drug research

A clinical trial at Johns Hopkins Hospital is looking at ways to make a targeted cancer drug more effective for pediatric brain tumor patients.

A large study provides the strongest evidence that children and teenagers can be desensitized to peanut allergies through controlled, escalating exposure.

Patients that wind up in emergency rooms because of drug use have far more types of drugs in their systems than the standard screening test used by hospitals is catching, a new study has found.

Brain plaques believed to contribute to Alzheimer's disease melt away in mice when robbed of a key enzyme, researchers report.

Dr. Robert Redfield, an AIDS expert with the University of Maryland School of Medicine has been appointed the new director of the Centers for Disease Control.

Dr. Byron Maas surveys a supply of marijuana products for dogs that lines a shelf in his veterinary clinic. They're selling well.

Deerfield Management will provide $65 million in funding to help Johns Hopkins scientists develop early stage therapeutic research.

Maryland team hopes to save lives and lesson illness with new flu treatments

Johns Hopkins researchers explore veterinary drug to treat patients like Sen. John McCain

St. Mary's County's pretrial supervision program, which is winning accolades for its results in getting criminal defendants to show up for trial and avoid new offenses without incarcerating them. The program that has been held up as a model for other Maryland jurisdictions to follow as the role of cash bail in determining who is freed diminishes.

Under current conditions, medical research is not science. It is deceptive. Even when results are positive they are presented in a misleading way to exaggerate their benefit. We hear that the newest cholesterol drug Repatha cuts down heart attacks by 20 percent, which sounds impressive, but in fact after two years only 15 out of 1,000 people benefit, and no lives are saved in this industry-sponsored study — numbers buried by the study's authors. The drug costs $14,000 a year. This is not

All drugs and some chemicals are tested on animals before humans, but no one is really sure how good mice, dogs and others are in predicting the toxic affects on people so a team from Johns Hopkins University aims to find out

Plavix is a blood thinner that prevents the blood from clotting around stents after surgery, which can reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke in people with heart disease. But the drug only works when a liver enzyme in the body activates it. About 30 percent of people have at least one gene variation that might prevent this activation and make the drug less effective.

The fact that clinical trials found that opioids pose a "very small risk of developing addiction, abuse, or other serious side effects" suggests that clinical trials, as they are currently conducted, may not be able to accurately determine the safety of prescription medications.

Federal approval for a new drug can take a decade or more, but researchers at Johns Hopkins University are studying a way to shave off years for medications meant for serious outbreaks of flu, Ebola or other infectious disease

The $1.1 billion allocated by Congress last week to target Zika will mean more money for states and localities to control and monitor for the mosquito-borne virus and for researchers to development of vaccines and diagnostic tests

University of Maryland researcher begin injecting a vaccine made from the DNA of the Zika virus to test for safety and effectiveness

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine will join several other academic and industry scientists in developing a new, stem cell based method of assessing treatments for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

Traces of amphetamines from prescription drugs and meth have side effects on the most basic level of stream ecosystems, researchers have found.

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine will begin testing a Zika vaccine in humans before the end of the year as part of an aggressive effort to curtail the virus blamed for a devastating birth defect

Federal regulators have approved a cholera vaccine developed by the University of Maryland, providing U.S. travelers with their first protection against the virulent infection common in many poor countries.

Zika vaccine developed by Emergent headed for clinical trials.

Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore have developed a new drug that promises a possible breakthrough by offering strong pain relief while lowering the risk of addiction.

With an official link established this week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between Zika and birth defects, and warmer weather expected to propel the mosquito-borne virus north, the push is intensifying for a drug to prevent or treat infections

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health are growing tiny replicas of the human brain to help the study of neurological diseases in a trend many hope could lead to better treatments and even cures for some of the most debilitating illnesses.

Baltimore biotechnology company Profectus BioSciences is testing a vaccine to guard against the Ebola virus on 39 human subjects, a first step toward administering it more broadly in people at risk of exposure to the deadly pathogen.

Nearly all children will catch the common wintertime respiratory infection known as RSV before they are two, but for decades researchers have been unable to develop an means to prevent it. Now a vaccine is showing promise in early trials at Johns Hopkins University.

Looking back at new developments in health, science, and technology this year, one thing is clear — 2015 was a banner year for medical milestones, scientific breakthroughs and technological advances at local universities and biotech companies.

The drug and device industry now funds six times more clinical trials than the federal government, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers. That means companies with financial interests in the studies now have more control over what doctors and patients learn about new treatments.

Decades-long research on a promising HIV/AIDS vaccine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine is moving into the critical human testing stage.

The drug, called Atezolizumab, is a form of immunotherapy, a new treatment option for patients with some types of lung cancer, bladder cancer and melanoma. Based on early data from a clinical trial, the treatment, which helps the immune system fight cancer, looks promising for women with metastatic, triple-negative breast cancer.

What could be one of the first treatments to delay or prevent Alzheimer's disease received a big boost from the National Institute on Aging, which is putting up $7.5 million to help fund the next round of trials for the drug being developed by Baltimore start-up AgeneBio and the Johns Hopkins University.

Cerecor, a Baltimore pharmaceutical company planning an initial public stock offering, has launched a new study of an antidepressant it says can help patients who aren't responding to standard treatments.

Seniors are most likely to develop life-threatening complications from the flu, but Johns Hopkins researchers say they may have found a way to boost the power of the seasonal influenza vaccine to better protect them.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, is similar to another deadly coronavirus identified a decade ago called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, giving scientists a jump on the investigation into their origins.

Doctors say more research is needed to treat people with rare cancer related to asbestos

Novavax Inc.'s Ebola vaccine helped healthy people develop an immune response against the deadly virus in an early trial.

Maryland's hospitals and doctors took in more than $7.6 million in payments for research, speeches and other work from drug and device manufacturers in 2014, according to federal authorities who have been releasing payment data periodically.

The U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases are partnering to help expedite progress in the global fight against Ebola. ECBC is working with USAMRIID on two critical studies –a vaccine study and a biomarker study – that will advance the global fight against Ebola.

Research being published Thursday suggests that an Ebola vaccine being developed by Baltimore company Profectus BioSciences is effective against the strain of the virus that has ravaged West Africa, a milestone the company says is a first in the race to prevent future Ebola outbreaks.

At its growing East Baltimore facility, Emergent BioSolutions has produced a booster shot to go with a leading Ebola vaccine candidate, joining in a competitive race to make a safe and effective tool to stop the spread of an outbreak that continues in West Africa and to prevent future outbreaks.

Vaccinogen is developing a vaccine that uses colon cancer patients' own tumor cells to train their bodies to fight off recurrence of the disease.

To beat Ebola as we've overcome other global epidemics, officials must preserve access to animal research. Cures for this deadly pathogen — and thousands of lives — depend on it.

Thousands of people are to be injected with two experimental Ebola vaccines in trials in West Africa within a couple of weeks, and a Baltimore biotechnology company is launching a human trial of its own candidate in June, as scientists and public health officials work to end the deadly epidemic.

Mutations to the Ebola virus could make some experimental treatments ineffective, according to researchers at Fort Detrick.

Another Ebola vaccine trial is set to begin in Maryland by the end of the month, as a Rockville company conducts research on behalf of Johnson & Johnson.

The way that cancer spreads from one organ to other parts of the body, called metastasis, has never been seen this way before.

On Thursday, Ravens star Haloti Ngata joined a rapidly growing list of pro athletes, including Orioles slugger Chris Davis, who have been suspended for using Adderall.