Categories: Post

Interview with the 2018 FNIH Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences Winner Zhijian ‘James’ Chen, PhD

Watch the full program here.

 

A recent breakthrough in our war against cancer is the development of therapies that harness our body’s immune system to seek out and destroy tumor cells. While such immunotherapies have significantly prolonged the life of some patients who had previously exhausted all treatment options, the majority of cancer patients still do not benefit from existing immunotherapies. Thus, there is an urgent need to devise new therapies that can benefit a larger population of cancer patients. A better understanding of the body’s immune system is also very important for the prevention and treatment of a growing list of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, such as lupus, arthritis and neurodegenerative diseases. In these diseases, the immune system misfires and attacks our own tissues. Our immune system is also crucial for defending us from infections by a large variety of microbial pathogens, such as viruses, bacteria, and parasites.

c2st

Recent Posts

Bugs and babies: Safety Concerns for Formula-Fed Infants

As someone who is lucky enough to have multiple tiny humans in their life, I…

11 hours ago

Science of Everything: Lucid Dreaming

We’ve all woken up to remember a strange dream. Maybe you were performing a concert…

6 days ago

The Science of Everything: Electricity

Electricity is essential to everyday life, yet, the process of how it works still baffles…

3 weeks ago

Bridging Language and the Brain: An Interview with Keith Johnson, Ph.D.

Keith Johnson, Ph.D., Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, studies how language…

2 months ago

Under the Sea: The Invisible Changes to Ocean Life

At a long-term monitoring site at Tatoosh Island in northern Washington, researchers noticed an unexpected…

3 months ago

Synthetic Biology as a Tool to Advance Human Health: An Interview with an Expert

I remember sitting down a few years ago to write what was the most important…

3 months ago