Amazing Things Podcast

More than 460,000 Americans have end stage renal disease. While transplant of a human kidney is the best treatment for kidney failure, there simply aren’t enough donor kidneys to go around, leaving the vast majority of these patients tied to dialysis machines for the rest of their lives.Every day 13 people die waiting for a kidney. Vanderbilt University Medical Center nephrologist and associate professor of medicine Dr. William H. Fissell IV and his colleague Dr. Shuvo Roy at the University of California, San Francisco have spent the better part of two decades working on a technology solution to this problem of supply and demand. And now, in 2016, they are closing in on what he calls the “Holy Grail” for people with kidney disease: An implantable artificial kidney.

Thousands of diseases are rooted in our genes, occurring when something goes wrong during cell multiplication and causes a mutation in the gene’s DNA sequence.

This is why researchers the world over heralded the 2012 revelation of the CRISPR-Cas9 system, a groundbreaking tool for editing faulty genes.

CRISPR-Cas9 allows scientists with relative ease and precision to snip out a segment of mutated or damaged DNA, correcting genes that are disease-causing and opening the door to potential treatments for diseases where there currently are none. Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is one of those diseases, and Dr. Amy Wagers of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute is leading an effort to use edited stem cells to treat Duchenne.

What if you could detect cancer at its earliest stages – before there are any symptoms that would send you to a doctor? What if such a diagnostic tool existed and it was low-cost, minimally invasive and easy to use? The impact would be huge.Northwestern University professor of bioengineering and biophotonics Vadim Backman is closing in on this goal. By the end of 2017 he expects that the first of a series of cancer pre-screening tests will be available for use by physicians.

For the 1.25 million American adults and children with type 1 diabetes, managing blood-sugar levels is a 24/7 affair that involves sticking their fingers many times a day and either manually injecting insulin as needed or wearing an insulin pump.Blood glucose management is an inexact science, with levels too high or too low having dangerous consequences. Even a small overdose of insulin can be deadly. Boston University Professor Ed Damiano’s involvement with type 1 diabetes began in May 2000 on a highly personal note when his son David was diagnosed at just 11-months old.

In 2016, nearly 1.7 million people in the United States alone will be diagnosed with cancer. For many of these people, treatment will involve surgery to remove the cancer.However, because it’s very difficult for the naked eye to distinguish between normal tissue and cancerous tissue, standard protocol requires doctors to remove the tumor as well as some surrounding tissue. If this tissue is found to contain cancer cells, which can happen in as high as 40 percent of cases, the patient often faces a second round of surgery. Samuel Achilefu and his research team at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a simple, but powerful solution that might significantly improve these odds. Their cancer goggles, used with a special imaging dye also developed by Achilefu, illuminate cancer cells and it easier for surgeons to remove all of the cancer the first time around.

America’s investment in medical research through the National Institutes of Health is making amazing things possible, from the development of the first universal early cancer screening test to the creation of a bio-artificial kidney, a bionic pancreas, and a system to allow surgeons to see cancerous tissue in real time during surgery. These and more of the latest advancements in medical science are the products of intense long-term research and development. These innovations represent the life’s work of the world’s keenest scientific minds. And, the critical element shared by all of them: the robust and sustained funding from the NIH. Subscribe to the Amazing Things Podcast, and join us on an in-depth exploration of the research-driven medical discoveries poised to change the world.