Medicine

A medical team at Johns Hopkins University genetically engineered a common cold virus to deposit a gene when injected into the human eye. This gene codes for a protein that binds to VEGF, another protein whose activity in old age contributes to vision…

Chemotherapy is a common and dangerous cancer treatment due to the negative effects on everything that is not a tumor cell. Researchers from Columbia University have invented a soft medical implant capable of administering drugs from inside the body. The…

by Dan Tarjan  figures by Krissy Lyon The EpiPen, the antiparasitic drug Daraprim, the blood pressure medication Nitropress. These life saving drugs have recently been in the news because their prices spiked by over 100% year-to-year without any apparent…

The first clinical trial using the gene editing technique CRISPR was given the go-ahead by panel from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). The trial is aimed at determining if the technique is safe for use on human subjects. As there is much we…

by Emily Ricq Depression affects 15 million Americans and is characterized by debilitating feelings of sadness or emptiness that interfere with the ability to lead and enjoy life [1]. The substantial personal and public health burden imposed by…

by Fernanda Ferreira figures by Krissy Lyon The young, scaly creature bursts from the torso of its doomed host in a mix of guts and blood and stares blinkingly at its new environment. For most people the sentence above describes a famous scene from…

Cells in your blood, like those shown in this microscope image, are coated in membranes that the body recognizes as non-foreign, preventing the immune system from attacking them. Cloaking nanoparticles in such membranes allows them to slip past the…

by Vivian Chou figures by Anna Maurer What do sushi and pain therapy have in common? The answer lies in a tiny protein in our bodies called TRPA1, nicknamed the “wasabi receptor.” For over a decade, scientists have been fascinated by the…

Visualizing DNA on a DNA gel. While the techniques to visualize and analyze DNA are commonplace, our ability to interpret what our DNA says about our likelihood to develop a particular disease is still lacking. Many human diseases are influenced by…

by Mary E. Gearing figures by Kristen Seim Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States [1]. Today, patients with a family history of heart disease or risk factors such as elevated “bad” cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein or LDL…