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.

Postdoctoral Fellow Binita Chakraborty, PhD was intrigued: in published analyses of large numbers of patients with melanoma (skin cancer) treated with an immunotherapy that is becoming standard of care, the treatment worked better in men than in women.

Turning a Terrifying Ordeal into an Opportunity to Help

When reports early last winter indicated that a mysterious new infectious disease had broken out of its point of origin in Wuhan, China, Charles Lucore, MD’83, P’17, MBA, began to prepare for its possible arrival in New York.