Scientists at the University of Salamanca have demonstrated that free radicals or reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by astrocytes had a beneficial effect on brain metabolism. 

Researchers have shown that T cells produced the neurotransmitter acetylcholine to affect blood vessel dilation, which helped them control chronic infections. The work was published in the Feb. 8, 2019, issue of Science.

In results that are simple in one sense and profound in another, researchers at Texas A&M University have demonstrated that application of growth factor bone morphogenetic protein 9 (BMP9) could regenerate a joint in mice after an amputation.

The easiest explanation for the funding woes of women's health is that women are women and venture capitalists are primarily men. But the aphorism that "there is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible and wrong," sometimes ascribed to Mark Twain and sometimes to H.L Mencken, applies.

From a medical perspective, women's sexual and reproductive health is a conundrum. Health care for women of reproductive age includes the possibility of affecting fertility; meanwhile, treating pregnant women means treating two people, whose physiologies differ and whose best interests can be at odds with each other.

Patent protection for drugs hinges on protecting the molecules themselves in composition-of-matter patents. But its structure is only one aspect of a drug that can be protected by patents. Another possibility is to patent the chemical pathway to that structure via composition patents. Pathways, plural, actually – pretty much any compound can be synthesized via multiple routes. The patents around Merck & Co. Inc.'s Januvia (sitagliptin), for example, include more than 400 intermediates, and more than 450 unique reactions.