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Helium As Medical Mission Critical

Without helium — the second lightest element on Earth, used at Thanksgiving to lift skyscraper-size parade balloons — medical science might come to a standstill. Ninety-two years ago, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was born. Today, the holiday spectacle uses about 400,000 cubic feet of helium annually to loft a couple dozen gigantic balloons and float them down the streets of New York City. That’s about 10 percent of a single day’s use of helium in the U.S.  The Federal Helium Reserve, a...

Flashback: Iron Lung

A medical miracle made of metal helped polio sufferers to breathe in the 1900s. The tank respirator, or iron lung, reads like a medical curiosity in modern times thanks to vaccines for the polio virus created by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin in the 1950s and 1960s. But prior to that, for the nearly one in every 200 patients infected with the virus that suffered paralysis, including of the respiratory system, it was the surest way to survive until they could recover and breathe again on their own...

4 Surprising Things That Can Affect Your Medications

You won’t believe these everyday factors that can impact the effectiveness of common medications. You’ve consulted with your doctor, filled your prescription, and carefully read the instructions about taking the medication safely. Now all you need to do is remember to swallow that pill every day, and you’re set, right? Not so fast. Many things can affect the way your body responds to a certain drug from your age and body weight to what you ate for breakfast. Read on to learn some surprising...

Using Big Data to Discover Nature’s Medicine

Computer programmers and data scientists are working with microbiologists and chemists to unlock the medicinal potential of natural products. For thousands of years, medicine has turned to nature for inspiration and potential cures. The bark of the yew tree, the slimy sea hare and even fungus have helped lead scientists to medicines for fighting cancer, high cholesterol and other conditions. As recent as last year, the natural products field took the spotlight when a Nobel Prize in Physiology...

foundations-science

Tools of the Trade: Harnessing Bioluminescence

Species from cats to monkeys and protozoa to plants can borrow a jellyfish’s luminescence to help trace the spread of disease. Tagging and tracking disease – visualizing the insidious spread of Alzheimer’s or a metastasizing cancer, or tracing how a pathogen moves – is possible today thanks to the harnessing of a 160-million-year-old protein responsible for a jellyfish’s green glow. Aequorea, a jellyfish species that lives off America’s Northwest Coast that reaches up to ten centimeters in...

Science & Innovation

4 Breakthroughs in Breast Cancer Treatment

One out of eight women will develop invasive breast cancer in her lifetime. (Science Photo Library)Advances in genetic testing, immunotherapy, and other areas are transforming the way we treat breast cancer.Survival rates for breast cancer have improved in recent decades. That’s good news for the approximately 250,000 women expected to be diagnosed in the U.S. in 2016.  In recent years, scientists have been harnessing genetics, immunotherapy, and other innovative treatments to more precisely...

Growing a Tiny Gut

A miniature version of a working gut, grown in a lab.  (Meritxell Huch) Creating a miniature intestine in a lab — called an organoid — can help researchers see how real guts will react to disease and medicine.Organoids sound like the stuff of Dr. Frankenstein’s mind — body parts grown in labs, created for scientific experimentation. What they are in reality are living tissues, grown from seed cells, that can tell researchers a lot about the way human organs will react to diseases and the medicines that may treat them. Tiny TitansThough some researchers are growing...

Good Guy/Bad Guy: B-Cells vs. Ebola

(CDC/Dr. Frederick A. Murphy; Steve Gschmeisserner/Science Photo Library) In the fight for immunity, our B-cells play the role of watchful attack dogs. A virus like Ebola has other ideas. Unbeknownst to most of us most of the time, there are death matches on the microscopic level going on in our bodies most every minute of every day, instigated by everything from paper cuts to viral infections. This new series we call Good Guy/Bad Guy offers a close-up look at the battlefield that is our...

Meet the Common Viruses Now Used to Help Combat Cancer

Common viruses are now being engineered to seek out and destroy cancer cells.Herpes, the virus behind the common cold sore, is moving up in the world. Thanks to scientific engineering, it’s no longer just a nuisance virus but also the latest weapon in the fight against cancer.Last fall, in a first-of-its-kind move, the Food and Drug Administration approved a genetically-engineered herpes virus to treat late-stage melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. It was the first oncolytic virus...

How Virtual Reality Takes Scientists Inside New Molecules (video)

A walk-in 3-D cube lets scientists explore the human body, its organs, and even the tiniest of cells. From video games to immersive documentaries, virtual reality is beginning to transform the consumer media and entertainment experience. But it’s poised to improve the way scientist discover new medicines as well. At Pfizer’s Research & Development hub in Cambridge, Mass., chemists, neuroscientists and other researchers use 3D VisBox technology to visualize and virtually explore the human body...

9 Things You Didn’t Know About Vaccines

  The cowpox pustules on the hand of a milkmaid in the 18th century provided the first vaccine ever created. (Science Photo Library) Vaccines have a long and storied history, from milkmaids’ cowpox pustules to snorting the scabs of infected people. The first vaccine was administered in 1796. In the two centuries since, dozens of vaccines have led to the salvation of millions of lives, from George Washington’s troops to children around the world.   Herewith, a primer on vaccines’ most...

Flashback: Carbolic Acid Sprayer

(Science Photo Library) Joseph Lister revolutionizes the world of surgery with an antiseptic idea. Upon reading Louis Pasteur’s work on putrefaction as a result of germs in 1865, budding Scottish physician Joseph Lister was struck with a eureka moment: He wanted to stop the outrageously high rate of deaths, a full 40 percent in the case of amputations, from infection acquired as a direct result of surgery. By 1867, he’d decided that carbolic acid (or phenol, a derivative of coal tar)...