Researchers at The Ohio State University’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS) are using sophisticated scanners and powerful supercomputers to study how vitamin E can be used to reduce the extent of brain injury suffered by stroke patients.
“When two genes interact to cause a clinically important phenotype, we can leverage genotypic information at one of the loci in order to improve our ability to detect the other,” said Veronica Vieland, Ph.D., vice president for computational research and director, Battelle Center for Mathematical Medicine.
Tricuspid valve surgery is a common heart valve procedure in the United States, but it is one with poor long-term outcomes. In fact, studies show that up to 45 percent of those who receive tricuspid valve surgery suffer a recurrence of problems, in some cases as early seven years after surgery. In one-third of the cases, a second operation is required.
For patients facing chronic lung disease, the third leading cause of death in the U.S., the ultimate end-stage treatment is a lung transplant. Unfortunately, the survival rate for lung transplant patients is lower than that of other organ transplants due to infections and tissue rejection.
In the Department of Genetics at Case Western Reserve University, Thomas LaFramboise, Ph.D., and his research team are discovering which genetic mutations determine a person’s susceptibility to developing leukemia.
The rise of antibiotic resistance among common infectious bacteria is a worrisome health threat that has many scientists looking for a solution. Jennifer Hines, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio University, is one of the few looking to ribonucleic acid (RNA) structures for new drug discovery.
A critical first step oncologists must take after finding a patient has breast cancer is to look for overexpressed hormone receptors in the cancer cells. This determines the type of therapy that will be used to most effectively combat the disease.
Sometimes numbers can be startling.
For instance, natural rubber is used in 50,000 commercial products, including 400 medical devices, because of its unique properties with regard to resilience, elasticity, abrasion and impact resistance, efficient heat dispersion and malleability at cold temperatures. It’s a critical raw material that developed countries simply can’t live without.
The difference between hearing and a lifetime of silence sometimes lies in the integrity of tiny inner ear proteins. Before Marcos Sotomayor, Ph.D., began studying these proteins, very little was known about hearing at the molecular level.
In less than 10 years, the way genetic data has been collected has sped up in a major way. Previously, collecting data from a species was done one gene at a time, on an individual-by-individual basis, but new sequencing technologies allow researchers to process hundreds of thousands of genes at a time.