Federal funding has provided crucial support for biomedical research at American universities for decades, fueling the innovation and discovery necessary to solve the biggest health challenges. This explainer video describes how research saves lives and how the process of research funding works.

Monique Starks, MD, associate professor of medicine, is leading the nation's first clinical trial of an innovative approach to saving more people who suffer cardiac arrest by delivering automated external defibrillators (AEDs) by drone. Drones carrying AEDs are being dispatched during real 911 calls in Forsyth County, North Carolina, to see if drones can deliver AEDs to patients faster than traditional emergency services.

After years reconstructing the faces of injured service members, Air Force veteran David Powers, MD, brings that same precision and compassion to patients recovering from gunshots, accidents, and cancer.

Doctors are taking a closer look at how obesity affects breast cancer and whether popular weight loss drugs might fit into future breast cancer prevention and treatment strategies.

By analyzing referral data and optimizing resources, a Duke Urology team reduced patient wait times by two-thirds.

In a study published in Nature, Duke researchers led by Trudy Oliver, PhD, reshape understanding of how small cell lung cancer begins, opening the door to developing therapies that could prevent this aggressive disease.

Duke's Neuromodulation and Stroke Recovery Lab, led by Wayne Feng, MD, focuses on harnessing non-invasive brain stimulation tools as potential treatment options for post-stroke complications.

Dan Ma, PhD, is transforming medical imaging with MR fingerprinting — a technique that captures the body’s inner landscape in a single scan. By varying magnetic signals, it creates unique tissue “fingerprints” and generates detailed maps that reveal what traditional MRI often misses — from hidden brain lesions to early-stage cancer. Ma’s work is unlocking a new era of imaging where every scan tells a deeper, more accurate story.

Study finds partial heart transplant series in pediatric patients resulted in valves that worked across different diagnoses and grew over time, matching the child’s development