Life at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
In an essay I published last year for the Lasker Essay Contest (and republished in our blog), I described optogenetics and chemogenetics, two technologies recently… Read More »A Revelation About DREADDs: A New Neuroscience Technique with Promise for Clinical Psychiatric Treatment
Fighting malaria is getting harder, with rising rates of drug resistance and drug tolerance making it more difficult for doctors to effectively cure patients. Drug… Read More »Smarter Antimalarial Use: Altering Drug Duration to Improve Efficacy
For the majority of the population, MDMA, or ecstasy, is simply an illegal drug, its use exclusive to underground dance clubs and its abuse the… Read More »Ecstasy and Agony: Accepting MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy as a Breakthrough PTSD Treatment
Basic biology tells us that in humans and other mammals, embryos with two X chromosomes develop as females, whereas embryos with one X and one… Read More »It’s Hard Work Being a Boy (and, It Turns Out, a Girl)
When scientists and clinicians hear the words “clinical trial”, we may think of hope, discovery, and a new chance at life. But for racial and… Read More »Understanding Disparities in Clinical Trial Enrollment
“...23,000 deaths a year.” “...over 2 million infections.” These headlines would be alarming but expected if they were descriptions of the latest Ebola outbreak. But… Read More »Antimicrobial Stewardship: Ensuring a Future for Human Health Care
For the first time ever, scientists in the United States have performed gene editing experiments using CRISPR-Cas9 in humans. CRISPR-Cas9 is a bacterial DNA editing… Read More »CRISPR Gene Editing in Human Embryos Performed for the First Time Ever in the U.S.
New therapies to treat metastatic breast cancer may lie within one of the most commonly used agents in health care across the world: antibiotics. Sonal Chaudhari,… Read More »Everyday Antibiotics May Reveal New Therapies to Treat Your Breast Cancer
In the midst of the political saga that is the ongoing debate over the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), news broke that Sen.… Read More »McCain and Brain Cancer: What’s in Store for Glioblastoma Treatment?
Long before we see or taste food, what strikes us most is its aroma wafting through the air. While eating, what we perceive as taste… Read More »Does My Sense of Smell Make Me Look Fat?