Foundations of Science

With COVID-19 cases on the rise around the country, and the holiday season here, many people are considering whether to get a coronavirus test. Diagnostic testing is a critical tool in helping to understand and control the spread of the virus. And for indviduals, test results help to guide their…

“Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.” – George Eliot

Instinctually, intuitively, we know that music makes life better.

For millennia, humans have used music to soothe to our souls and comfort pain. Parents worldwide sing lullabies to the young and mark special occasions such as birthdays, graduations, and weddings with song. We rely on music to help us power…

With the potential to offer targeted therapies and reduced side-effects, the drive towards biologics is exciting. Biologics have revolutionized the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer, autoimmune conditions, and other diseases. Biosimilars have the potential to enhance treatment accessibility, and with biologic patents beginning to expire, this is an interesting era for the two treatment options.^1…

Cory Woodall flew as a Navy flight instructor before his symptoms from Wilson disease became too debilitating.

In 2017, Cory Woodall, was living his dream. A U.S. Navy flight instructor, he flew a P-3 Orion— a surveillance aircraft— with ease, and hoped to someday become…

While many people have heard of the blood disorder hemophilia, immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is a lesser-known bleeding disorder that also severely impacts patients’ quality of life.

When you have a cut or injury, thrombocytes, or platelets, are tiny, colorless cell fragments that form a “plug” in blood vessels to help begin the clotting process. ITP is an autoimmune condition that causes a person’s immune…

Is a strong immune system the solution to sickness? Can we keep ourselves well by strengthening our immune response?

Sort of. And not really.

Think of your immune system as a home security system for your body. Intact skin and mucus membranes keep out some bacteria and viruses, just as a fence around your house keeps most unwanted intruders off your property. When germs get inside the body, the…

We’ve all heard a lot about viruses lately, but what exactly are they? Viruses are bundles of nucleic acid—DNA or RNA—that are enclosed by a protein shell known as a capsid.¹ By some measures the most abundant life form on earth,¹ viruses lurk everywhere; experts estimate that they are 10 times more numerous than bacteria.² And while individual viral particles, called virions,^3…

Eczema is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that can be challenging to live with. Affecting over 31 million Americans, it is a prevalent condition presenting in seven different forms; contact dermatitis, atopic dermatitis, seborrheic dermatitis, dyshidrotic eczema, nummular eczema, and stasis dermatitis. The main characteristics of the disease include:

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in both men and women. In fact, it is estimated that nearly 230,000 lung cancer cases will be diagnosed in the United States in 2020. Of those cases, 80-85% of lung cancer is non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).¹

The treatment of patients with NSCLC has become reliant on tissue and/or blood biomarkers to help guide treatment decisions.