Breakthroughs

There's strong evidence that physical activity can play an important role in the health and lifespan of cancer survivors. Siobhan Phillips, PhD, MPH, leads the Exercise and Health Lab at Feinberg, which designs, tests, implements and disseminates physical activity interventions to support cancer survivors. In this episode, Phillips details interventions specifically designed for breast cancer survivors, a majority of whom don't meet the recommended standards for weekly physical activity. 

Skin diseases from psoriasis to melanoma affect as many as one in three Americans at any given time. Kathleen Green, PhD, has greatly advanced basic molecular research related to skin diseases. She discusses recent discoveries in her lab that could lead to future therapeutic targets. 

Physicians are notorious for prescribing antibiotics as a "quick fix" when they aren't necessary. There are many reasons why, and Jeffrey Linder, MD, MPH, dives into those and discusses effective ways to reduce the number of inappropriate prescriptions by working with physicians. Originally released in fall 2018, this episode is still timely as the over prescription can lead to dangerous side effects for patients including antibiotic resistance.

Northwestern scientists Yuan Luo, PhD, and Catherine Gao, MD, discuss a study they conducted using the artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT. The results showcase the online tool's ability to produce convincing medical research abstracts. They also discuss the tool’s potential to help with writing-intensive tasks in healthcare and medical research.  

A theoretical neuroscientist, Ann Kennedy, PhD, is investigating neural computation and the structure of behavior. In this episode, she talks about her recent research in the area of aggression and how it's regulated in the brains of animals. She was recently named the winner of the 2022 Eppendorf and Science Prize for Neurobiology.

Parkinson's disease is the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disease, and nearly one million people have Parkinson's disease in the U.S. A $30 million dollar, phase 3 clinical trial at Northwestern is investigating whether exercise can slow Parkinson's disease progression. Daniel Corcos, PhD, a professor of Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences, is leading the trial and explains what he hopes to accomplish. Interested in the study? Learn more: https://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/research/clinical-research/trials/index.html?id=STU00211903

To have the greatest impact on human health, biomedical research findings and evidence-based practices need to be implemented into routine healthcare. What is implementation science, and how can we ensure research successfully makes an impact? Rinad Beidas, PhD, and Sara Becker, PhD, discuss the field and its future as a research priority at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

There’s been an uptick in childhood food allergies in recent years, and new evidence from Northwestern shows they’re also becoming more common in adults. Many of the reactions to these allergies are life-threatening. Why is this increase happening, and how can we keep people affected by food allergy safe? Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, is trying to answer those questions. This a rewind episode that originally was published in 2019.

A Northwestern Medicine course called Cooking Up Health is giving medical students, trainees and health professionals the opportunity to learn culinary medicine and food-as-medicine science concepts. Melinda Ring, MD, created the course and explains how it can improve the health of patients and train more nutrition-aware physicians.  

Understanding how genes function is a vital part of understanding how to better treat cancer. Research led by Mazhar Adli, PhD, is grounded in the development of a systematic approach to identify the function of each gene in the human body. His team aims to discover novel therapeutic drug combinations to prevent cancer development and chemotherapy resistance. 

Bariatric surgery is proving to be an effective tool to help teenagers with severe obesity lose weight and reverse the progression of weight-related conditions, according to findings from the Teen Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery study (Teen-LABS). Thomas Inge, MD, PhD, principal investigator of Teen-LABS, shares results of the study, which is the only multicenter National Institute of Health sponsored research on adolescent bariatric surgery. 

How are habits – both good and bad – formed in the brain, and what role do habits play in diseases of the brain? These are some of the questions neuroscientist, Talia Lerner, PhD, is investigating in her lab. Her recent study, published in Cell Reports, may change the overall understanding of how habits are formed and could be broken.

Uniting scientists and harnessing the power of the immune system to fight disease is at the heart of the new Center for Human Immunobiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Stephanie Eisenbarth, MD, PhD is leading the new center, she is also the new chief of Allergy and Immunology in the Department of Medicine.   She discusses the variety of immunology research taking place within the new center and its goal of bringing a community of immunologists together to discover and translate innovative science into cures for immune-related diseases. 

In recent years, Feinberg has launched several initiatives to augment human expertise with computational methods and advance the science of human health. Theresa Walunas, PhD, explains how she is using big data from electronic medical records in a variety of projects at Feinberg, from improving quality of care to identifying patients who could develop debilitating autoimmune diseases. 

A celebrated molecular neuroscientist, Jeremy Nathans, MD, PhD, is responsible for landmark discoveries that have changed our understanding of how humans see the world. He is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.  

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one cause of death globally, and nearly half of all U.S. adults are currently at risk for heart attack and stroke. Hossein Ardehali, MD, PhD, is working to understand the role of iron and metabolic processes in cardiovascular disease and develop new therapies that target iron accumulation in people with CVD and many other chronic diseases.

Alfred George, Jr., MD, is a pioneer in understanding the mechanisms by which ion channel mutations cause a variety of inherited disorders, such as genetic epilepsy. He discusses his recent breakthroughs in the field and his optimism for future RNA therapeutics to treat rare genetic diseases. 

Cell and Developmental Biology is a field that's integral to finding new therapies for a wide variety of diseases. At Feinberg, Lusia Iruela-Arispe, PhD, a vascular biologist, leads the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology as chair. In this episode, talks about her research and the future of cell-based treatments for diseases.  

Providing evidence-based medical care to transgender and gender nonconforming youth has been a challenge in the past, as trans-related healthcare has long been understudied. Robert Garofalo, MD, MPH, discusses how gender-affirming care can improve the overall health and well-being of transgender and gender diverse children and adolescents. He also discusses his research on the short-term and long-term outcomes of gender-affirming medical treatments.

The past two years have been a crucial time for the study of infectious diseases. Richard D’Aquila, MD, professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Northwestern and director of NUCATS, discusses how HIV/AIDS research is running parallel to ongoing COVID-19 research with interesting crossover and lessons learned.