In its breaking news today The Australian provides information on a new study where US scientists have devised a drug-disease matchmaking program that mines databases for potentially useful new treatment combinations.

A drug commonly used to alleviate ulcers has shown promise against lung cancer and an epilepsy medicine for halting seizures could also work against inflammatory bowel disease, the study released today said.

The research, led by Stanford University scientists and funded by the National Institutes of Health, is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine (available online to UQ staff and students). The research team used an NIH (National Institutes of Health) database that is available to the public, called the NIH National Center for Biotechnology Information Gene Expression Omnibus, which contains thousands of genomic studies from around the world.