IRP Discoveries

AI-Powered ‘Digital Twins’ Predict Liver Donors’ Futures

IRP Study Shows Potential of Machine Learning Algorithms in Personalized Medicine

man facing his computer-generated twin

Despite the potential drawbacks of time travel demonstrated in countless sci-fi movies, most people wouldn’t mind some advice from their future self. What they might not think about is how useful their doppelganger’s knowledge of the future could be to their doctor. IRP researchers hope an AI-powered computer model they’ve developed could provide those kinds of predictive medical insights for people recovering after donating a portion of their liver to someone in need of a transplant.

A Promising New Tool to Combat Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

IRP Research Demonstrates the Perks of Overlooked Immune System Molecules

E. coli bacteria

Countless Hollywood romances rely on the trope that, every so often, it turns out the thing you’ve been searching for has been right in front of you all along. Thanks to new IRP research, a molecule long-studied for its role in directing immune cells’ movement around the body is being seen in a new light as a potentially important player in medicine’s life-or-death struggle against antibiotic-resistant infections.

A Brain Signal Biomarker for Cerebral Palsy Treatments

Study Points to Potential Way to Improve Physical Therapy Interventions for Movement Disorder

boy with cerebral palsy receiving physical therapy

It’s easy to take everyday activities like walking and typing for granted, but for people with cerebral palsy, any movement can be a struggle. Intensive physical therapy, starting at a young age, has long helped those individuals move more easily. Now, recent IRP research could provide a way to track how those and other treatments affect communication within the brain during movement, providing a tool that could help researchers more quickly evaluate which treatments work and which don’t.

Alcohol Accelerates Cardiovascular Aging

IRP Research Suggests Older Adults May Benefit From Severely Limiting Alcohol Consumption

illustration of heart and lungs overlaid over an older woman

It seems like every news report touting the health benefits of a daily glass of wine is soon followed by another that claims consuming any amount of alcohol harms health. While the jury is still out on this issue for younger individuals, a recent IRP study suggests that alcohol consumption may accelerate the typical age-related erosion of the cardiovascular system.

Many scientific studies have established the myriad ways that aging and alcohol independently diminish the capacity of the heart and blood vessels to effectively move blood — and the vital oxygen and nutrients it carries — around the body. However, the effects of those two forces in combination remains an outstanding question with potentially significant implications for health and public policy.

A Crystal Ball for Prostate Cancer Treatment

IRP’s Dr. Adam Sowalsky Looks to Tumors’ Origins to Predict Outcomes

crystal ball

"Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been." — hockey great Wayne Gretzky

Imagine two men, both diagnosed with prostate cancer. For one, the disease will remain a quiet shadow, never seriously threatening his life. For the other, it will become an aggressive adversary, resisting treatments and altering his future. This June, as Men's Health Month brings such realities into focus, a critical question echoes in clinics and labs: how can we identify early on which cancer will turn dangerous, and how can we use that knowledge to change a patient's outcome for the better? 

IRP senior investigator Adam G. Sowalsky, Ph.D., believes the answer lies not just in how cancer adapts during treatment, but in the evolutionary traits it already possesses when it first emerges. 

Calming Kids’ Runaway Emotions

Brain Research Helps Understand and Treat Childhood Anxiety

young girl with glowing brain

It’s perfectly normal for young children to throw tantrums or be nervous on their first day of school, and for adolescents to be anxious about what their peers think of them. However, for some children and teens, negative emotions can escalate to unhealthy levels, resulting in significant distress and impairing their quality of life. 

IRP senior investigator Daniel Pine, M.D., is on a mission to understand how that happens and figure out ways to help those kids. In honor of Mental Health Month, we talked with Dr. Pine about how his research is revolutionizing the field of pediatric psychiatry and paving the way for new, non-pharmaceutical treatments.

Dieting May Disrupt Women’s Sleep

IRP Study Reveals Influence of Calorie Intake and Reproductive Cycle on Sleep

woman yawning at work

Doctors have long emphasized the importance of maintaining a healthy body weight and getting enough sleep, but in our time-limited lives, we often have to choose between spending time exercising, preparing healthy meals, and getting sufficient shuteye. And the number of hours in the day may not be the only thing that pits weight loss against sleep. A recent IRP study suggests that young women who are not obese get poorer sleep when they change their diets in order to lose weight.

Startling Snapshots of Science

Vibrant Images Push Forward Environmental Health Research

cell junctions in tracheal epithelial cells from a TLR5 knockout mouse

Scientists and artists obviously don’t spend their days doing the same thing, but that doesn’t mean the former can’t sometimes inadvertently be the latter. Take for example the 14 IRP research fellows who submitted images to the most recent edition of the Fellows Scientific Image Competition at NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). The competition, held every few years, shows that biomedical science can not only save lives, but also look good doing it.

“We are excited to showcase the work of our trainees using visual media, which reminds us there is art in science and showcases the important research we’re all engaged in at NIEHS,” says NIEHS Scientific Director Darryl Zeldin, M.D., who initiated the competition.

Robot-Assisted Experiments Point to Treatments for Rare Cancer

Study Identifies Drugs That Exploit the Disease’s Weak Spots

drug-screening robots performing automated experiments

The best way to destroy a cancer cell is to target its weak points, but that’s obviously easier said than done, especially when you want to kill those diseased cells while sparing healthy ones. That’s where robots come in, allowing scientists to quickly evaluate the effects of thousands of drugs on cancer to see what works and what doesn’t. IRP researchers recently used that approach to identify potential treatments for a rare skin cancer, including a strategy that appears to be particularly good at hitting the disease where it’s most vulnerable.

Tracking the Neuronal Response to Head Injury

New IRP Study Identifies Vulnerable and Resilient Brain Cells

man being treated for a head injury

Even with our thick skulls to protect our fragile brains, a hard enough blow to the head will still send our neurons into a tizzy. However, not all neurons are affected in the same way by a ‘traumatic brain injury,’ or TBI for short. By developing a way to see which neurons turn on a distress signal after a mild TBI, IRP researchers recently identified differences between neurons that die afterwards and those that are shaken up by the injury but manage to recover over time.