Brandon Levy

Brandon Levy is a Health Communications Specialist for the NIH’s Intramural Research Program, where he works to increase the IRP’s public profile and ensure IRP scientists get the recognition they deserve. He particularly enjoys writing about the cutting-edge research performed at NIH but also produces videos and content for social media. Before joining the IRP, he worked as a science writer in NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and as a postbaccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) fellow in NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), spending his days putting people inside giant magnets and sending magnetic waves into their brains to shed light on the mysteries of learning and memory. When he’s not hunched over a computer keyboard, Brandon enjoys singing in his acapella group, reading, honing his skills as an amateur chef, and over-obsessing about college basketball.

Posts By This Author

Drug Duo Stokes Body’s Fat-Burning Furnace

Mouse Study Suggests Treatment Strategy Could Benefit Patients with Obesity

fire

It’s bad enough that the excess abdominal fat carried by most individuals with obesity causes widespread inflammation throughout their bodies. To add insult to injury, that inflammation actually makes it harder to use up overloaded fat stores. However, a new IRP mouse study supports a two-pronged pharmaceutical approach that could break this vicious cycle and help improve the health of people with obesity.

IRP Pushes Forward in Fight Against Pandemic Virus

Many NIH Labs Remain Focused on COVID Research

SARS-CoV-2 virus particles

Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, IRP researchers have been hard at work learning about the virus and developing ways to prevent and treat infections. That research remains as important as ever, particularly as the new Omicron variant of the virus continues to spread rapidly.

Fortunately, NIH’s Intramural Targeted Anti-COVID-19 Program (ITAC) has been providing IRP scientists with millions of dollars to support their research on the pandemic virus, known as SARS-CoV-2. Last week, the “I Am Intramural” blog discussed ITAC-funded efforts to learn about the biology of the virus and how it affects the body. This week, we’ll look at IRP projects focused on ways to track, treat, and prevent infections.

IRP Scientists Continue Efforts to Quell Pandemic

COVID-19 Research at NIH Show No Signs of Slowing

SARS-CoV-2 virus particle

It’s been more than two years since the first outbreak of COVID-19 occurred in China. During that time, amazing scientific advances have dramatically altered prevention and treatment for the illness, including the development of remarkably safe and effective vaccines. However, even with widespread vaccination, scientists predict that the disease will continue to circulate in society indefinitely, with seasonal ebbs and flows like the flu.

As a result, even as COVID-19 vaccine shots rolled out by the hundreds of millions, numerous IRP researchers continued studying the disease and the virus responsible for it. Many of these projects have been funded by the NIH’s Intramural Targeted Anti-COVID-19 Program (ITAC), an initiative that provides IRP researchers with funding for research related to COVID-19. Over the past year and a half, ITAC has provided more than $12 million to support a wide variety of projects — more than can be covered in just one blog post. Read on to learn about just a handful of the many ways IRP researchers are contributing to the fight against COVID-19, and stay tuned next week for another blog describing even more ITAC-funded COVID research.

A New Approach to Male Birth Control

Research in Cells Shows Promise for an Alternative Way to Halt Sperm Production

birth control pills

Birth control has long been mostly one-sided, as the vast majority of contraceptive methods are intended exclusively for women. However, recent IRP research has shown the potential of a new approach towards creating a reversible method of male contraception.

Women have a vast array of contraceptive options available to them, from ‘the pill’ to intrauterine devices (IUDs) and other products. However, for men, the only options aside from condoms are safe but irreversible surgical procedures. More than 40 percent of pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, and additional options for male birth control could help reduce that number.

New Lasker Scholars Begin Breaking New Ground

Early-Career Scientists Power Through Pandemic to Launch Labs

NIH’s 2021 Lasker Clinical Research Scholars

NIH has long prided itself on its ability to accelerate the careers of the brightest young physicians and scientists in the country. One of these many efforts is the Lasker Clinical Research Scholars Program, which provides a select group of individuals relatively early in their scientific careers with the funding and institutional support to start their own labs at NIH. After five to seven years of independent research in the IRP, Lasker Scholars are given the option to apply for three years of funding for work outside of NIH or to remain as investigators at NIH.

While launching a lab in the midst of a global pandemic is no easy task, five Lasker Scholars have done just that over the past year. Their research on cancer, Parkinson’s disease, childhood blindness, and inflammatory conditions is now well underway and promises to eventually improve the lives of many patients. Keep reading to learn more about how NIH’s newest Lasker Scholars are changing the way we treat those illnesses.

Genetic Sequencing Solves Drug Reaction Mystery

Immune System Genes Linked to Severe Side Effects in Patients with Rare Disease

computer monitor showing the results of DNA sequencing

When you run the largest-ever study of a rare childhood disease, you become the go-to person when your peers notice something peculiar in patients with the illness. It was not too surprising, then, when a researcher from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, asked IRP investigator Michael Ombrello, M.D., to help her team follow a new lead in the mystery of why some patients with a rare inflammatory condition called Still’s disease were coming down with a life-threatening lung ailment. The results of their collaboration could lead to a new precision medicine approach that individualizes therapy for Still’s disease based on patients’ DNA.

Mouse Study Links Anxiety to Neuronal Power Failure

Chronic Stress Diminishes Energy Production in the Brain

unplugged power cord

When power lines come down and the electricity shuts off, it’s understandably a worrying situation. As it turns out, people may become anxious not just when their homes are cut off from energy, but also when their brains find themselves short on power, according to recent IRP research done in mice.

While the misfortune of a blackout is temporary, many people experience chronic stress that bothers them continuously. In some individuals, repetitive stressors can contribute to the development of debilitating anxiety that interferes with everyday life. Intriguingly, past research has found evidence that problems with the biological batteries that power our cells, called mitochondria, might be involved in anxiety disorders, as well as some other psychiatric illnesses.

Inflammation Contributes to Cancer-Related Fatigue

Mouse Study Suggests Approach to Combat Patients’ Debilitating Tiredness

exhausted person in bed

The human body is like any delicate ecosystem — disrupting just one part of it can have unexpected, widespread repercussions. Cancer patients know this well, not just because a tumor confined to one organ can cause a range of symptoms, but also because radiation treatment aimed specifically at the tumor sometimes leaves patients feeling utterly exhausted. New IRP research suggests that an inflammatory response to targeted radiation therapy is responsible for this common side effect of the treatment.

To Boost Learning, Timing May Be Everything

New Strategy Could Enhance Benefits of Therapeutic Brain Stimulation

person holding a stopwatch

Electricity can do crazy things to the brain. While it can’t bring back the dead à la Frankenstein or give you new memories like in Total Recall, many scientists believe electrical stimulation could one day help patients with movement or memory problems regain those capabilities. New IRP research bolsters this idea by showing that a brain stimulation technology called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) significantly boosts motor skill learning when precisely administered during specific periods of brain activity.

Study Explores Sex Differences in Flu

Differences in Flu-Fighting Antibodies Could Explain Women’s Greater Susceptibility

sick woman and man

It is well-known that COVID-19 infections are more often life-threatening in the elderly and individuals with chronic medical conditions like obesity, but the novel coronavirus isn’t the only infectious disease that more severely affects certain groups of people. A new IRP study explored a possible biological reason why women tend to experience worse flu infections and suggests a way to potentially improve the effectiveness of flu vaccines for everyone.

This page was last updated on Wednesday, March 15, 2023