ThinkResearch

"I treat pancreatic cancer and only 1% of those patients respond and the rest don't," says Osama Rahma, principal investigator at the Center for Immuno-Oncology and Gastroenterology Cancer Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Rahma discusses his research in cancer immunotherapy and his development of novel immunotherapy drugs.

"Microbes are amazing chemists,” says Emily Balskus, PhD, of Harvard University. Balskus discusses her research on the chemistry of microorganisms, including the microbiome, and how they affect human health and disease.

COVID-19 has affected all of us. How has it affected your research? Using the voice memo app on your smartphone, record yourself telling us how the pandemic has changed the way you're working.

Send the file to: [email protected] and we may use your voice in an upcoming episode. Please try to keep your submissions to around 2 minutes. Thank you!

Food in the U.S. is cheap. It's very accessible; it's very unhealthy. And it's strongly marketed to us," says Sara Bleich, professor of public health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Bleich discusses her research evaluating policies related to obesity and diet in vulnerable populations in our latest podcast.

"It's astonishing to understand how little we know about how people become pregnant," says Caroline Mitchell, MD, MPH, director of the Vulvovaginal Disorders Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. In our latest podcast, Mitchell discusses her research with IVF patients to identify how the vaginal microbiome impacts fertility.

"There are about 15,000 deaths a year from C. diff.," says Georg Gerber, MD, PhD, MPH, co-director of the Massachusetts Host-Microbiome Center. In our latest podcast, Gerber discusses his research on predicting recurring C. difficile infections in patients by utilizing precision medicine, microbiome data, and machine learning.

What are the factors driving antibiotic resistance in gonorrhea? Yonatan Grad, MD, PhD, Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, discusses his lab's work exploring antibiotic resistance in gonorrhea and the methods employed to tackle this problem.

“Large wounds have the same risk of infection as small wounds," explains Victor Neel, PhD, director of Massachusetts General Hospital's Dermatologic Surgery Unit. In this podcast, Neel discusses his research examining the interplay between skin bacteria and infection post-surgery.

"Our experience as physicians and patients is kind of getting lost in this web of the healthcare system," says Michael Barnett, MD, Brigham and Women's Hospital. In this podcast, Barnett discusses his research analyzing patient sharing networks and their associated cost of care, as well as his work evaluating policies aimed at reducing opioid use disorder.

Jeff Karp, PhD, Brigham and Women's hospital, discusses the concept of radical simplicity, which he describes as “breaking down the problem into simple terms that you can test.” Karp explains how he used this approach in stem cell therapy research to inform the translational and commercialization process.