response against the body's own tissues. Recent findings reveal new insights into how these diseases are initiated and progress and the factors that contribute to their clinical symptoms. Such work also pinpoints potential new therapeutic targets including the integra...

Biomedicine Select

This issue’s Biomedicine Select highlights new insights into the role of mitochondria in disease. Several new studies implicate abnormal mitochondria in the destruction of neurons of the substantia nigra, the cause of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Meanwhile, an elegant computational approach has enabled identification of candidate genes for several mitochondrial diseases including the mitochondrial...

Time busters: a lean team tackles OR turnover.