lungs

Mapping the Pathway to an Asthma Attack

IRP Research Breathes New Life into Therapies for Treatment-Resistant Asthma

black man using an inhaler

It may start with a wheeze, a cough, or a feeling of tightness in the chest, but the result is the same. Acute asthma attacks make sufferers feel like they’re breathing through a straw while underwater. And even between attacks, having asthma can sometimes feel like your lungs are bound in tight bandages that make it difficult to take a deep breath.

World Asthma Day, observed this year on May 2, raises awareness of asthma, a common inflammatory disease that causes difficulty breathing in more than 260 million people worldwide, including 25 million in the U.S., roughly 8 percent of the country’s population. While many people can control their symptoms by taking medications and limiting certain activities, the condition still causes significant illness and even death.

Preventing Cellular Rust Hinders Tuberculosis

Study Suggests New Treatment Approach for Deadly Lung Infection

tuberculosis bacteria

Oxygen is, quite literally, the air we breathe (or, more accurately, 21 percent of it). However, just as oxygen in the air can turn a handy garden tool into a useless hunk of rust, certain unstable, oxygen-containing molecules in our bodies can wreak havoc on our cells. According to new IRP research, revving up cellular systems that prevent this kind of damage could significantly improve outcomes for people with tuberculosis.

Predicting Risks and Benefits for Lung Cancer Screening

IRP Researchers Refine Tools to Maximize the Benefit from Life-Saving Tests

patient getting a CT scan

Eleven years ago, IRP senior investigator Hormuzd Katki, Ph.D., had a bit of an eureka moment during a press event announcing the results of the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial, which demonstrated that annual screenings cut the risks of dying from lung cancer in heavy smokers by 20 percent.

“It struck me as I read the trial results that not only was this a very important trial, but that it was possible that different people will have different benefits from lung cancer screening,” Dr. Katki remembers. “Even within this group of very high-risk smokers who were part of the trial, you can identify some people who get much more benefit than other people, and that has implications for who should be offered this kind of screening.”

NIH History Shows Off Its Spooky Side

Museum Collection Contains Many Eye-Catching Objects and Photographs

Anyone who has engaged in a marathon of gruesome Halloween movies knows that the human body can be portrayed in ways that are frightening. Even in real life, the tools and techniques researchers use to understand disease may seem like something out of a work of fiction. In honor of Halloween this year, let’s sneak inside the archives of the Office of NIH History & Stetten Museum to see the spookiest nooks and crannies of our collection. Whatever you do, don’t turn out the lights!

model of the muscles and blood vessels in the head

Postdoc Profile: Eavesdropping On Bacterial Banter

Dr. Tiffany Zarrella Examines Communication Between Bacteria to Combat Persistent Infections

Dr. Tiffany Zarella

Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users may seem like a huge social network, but it pales in comparison to the conversations among the trillions of microbes that live inside a single human body. Few people know this better than IRP postdoctoral fellow Tiffany Zarrella, Ph.D., who spends her days eavesdropping on the messages bacteria send to one another to improve treatment for stubborn infections.

Dr. Zarrella was drawn to the bacterial world in microbiology lab courses while earning a biochemistry degree at Syracuse University in New York. After graduation, she obtained a research technician position at Albany Medical College, where she worked on projects centered around infectious bacteria and how they respond to their environments. She continued this thread of research in graduate school, moving on to a new study to discover how Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria, which often cause ear infections and pneumonia, use a particular signaling molecule to resist antibiotic treatments and evade vaccines.

Teaming Up to Tackle Engineering Challenges

Innovation Awards Accelerate Development of New Research Techniques

scientist working with a robotic arm

Scientists spend years, even decades, intensely studying a specific disease or biological system, an approach that yields unrivaled knowledge. However, many important scientific questions require a deep understanding of several subjects. As a result, the IRP has numerous programs dedicated to encouraging scientists with different areas of expertise to work together.

One such program is the NIH Director’s Challenge Innovation Awards, which funds innovative, high-impact projects that require the cooperation of researchers in more than one of NIH’s Institutes and Centers. This year, the program selected six promising proposals with one foot in the disciplines of biology and medicine and another in engineering or the physical sciences.

Poster Days Spotlight Young Researchers

Budding Scientists Showcase Research at Annual Event

Yasmin Ali

Any scientist who wants to make game-changing discoveries has to start somewhere — even Albert Einstein worked in a patent office before landing his first job in academia. Through its Postbaccalaureate IRTA program, NIH hopes to give aspiring scientists more of a leg up than Einstein had by bringing them into IRP labs after they complete their undergraduate studies.

On April 26, 27, and 28, more than 900 recent college graduates participating in the program presented at this year’s virtual Postbac Poster Days. Read on to learn about a few of these young researchers and their contributions to the groundbreaking work being done at NIH.

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.

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.

Mold Exposure Sets Stage for Severe Flu

Mouse Study Suggests Common Fungus Could Worsen Respiratory Infections

black mold growing on a wall

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, both scientists and the media have focused on the factors that influence who experiences mild symptoms or none at all and who faces potentially life-threatening consequences from the disease. Other respiratory viruses like the flu also have widely varying effects on different patients. New IRP research has found that exposure to a common variety of mold primes the immune system to overreact to the flu virus, dramatically increasing the illness’s severity.