By Michael Gottesman
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Many cultures through history marked the new year in the spring, at the vernal equinox in March when the daytime and nighttime at the equator are equal lengths, 12 hours each. That certainly makes sense: Spring is a time of renewal, as the earth is giving birth to new crops. And I'm surely in the mood for some renewal. One of the most exciting things I have to report is the 21st Century Cures Act, which was signed into law on December 14, 2016.
By Michele Lyons
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Sometimes as a museum curator, I come across a box in the collection with a vague marking and full of bits and pieces of … something. One of the coolest things is finding out what that something was and who created it. This photo shows pieces from the NIH lab of Dr. Stanley Sarnoff, dating from 1954-1962.
By IRP Staff Blogger
Thursday, January 26, 2017
For gene therapy research, the perennial challenge has been devising a reliable way to insert safely a working copy of a gene into relevant cells that can take over for a faulty one. But with the recent discovery of powerful gene editing tools, the landscape of opportunity is starting to change. Instead of threading the needle through the cell membrane with a bulky gene, researchers are starting to design ways to apply these tools in the nucleus—to edit out the disease-causing error in a gene and allow it to work correctly.
By Michael Gottesman
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
To paraphrase President Obama from his guest editorial in the November issue of Wired magazine, there’s never been a better time to be alive. One NIH institute leading us into the future is the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), which supports avant-garde investigators at the nexus of engineering and the physical and life sciences with innovations that improve global health.
By Michele Lyons
Friday, January 6, 2017
How does the brain know that what we’re looking at is standing still or moving? Dr. Robert H. Wurtz developed methods for studying the visual system, a technique now widely used for the study of higher brain functions, to find the answer to that question.
By Michael Gottesman
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Yasmine Belkaid, chief of the Mucosal Immunology Section in the NIAID Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases, has won the Sanofi–Institut Pasteur 2016 International Mid-Career Award for “outstanding research in the life sciences…contributing to progress in global public health,” announced on December 13, 2016 in Paris.
By IRP Staff Blogger
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
In a new study of families affected by Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), National Institutes of Health (NIH) Intramural researchers have identified different connections in the brain that children may inherit from their parents and are linked to the disorder.
By IRP Staff Blogger
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
The surprising results of an animal study are raising hopes for a far simpler treatment regimen for people infected with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Currently, HIV-infected individuals can live a near normal life span if, every day, they take a complex combination of drugs called antiretroviral therapy (ART). The bad news is if they stop ART, the small amounts of HIV that still lurk in their bodies can bounce back and infect key immune cells, called CD4 T cells, resulting in life-threatening suppression of their immune systems.
By Hoo-Chang Shin
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
If you were going to train an artificial intelligence (AI) system to understand and accurately diagnose medical images, what kind of information do you think would be most effective: lots of general image data, or small amounts of specific data?
By IRP Staff Blogger
Monday, October 24, 2016
This year, members of the National Academy of Medicine elected four NIH Intramural researchers to their ranks, one of the highest honors in science. Learn a bit about each of their research and follow the links to their IRP profiles for more information.
