Duke's Ed Miao, MD, PhD, a professor in the Departments of Immunology, Molecular Genetics, and Biology, was the first to demonstrate that pyroptosis (cellular suicide) is real and clears intracellular bacteria. More basic science research is needed, however, to understand why pyroptosis can occur in normal, non-infected cells, which could be implicated for sepsis.
During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, confusion about the virus, how it spreads, and how to stop transmission was rampant. But one thing was certain — the virus did not discriminate in who it infected. Everyone was at risk.
In 2011, Katie Corun was in her third semester of nursing school in Maryland when she began having personality changes—moodiness and anger. Neither she nor her husband of seven months, Ron, or her mother, Kathy, could figure out what was going on.
Nicole McGuinness was 29 in December 2015 when she woke up already an hour late for her government relations job. She had blood on her shirt, and her tongue was swollen.
Ever since Duke Cancer Institute helped Meg Lindenberger survive breast cancer more than a decade ago, she and her husband, Bill, have been faithful supporters.
A $5 million gift from an anonymous donor has established the first Presidential Distinguished Chair at Duke University. The Duke Presidential Distinguished Chairs, a new class of endowed professorships, were created to maximize the university’s ability to recruit and retain exceptional faculty in a wide range of disciplines, including those aligned with the Duke Science and Technology (DST) initiative.
Breast cancer researcher Donald McDonnell, PhD, met his wife, Mary, in Maine for a week of vacation. Sitting at a secluded inn on Anne’s Point, McDonnell, Coleader of the Women’s Cancer Research Program at the Duke Cancer Institute, couldn’t stop thinking about what he had heard at a meeting.
For 27 years, Heather Paradis, a 1995 graduate of Duke University’s Master of Science in Nursing Program, cared for cancer patients at Duke University Hospital as a hematology-oncology nurse practitioner. As she saw many patients fighting the disease, she had no idea that she would one day be on the other side of cancer care.
In 2016, Duke employee Brandy Chieco was a new mom with a three-month-old baby boy when her own mom, Brenda Brooks, was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma, which tends to arise in the joints.
As the COVID-19 pandemic shines a light on health disparities, efforts to find new ways to reduce them get a boost.