The two-day “NIH/FDA COVID-19 Research Workshop,” held virtually in October 2020, showcased what scientists at NIH and FDA are doing to fight SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The workshop took the place of the NIH’s annual research festival, which was cancelled this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a new study published in Nature Communications, NIAMS researchers identify defects in the wound-healing process that might explain why such wounds heal slower or not at all. The scientists also pinpoint a critical step in the pathway, the series of events contributing to wound repair, that might be a good target for developing new treatments for diabetic foot ulcers.
Jaydira del Rivero is one of the world’s few specialists in rare cancers that originate in the body’s neuroendocrine system, which is made up of specialized cells that make hormones in response to neurological signals. Her goal is to treat these tumors holistically—using a biological approach as well as taking the whole patient into consideration.
We often associate microbes with disease. But the Human Microbiome Project has shown that people live in a mutually beneficial relationship with trillions of microbes on and in their bodies. Some human diseases are associated with alterations in the microbiome. NHGRI Senior Investigator Julie A. Segre, who is exploring the skin microbiome, explained the dichotomy in her Anita Roberts Lecture titled “Human Microbiome: Friend or Foe,” on November 3, 2020.
For Johns Hopkins professor Lisa Cooper, COVID-19 health disparities are the result of both infectious disease and social pandemics. Her recent JAMA editorial, “A New Kind of Herd Immunity,” ascribes a social definition to the commonly known public health term. Similar to COVID-19, social deprivation is an infection that spreads within communities and is invisible.
