Over the past two decades, gene therapy has been incubating at a very small scale in academic research labs. Like a chef fine-tuning a new recipe, scientists have been working in single batches that would only be sufficient to treat one or two patients at a time....
In 1987, scientists first uncovered the gene that is the target of mutations that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a lethal muscle-wasting disease that affects about one in every 5,000 newborn boys. While the discovery of...
Hunting wooly mammoths with stone age technology took guts. If the archaeological record is to be believed, it also took an incredible ability to bounce back from serious injuries. ...
The way contemporary chemists work is a lot different than the way their predecessors worked only a few generations ago. You might think that the change is due to new technologies or breakthroughs in scientific understanding, but that’s only partly right. One of the major reasons chemistry is...
Most people struggle with pain at some point in their life, and when it gets bad enough it can be a debilitating condition. However, while pain has its obvious and sometimes devastating downside, our ability to feel physical pain is also part of maintaining our health. For a time, physicians even...
When it comes to creating new medicines, the stories that most often reach the public are the discoveries of new biological pathways or novel compounds. But in the nearly decade-long journey a medicine takes to get from the lab to patients, drug safety studies are an integral, though often behind...
Iron is an essential part of the biologic operating manual for organisms from single-celled bacteria up to complex human beings. But iron also has a dark side: Because of its capacity to turn molecules into free radicals that can damage cell membranes and DNA, too much iron can be as dangerous as...
You go in for an elective knee replacement surgery, hoping to be able to climb the stairs again without pain, and end up with more than you bargained for: a potentially life-threatening bacterial infection caused by Staphylococcus aureus (also referred to as S. aureus, Staphylococcus, or staph...
In our immune system — the body’s security force against infection — T-cells are like the “special-ops” team. These elite defenders are tailored to fight specific pathogens. But T-cells are not only fascinating for their germ-busting abilities. They’re also actively involved in the development of...