Understanding How Parasite Feeds May Lead to New Treatments
World Malaria Day, commemorated annually on April 25, highlights the need to end an infectious disease that sickens nearly 250 million people around the world each year, killing more than 600,000 in regions where it is common. Children are particularly susceptible to its deadly effects.
Unfortunately, there is still no highly effective vaccine against malaria, so management is mostly limited to preventive measures like bed nets and medications that treat the infection, which must be taken over an extended period to effectively treat the disease and stop it from spreading. However, the speed with which the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, adapts to antimalarial drugs has created a critical need for novel treatments — a need that IRP researchers led by Joshua Zimmerberg, M.D., Ph.D., are taking a unique approach to filling.
Interrupting Sedentary Time Could Help Stave Off Health Problems
Many people don’t get much exercise these days, and kids are no exception. Whether at school, doing homework, or entertaining themselves online, children and teens spend hours on end sitting around. That lack of physical activity raises their risk for metabolic conditions like obesity and type 2 diabetes, but according to a recent IRP study, breaking up those long, sedentary periods with just a few minutes of exercise could yield noticeable benefits for their health.
IRP Researchers Pursue New Approaches to Treating Alcohol Use Disorder
While most adults in the U.S. consume alcohol in moderation, for nearly 30 million of them, going even one day without alcohol feels nearly impossible. For these Americans, alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a serious condition that harms their health, relationships, and career. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of people with AUD receive treatment, and even then, for many patients, the chances of a relapse are high.
As the search for a reliable and effective treatment continues, IRP senior investigator Lorenzo Leggio, M.D., Ph.D., is exploring the biological processes that underlie alcohol cravings to unlock new approaches to therapy. April is Alcohol Awareness Month, so we took the opportunity to speak with him about recent discoveries made by his IRP team and its collaborators.
IRP Study Points to Strategies to Stop Disease From Spreading
Ancient Greek myth describes how the hero Hercules battled the many-headed hydra, which regrew two heads every time Hercules cut one off. This frustrating fight against a seemingly invulnerable opponent would be an apt metaphor for treating cancer, in which tumor cells sometimes die in a particular way that actually helps their brethren multiply and spread to other parts of the body. In a study of that phenomenon using a mouse model of breast cancer, IRP researchers discovered that it occurs because that form of cell death suppresses the immune system’s response to the cancer,a finding that points to several potential ways to improve cancer therapy.
NIH Scientist Proves What Happens in the Mouth Doesn’t Stay in the Mouth
For many people, good oral health means a pretty smile, not necessarily a healthy body. However, poor dental health can lead to serious illness and disability. IRP senior investigator Jennifer Webster-Cyriaque, D.D.S., Ph.D., has spent her career illuminating the connection between our mouths and our overall health. Dr. Webster-Cyriaque, who recently joined NIH as Deputy Director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) and Chief of the Viral Oral Infections in Immunosuppression and Cancer Laboratory at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in October for her seminal contributions to our understanding of viruses that infect the mouth.
NIH Archives Document the Tremendous Importance of Female Scientists
Women’s History Month is celebrated every March, and women scientists have undoubtedly made invaluable contributions to IRP research over the course of NIH’s history. Despite this, women still remain under-represented in biomedical science at NIH and elsewhere today, prompting the IRP to make supporting the careers of female researchers an important priority. While NIH works to rectify the gender imbalance in scientific research, it’s important to take time to celebrate the many women who, even when confronted with significant historical obstacles, have made a name for themselves in the lab and on the pages of scientific journals. Join me in taking a look through the archives of the Office of NIH History & Stetten Museum to learn about some of the many women scientists who have been at the forefront of science and administration at NIH.
Study Suggests New Treatment Approach for Deadly Lung Infection
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.
IRP Researchers Are Peering Into the Brain to Learn Why Opioid Drugs Are So Hard to Quit
The ancient Egyptians, despite their significant anatomical knowledge, thought the heart was the seat of intelligence. Over the millennia, that view changed as philosophers and scientists alike came to appreciate the extraordinary role of the brain. It is partly thanks to them that we celebrate Brain Awareness Week every March. In honor of this observance, we took the opportunity to talk with IRP senior investigator Yihong Yang, Ph.D., and postdoctoral fellow Ida Fredriksson, Ph.D., Pharm.D., about their investigation into how cravings for opioids build during a period of prolonged abstinence, often leading to relapse.
Event Includes In-Person Presentations for First Time Since 2020
Three years after COVID-19 dramatically changed the way scientists and many others work, much of life in the NIH IRP has begun to resemble the way things were in February of 2020. This includes the return of in-person scientific poster sessions like the one that took place on February 16 as part of the 19th annual NIH Graduate Student Research Symposium. Nearly 130 graduate students conducting their Ph.D. research in IRP labs as part of NIH’s Graduate Partnership Program presented their progress at that poster session and its virtual counterpart held February 15.
The two poster sessions made it clear that IRP graduate students are essential contributors to the life-changing discoveries made at NIH, from using geckos to learn about human eye diseases to investigating how the immune system combats infectious invaders to exploring ways to improve cancer treatment. Keep reading to learn about some of the bright scientists-in-training who showed off their work during the two-day event.
IRP Research Hastens Development of First Treatment for Genetic Muscle Condition
An old medical adage warns doctors that when they hear hoofbeats, they should first think of horses, not zebras. After all, when someone comes into the hospital with a cough, the most likely explanation is something mundane like the flu. However, some patients truly are medical zebras, affected by a disease that afflicts very few others.
IRP senior investigator Marjan Huizing, Ph.D., has learned quite a bit about those zebras since arriving at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) as a postdoctoral fellow in 1998. To help commemorate Rare Disease Day today, Dr. Huizing spoke with the “I Am Intramural” blog about her research on an array of ailments linked to a small sugar molecule called sialic acid, some of which are extremely rare.
This page was last updated on Friday, January 14, 2022
