Features

An Amazing Two-Day Banquet of COVID-19 Research Presentations

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.

NIAMS Researchers Uncover Clues To Why Some Wounds Don’t Heal

BY STEPHANIE MATHEWS, NIAMS

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.

COVID-19 Timeline at NIH (November–December 2020)

COVID-19 Research and Activities at NIH

Highlights of the COVID-19-related activities that were going on at NIH in November and December 2020.

A Destiny in Neuroendocrine Oncology

Profile: Jaydira del Rivero, M.D.

BY SUSAN CHACKO, CIT

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.

Characterizing the Skin Microbiome, One Genome at a Time

Julie Segre Delivers the Anita Roberts Lecture

BY SUNITA CHOPRA, NCI

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.

Lisa Cooper’s WALS Dyer Lecture on Global Health Equity

Public Health Disparities, Humanism, and COVID-19

BY FRANCES FERNANDO, NICHD

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.

Obituaries 2020

Former NIH scientists and other NIH-affiliated people who died in 2020.