Is parabiosis the new fountain of youth? Parabiosis, meaning “living beside,” is a 150-year-old surgical technique that unites the blood vessels of two living animals. One of the earliest accounts of parabiosis comes from the mid-1800s when a French zoologist, Paul Bert, attached the circulatory systems of two animals and demonstrated that fluid injected into(...)
Biomedical Research
Potential Cuts to Science Funding Threaten US Position as World Leader in Biomedical Research
Posted by | Did You See This?We Americans are privileged to live in a country that boasts the top scientific research in the world being conducted in our laboratories, research institutions and government establishments, like the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The United States is currently considered the leader in biomedical research, but what most Americans don’t realize is that our(...)
Gene Editing Under Fire
Posted by | Perspectives in ResearchCRISPR/Cas9 gene editing is the hottest new technology being used by molecular biologists and geneticists around the world. The method, first developed in prokaryotes in a collaboration between Jennifer Doudna’s group at University of California, Berkeley and Emmanuelle Charpentier’s lab at the Pasteur Institute in June 2012, allows targeted editing of the genomes of living(...)
Cancer Drug Shows Surprising Potential as Parkinson’s Treatment
Posted by | Perspectives in Research, Recently PublishedParkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative condition caused by the death of dopamine-producing cells in a region of the brain called the substantia nigra, which leads to disruptions in neural circuits controlling motor function. Although the cause of this inappropriate cell death is largely unclear, one hypothesis is that it is due to the abnormal aggregation(...)
The Malthusian Dilemma: Biomedical Research in the Post-NIH Budget Doubling Era
Posted by | Did You See This?Shirley Tilghman, professor of molecular biology and former Princeton University president, delivered the 16th annual Daniel Nathans Lecture in Molecular Genetics about a dilemma unfolding in the scientific community. Although the talk was titled “The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: A Life in Biomedical Science,” Tilghman only used her first and last slides(...)
Highlights from the 2015 American Society of Human Genetics Conference
Posted by | Events and HappeningsAs the American Society of Human Genetics concluded its 65th annual meeting in Baltimore, the air around the Johns Hopkins McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine still seems to buzz with the excitement of it all. Among the plethora of innovative research and technologies presented, the society devoted some focus to those entities whose existence is(...)
Legislative Bill Prompts Discussion of Cross-Talk in the Scientific Community
Posted by | Perspectives in ResearchEarlier this month, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill directly impacting the biomedical research community. If approved by the Senate, the 21st Century Cures Act promises to increase the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and provide it with an additional $8.75 billion over the next five years. The Food and(...)