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Innovative medicines should be made available to patients at the earliest possible stage.

This is according to the Expert Group on Innovation in the Regulation of Healthcare and the body wants to see an acceleration in the distribution of drugs if there is an unmet medical need. Legal flexibilities already exist in this area, but it does not believe they are being used effectively. 

Instead, the Expert Group thinks the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) – the body responsible for regulating all medicines and medical devices in the UK – should be pressurising the European Medicines Agency to call for adaptive licensing at the earliest possible opportunity. 

By doing so, companies would be able to put forward pilot products to use these flexibilities – as a result the group supports the proposed UK early access scheme for unlicensed medicines.  

It also believes the government should consider accommodating within the system a process whereby a product can be identified for a potential candidate for the early access scheme.

Dr Ian Hudson, chief executive of the MHRA, said: "The MHRA is committed to playing its part in creating an environment that will encourage innovation and help patients get faster access to new, innovative medicines and treatments.

"We want to see improvement in the health of millions of people. There are a range of regulatory tools that can be appropriately used to allow innovative products to be developed in an optimal way for the benefit of public health."

He added organisations can get in touch with MHRA to get both scientific and regulatory advice. 

A report created by the Expert Group has now been passed on to the Department of Health and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who are set to consider it before making an announcement about the next course of action. 

New technology that relies on 'virtual reality hands' could help stroke survivors regain the use of their limbs.

A small scale study has been carried out by the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and it suggests a brain-computer interface can help the physically impaired make a better recovery. 

Presented as part of the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2013, the investigation sought to ascertain how important it is for people to practice mental imagery if they are struggling to move their hands and arms. 

Alexander Doud, lead author on the research project, revealed the virtual reality hands are controlled by stroke survivors' thoughts. 

He added: "During rehabilitation, usually a therapist will move the patient's hand or arm in the desired direction while asking that patient to imagine they are making the movement. In this practice space, the patients can control photorealistic hands by thinking about using their own hands without actually moving at all."

Statistics from the Stroke Association show that there are over 152,000 strokes in the UK every year, while there are approximately 1.1 million stroke survivors. This demonstrates how significant this study could be if it helps people regain the use of their limbs. 

Patients taking part in the study achieved an 81 per cent accuracy when it came to reaching out for a glass of tea or water with the virtual hands. They had only be given three two-hour sessions before being tested. 

Mr Doud remarked the system can be personalised quite easily, so specific motivating goals can be achieved. He thinks the next step is to have the same set of results replicated in a much larger study.

However, the expert is confident about the system's usefulness, as it encourages stroke survivors to exercise parts of the brain that have been damaged or weakened, while it can be used alongside traditional rehabilitative therapy. 

Scientists may have come up with a new technique that has the potential to revolutionise the drug development process.

A team of researchers from the UK, US and Italy have honed a process that enables them to engineer specific functions into a protein.

Led by experts at the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences and Department of Biochemistry at the University of Leicester, the group have proven the new system works by taking a protein normally found in the human body and evolving it to a form that can block a molecule involved in blood vessel growth and inflammation.

Research leader, Professor Nick Brindle, said the theory behind this new technique is not new, but it has been difficult to develop it for the number of complex proteins required to create more targeted drugs – until now.

Mr Brindle claimed it was a bonus that the team were able to develop the protein – known as a ligand-trap – as it targets a molecule that is involved in "a whole range of health problems".

It is hoped the process can be used to tackle heart disease, inflammation and other illnesses.

"In addition to medicine, these specifically evolved 'designer proteins' have a wide range of applications in the chemical, pharmaceutical and agricultural industries," he remarked.

"This is a big step forward. We are hoping that, over the next five years or so, this new protein can be developed into a form that could be used to treat inflammation and other conditions."

Heart disease is still one of the biggest killers in the UK, so any treatment that can improve survival rates will be welcomed by medical professionals.

According to figures compiled by the British Heart Foundation, around one in six men die from coronary heart disease, while the same can be said of one in nine women.

Approximately 74,000 people die from this condition in the UK every year – an average of 200 deaths every day.

Scientists looking for new cancer treatments will soon be able to take advantage of a new database.

The CanSAR system will make 1.7 billion experimental results available to researchers in one easy-to-access location. Special technology will also be used to try to predict potential targets for anti-cancer drugs in the future. 

One of the main benefits of the scheme is that it will let scientists from different countries work together almost seamlessly, as they can share the same information regardless of their location. 

Nell Barrie, senior science information manager at Cancer Research UK's, which has funded the system, said: "The clues we need to tackle cancer are hidden in data like this and by making it freely available we can boost our progress and make breakthroughs sooner." 

The development is comfortably the biggest disease database of its kind in the world. To put its size into perspective, it is capable of holding more information than the Hubble space telescope would gather in a million years of use.

There are more than 200 different types of cancer, each with a specific set of causes, symptoms and treatments, and so this database has the potential to revolutionise research and development. 

Dr Bissan Al-Lazikani, team leader at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, stated the database "can spot opportunities for future cancer treatments that no human eye could be expected to see". 

Advances in DNA sequencing have made the development possible, while information will also be available on nearly one million testable drugs and over a thousand types of cancer cell.

A smaller-scale prototype was previously launched and it attracted some 26,000 users in over 70 countries. Thanks to the scheme, 46 previously overlooked drug treatment possibilities for cancer molecules were discovered.

Professor Paul Workman, deputy chief executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, said: "This is an extraordinary time for cancer research, as advances in scientific techniques open up new possibilities and generate unprecedented amounts of data."

Scientists have made a significant breakthrough that enables them to analyse an entire genome for the first time, which in turn means they can discover the cause of a genetic disease dubbed 'junk DNA'.
 
Teams led by the University of Exeter Medical School and Imperial College London carried out a comprehensive study that found junk DNA is most commonly the result of mutations that occur in a newly identified gene element in a particularly remote part of the genome.
 
Thanks to the latest advances in genetic sequencing, this part of the genome can now be explored for the first time.
 
Results from the study were published in Nature Genetics and the experts behind the research discovered the condition is the result of mutations in genomic dark matter. This dark matter is made up of the large stretches of DNA that contain no genes and make up about 99 per cent of a human's genome.
 
Instead of holding genes, this dark matter is responsible for making sure that genes are "switched on" at the right times and in the part of the body where they are required.
 
Of particular interest is the fact that it was only the recent development of advanced genetic sequencing laboratory technology that made the study and subsequent findings possible.
 
Dr Mike Weedon, lead researcher and senior lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School, said: "This breakthrough delves into the dark matter of the genome, which until recently, was very difficult to systematically study. 

"Now, advances in DNA sequencing technology mean we have the tools to explore these non-protein coding regions far more thoroughly and we are finding it has a significant impact on development and disease."
 
A host of bodies came together to fund the project to ensure the study could go ahead. These included the Wellcome Trust, the National Institute for Health Research Exeter Clinical Research Facility and the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme.