As human cases of flea-borne murine typhus continue to occur in South Texas, researchers are working to better understand the role cats and their fleas may play in the disease’s transmission cycle.

In a recent study, researchers at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) detected DNA from Rickettsia typhi — the bacterium that causes flea-borne murine typhus — in cat fleas (Ctenocephalides felis) collected from domestic cats in the Rio Grande Valley, a region that consistently reports some of the highest numbers of human cases of murine typhus in Texas.

The findings provide new insight into the pathogens carried by cat fleas and demonstrate how closely animal, human and environmental health are linked.

Insilico Medicine (“Insilico” HKEX:3696), a leader in clinical-stage generative AI for drug discovery, today announced a strategic collaboration agreement with Takeda to use its proprietary end-to-end platform, Pharma.AI, to advance drug candidates across the company’s therapeutic areas. 

The collaboration is designed to identify clinically differentiated drug candidates for promising therapeutic targets. Using advanced generative models from the earliest stages of design, the teams aim to improve the quality of candidate molecules and optimize them to achieve best-in-class efficacy and safety criteria.

A new retrospective cohort study conducted at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf has revealed that hypoxic liver injury (HLI) is a frequent and highly consequential complication among critically ill patients suffering from acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The findings highlight HLI as a significant prognostic marker associated with markedly increased mortality in this vulnerable population.