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The new class of drug, which can be taken orally, is designed to protect the brain by combating the damaging effects of inflammation. Results from early stage clinical trials have yet to be announced, but studies on animals suggest the therapy could be effective against a wide range of conditions which also include motor neurone disease and complications from traumatic brain injury.

Scientists have found a master regulator gene needed for the development of M cells, a mysterious type of intestinal cell involved in initiating immune responses.

For the first time doctors have successfully transplanted a vein grown with a patient's own stem cells, another example of scientists producing human body parts in the lab. In this case, the patient was a 10-year-old girl in Sweden who was suffering from a severe vein blockage to her liver. Last March, the girl's doctors decided to make her a new blood vessel to bypass the blocked vein instead of using one of her own or considering a liver transplant.

Doctors have successfully dropped the first "smart bomb" on breast cancer, using a drug to deliver a toxic payload to tumor cells while leaving healthy ones alone.

Medical science efforts to harness the power of the immune system against cancer are beginning to bear fruit after decades of frustration, opening up a hopeful new front in the long battle against the disease.

Paralysed rats have been able to walk again when their spinal cords were bathed in chemicals and zapped with electricity, scientists have shown.

Western intelligence agencies believe that al-Qaida doctors have been trained to implant bombs inside the bodies of suicide bombers, Britain's Sunday Times reported.

The tantalising prospect of treating a range of brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, all with the same drug has been raised by UK researchers.

It turns out you can recycle just about anything these days - even kidneys and other organs donated for transplants. Recently in Chicago, in what is believed to be the first documented case of its kind in the U.S., a transplanted kidney that was failing was removed from a patient while he was still alive and given to somebody else.

For some people with diabetes, surgery may be the best medicine. Two studies have found that weight loss operations worked much better than the standard treatments to control Type 2 diabetes in obese and overweight people. Those who had surgery to staple the stomach and reroute the small intestine were much more likely to have their diabetes go into complete remission, or to need less medicine, than people given the typical regimen of drugs, diet and exercise, the studies found. The surgery also helped many to lower their blood pressure and cholesterol.