IRP Research Shows Benefits of More Intensive Treatments for Certain Patients
By Melissa Glim
Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Fate can be cruel, especially when it comes to a rare, highly fatal blood cancer called acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Even when months of intensive chemotherapy appear to cause a complete remission of the disease — meaning doctors cannot detect any remaining cancer cells in a patient’s body — roughly half of those patients see the cancer return within two years, or even as soon as six months. Sadly, most of them don’t survive their second bout with the disease.
As a medical student, IRP senior investigator Christopher Hourigan, M.D., D.Phil., thought this outcome was unfair. More than that, he thought it indicated that the standard ways doctors determined if an AML patient was in remission were inadequate, and that remission might not even be the right goal. That’s why he has focused his career on finding ways to detect, prevent, and treat AML recurrence, known in his field as ‘relapse’.
“I was a scientist before I became a doctor, and it was really eye-opening to me, when I started to practice medicine, how difficult some of the treatment decisions were and how limited the information available was to inform those decisions,” Dr. Hourigan says.
IRP’s Diana Bianchi Honored for Leading Pediatric COVID Response
By Melissa Glim
Monday, August 29, 2022
When the first reports of COVID-19 came out, infectious disease experts and healthcare providers thought children might be spared its most dire effects. After all, the news reports and health statistics showed that nearly all serious cases occurred in the elderly, people with certain pre-existing conditions, and those who spent their days and nights caring for COVID patients. However, as case counts rose and disruptions in daily life grew, the medical and psychological effects of COVID on children became apparent — and the impact was alarming. It soon became clear that something had to be done to understand the disease's effects on infants, children and teens, as well as pregnant women and traditionally underserved communities.
It was, appropriately, Mother’s Day when then-NIH Director Francis Collins sought help from Diana W. Bianchi, M.D., Director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and a senior investigator in the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). An expert in infant health and genetic conditions like Down syndrome, Dr. Bianchi was just the person to initiate large-scale studies across the country to assess the severity of COVID in specific populations, the safety and efficacy of vaccination and treatment, and the impact of mitigation efforts such as masking. For this critical leadership, Dr. Bianchi was named a finalist for the 2022 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal for COVID-19 Response.
IRP’s Mary Carrington Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for Insights Into Immune System Variations
By Melissa Glim
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
Some people never seem to get sick, while others catch a new bug of some sort every other week. Humans are immensely variable both in their capacity to shrug off illness and in the ways their bodies respond to medical treatments. IRP senior investigator Mary Carrington, Ph.D., has spent her entire career exploring the biological roots of these differences, and the discoveries she has made earned her election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences earlier this year.
Government Awards Recognize H. Clifford Lane’s Four Decades of Research Achievements
By Melissa Glim
Wednesday, July 27, 2022
The remarkable career of H. Clifford Lane, M.D., might have gone very differently if a NIH scientist hadn’t accidentally eavesdropped on Dr. Lane’s conversation with a colleague in 1979. After hearing Dr. Lane mention that he had missed the deadline to apply for a position at NIH, the NIH researcher made some calls and discovered a spot there had just opened up — one that was perfect for Dr. Lane, who would spend the ensuing decades conducting life-saving research to understand and combat some of the world’s most dangerous infectious diseases.
Now the Clinical Director at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), Dr. Lane has been named a finalist for the 2022 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals’ Career Achievement Award in recognition of his crucial contributions to the fight against HIV/AIDS, Ebola, COVID-19, and other illnesses. Also known as the “Sammies,” the awards recognize federal employees who are “breaking down barriers, overcoming huge challenges, and getting results.”
Drug Candidate Could Slow Progression and Reduce Side Effects
By Melissa Glim
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
If you know someone with Parkinson’s disease, you’re probably familiar with the progressive tremors and movement difficulties it causes. Unfortunately, the most common treatment for the disease — a drug called levodopa, or L-DOPA for short — can make some movement problems worse when taken for long periods of time. That’s why IRP senior investigator David R. Sibley, Ph.D., and postdoctoral fellow Amy Moritz, Ph.D., have taken on the challenge of discovering new drugs that could be given to patients in conjunction with existing treatments to more effectively slow the disease’s progression while reducing side effects.
IRP Researchers Develop Drug to Recapture Immune Cells Hijacked by Tumors
By Melissa Glim
Friday, June 3, 2022
In the 1958 cult classic The Blob, a giant gelatinous creature from outer space lands on Earth and begins engulfing a small town and everything in it. While that may sound far out, a similar entity within our bodies does much the same thing, but for good instead of ill. These Pac-Man-like blobs are called macrophages — Greek for ‘big eaters’ — and they serve a vital role in keeping us healthy by clearing away dead cells and digesting foreign invaders like bacteria and cancer cells.
However, cancer cells aren’t content to just let themselves be eaten. They have evolved ways to overwhelm and commandeer the immune system, redirecting immune cells to support tumor growth rather than suppress it. Although highly personalized ‘immunotherapies’ that reboot the immune response and harness it to fight cancer have made significant advances in treating some forms of the disease, most cancers do not respond to these treatments. Fortunately, reinforcements are on the way: IRP senior investigators Udo Rudloff, M.D., Ph.D., and Juan Marugan, Ph.D., have identified a way to reclaim the loyalty of macrophages that are aiding and abetting tumors, turning them back into the cancer-consuming gluttons they were meant to be. Importantly, this approach may be effective on a broader array of cancers than other immunotherapies.
New Findings Could Help Improve Risk Assessment and Treatment
By Melissa Glim
Tuesday, May 10, 2022
Fresh off celebrating Mother’s Day this past Sunday, as well as Women’s Health Week this week, it’s important to acknowledge that being a new mom isn’t easy. As joyful and exciting as a new baby might be, it can be exhausting and worrisome, too. Many new moms experience some level of baby blues, but for some women, those blues can take a downward turn into symptoms of more serious depression.
Approximately one out of every eight women in the U.S. experiences symptoms of postpartum depression, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What’s more, a recent study led by IRP staff scientist Diane Putnick, Ph.D., has shown that the course of postpartum depression can differ significantly among women. The study of nearly 5,000 women not only showed that 25 percent of them experienced symptoms of postpartum depression, but it also found that depression symptoms followed several different patterns and could persist for at least three years after giving birth. Understanding these different patterns of symptoms and some of the risk factors associated with them may help physicians recognize and monitor mothers who are at higher risk for persistent depression.
IRP Researchers Discover Unexpected Stress-Blunting Effects of Some Neurons
By Melissa Glim
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
The past few years have not been easy for anyone. With world events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine causing everyone to worry, it’s no surprise that during this April’s annual Stress Awareness Month observance, so many people experienced high levels of stress and anxiety. While stress management techniques and talk therapy may help some people, nearly 10 million Americans need prescription anti-anxiety drugs to quell those feelings.
One important target for anti-anxiety medications is norepinephrine, a chemical released by certain neurons in the brain. Norepinephrine — also known as noradrenaline — has traditionally been considered to be a ‘stress chemical’ that triggers anxiety. However, drugs designed to target the neurons that produce it don’t always work as predicted. That’s why IRP senior investigator Patricia Jensen, Ph.D., and her colleagues in the Developmental Neurobiology Group at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) are delving deep into the mouse brain to better understand these neurons and what exactly they do.
Nursing Research Leader Sheds Light on How Neighborhoods Influence Health
By Melissa Glim
Monday, April 4, 2022
When you think about public health, city planning might not be the first thing that comes to mind. Yet where we live — the quality of the buildings, the availability of places to walk and play safely, and the types of schools and stores in the neighborhood — can profoundly affect our health. This relationship has been emphasized by the COVID-19 pandemic, as close, stuffy living conditions, the need to take public transportation to essential jobs, and inequities in access to testing and vaccination sites all contributed to the larger reduction in life expectancy for Black and Latino Americans compared to Caucasians over the last two years.
Shannon N. Zenk, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.N., F.A.A.N., Director of the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021 for her research into how neighborhood characteristics affect the health of residents and contribute to the health disparities seen between communities with different racial and ethnic makeups and different levels of income.
IRP Researchers Aim to Regenerate Damaged Salivary Glands
By Melissa Glim
Friday, March 18, 2022
It’s easy to take our saliva for granted. Most people have so much of it that they think nothing of spitting it out into a trash can when they finish chewing a stick of gum. Perhaps only people who have lived without it truly understand the great gift that is a perpetually moist mouth.
“Persistent dry mouth causes lots of problems with quality of life, and people forget how important saliva is until they lose it,” says IRP senior investigator Matthew Hoffman, B.D.S., Ph.D.
In honor of World Oral Health Day on March 20, a celebration of scientific efforts to reduce the burden of oral disease, I talked with Dr. Hoffman about his lab’s efforts to understand the biology of salivary gland dysfunction and translate that knowledge into treatments that bring relief to the many people suffering from it.
