Adventures from the Johns Hopkins University 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 developed for basic neuroscience research that have the potential to improve the way we treat psychiatric illness. The major drawback to drugs currently prescribed for diseases such as depression, PTSD,(...)
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 resistance is distinct from drug tolerance, in that a resistant microbe can survive even high doses of a particular drug, while tolerant microbes are able to replicate in the drug’s(...)
We’re getting old. Unprecedented advances in biomedical research and technology over the last century have increased the average human lifespan in the United States by over 50 percent.1 And with more people enrolling in Medicare than prenatal partner yoga, it is vital to understand and improve the health of the aging population. Unfortunately, getting older(...)
The seasons I spent running high school cross country have long gone, and I'm far from a great long-distance runner now, but I remember three things our coach was always shouting at us. "You're only as fast as the slowest person!" While it seemed like every runner was on the trail by herself, it was always, ultimately, a(...)
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 purview of the police. However, a small group of psychopharmacological researchers and advocates have been touting this compound as the next major frontline treatment for a variety of troubling psychological(...)
“From Prison Cell to Ph.D.” is a series following the journey of Dr. Stanley Andrisse, who was convicted of 2 felony drug charges and sentenced to 10 years in Missouri prison. He is now a postdoctoral scientist in pediatric endocrinology and trainee leader at Johns Hopkins Medicine. “This is a collect call from the Northeast Correctional Center,”(...)
It’s the beginning of my third and final year of residency, and I can finally see the light at the end of the training tunnel. Second year was challenging — the first half was filled with weeks of nights, a crash course in pediatric intensive care, and months on the pediatric hematology and oncology floor.(...)
After their qualifying exams are over and most of their required coursework is completed, graduate students disperse back to their labs for the long haul. Most classes and exams occur in the first year or two of a Ph.D. program; afterward, students focus full-time on their independent studies and dedicate their time to pursuing their(...)
More often than not, people come to a point in their academic careers where they hit a wall; some of us just do it more literally than others. What started out as a strange niche sport for people living on the fringe of society has quickly become a fast-growing sport in America. The first indoor(...)
As I enter the last few weeks of my graduate career, job hunting has become a major aspect of my daily life. The endless job list scouring and cover letter writing can be quite tiring. Fortunately, career fairs can provide a major boost in the job-hunting game by getting students directly in touch with employers(...)