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Video Interviews
Ralph Steinman received the 2007 Lasker Award in honor of his discovery of the dendritic cell, a critical component of the immune response. Here he describes his finding and its ongoing implications for research into cancer and immunology.
As University of Pittsburgh immunologist Olivera Finn explains, targeted immunotherapy against cancer has shown encouraging results in recent years, and could become a powerful tool when combined with personalized medicine.
With technologies like GPS, gene chips, and the Internet, we are awash in data. As Columbia University computer scientist Tony Jebara describes, extracting useful information from it all is the goal of the new field of machine learning.
Scott Halstead, research director of the Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative, explains how global urbanization is promoting the spread of dengue virus and describes challenges to vaccine development.
William Li, president of the Angiogenesis Foundation, notes that targeting the molecular pathways by which tumors recruit blood vessels to nourish themselves has become a promising strategy against cancer.
Inventor Dean Kamen explains why scientists and engineers need to be active role models for young people, and how his program FIRST is transforming kids’ sense of their potential.
Doris Bucher's laboratory produced a seed strain used to develop a vaccine for swine H1N1 influenza. Here, she explains why she is “very optimistic” that an effective vaccine will be developed.
Michael Shaw has been a leader in the CDC's response to the 2009 swine flu outbreak. Here he describes the challenges public health officials face, and the lessons they've learned from the crisis.
Issar Smith spent over 42 years at the Public Health Research Institute studying the control of sporulation and gene regulation in Bacillus subtilis and pathogenesis in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Here he describes the highlights of his career.
Epidemiologist Chris Beyrer explains how in the absence of human rights, public health suffers. Beyrer is working in Burma to conduct public health research and provide health services to internally displaced people.
Considering humanity's capacity to address this problem, longtime member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Michael Oppenheimer observes, "Things are under our control, if we choose to exert that control."
Marc Feldmann and Ravinder Maini developed the first therapy targeting a specific cytokine. Here Feldmann explains the connection between his groundbreaking work on rheumatoid arthritis and his latest research on diseases such as atherosclerosis.
Ravinder Maini, awarded the Lasker Prize (with Marc Feldmann) for the development of anti-TNF therapy, explains the cytokine's central role in inflammation, and why his translation of this knowledge into a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis was a landmark in the field of protein therapeutics.
Thomas Tuschl, a pioneer in the microRNA field, explains the role of posttranscriptional regulation in diseases like type 2 diabetes, and some of the technical challenges in developing oligonucleotide therapeutics.
Immunologist Art Krieg argues that many of the effects of early antisense and RNA interference experiments were due to off-target immune effects of the oligonucleotides. But such effects aren't necessarily a bad thing; they may even offer unique opportunities for drug development.
John Lamb of Rosetta Inpharmatics describes how systems biology can help reveal the role of individual genetic variation and environmental perturbations within complex diseases.
Barry Levin, vice-chair of the Department of Neurosciences at New Jersey Medical School, explains the value of animal studies in obesity research, and describes how the perinatal environment has a big impact on whether rats, even those with obesity-resistant genes, become obese.
In addition to controlling gestational diabetes and weight during pregnancy, Andreas Plagemann, head of the Division of Experimental Obstetrics at Charité–University of Medicine Berlin, advocates that women breastfeed to reduce their children's risk of becoming obese later in life.
Robert Whitaker is a pediatrician who studies childhood obesity. Here he discusses the challenges of intervening in the way parents feed their children and use food to achieve other goals besides nutrition.
Rudolph Leibel, along with Jeff Freidman, cloned the leptin gene in 1994. Here he describes why people who lose weight almost always regain it.
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