While an effective treatment is available for combating multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, it carries serious side effects for patients. New research conducted at the Center for Tuberculosis Research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine shows that lower doses of the toxic drug bedaquiline — given together with verapamil, a medication that’s used to treat various heart conditions — can lead to the same antibacterial effects as higher toxic doses of bedaquiline.

Already known to cut proteins, the enzyme SPPL3 turns out to have additional talents, according to a new study from Johns Hopkins. In its newly discovered role, SPPL3 works without cutting proteins to activate T cells, the immune system’s foot soldiers. Because its structure is similar to that of presenilin enzymes, which have been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers believe their findings could shed more light on presenilin functions, in addition to providing new insight into how the immune system is controlled.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered what keeps an enzyme from becoming overzealous in its clipping of DNA. Since controlled clipping is required for the production of specialized immune system proteins, an understanding of what keeps the enzyme in check should help explain why its mutant forms can lead to immunodeficiency and cancer.

A lack of standards for public performance reports can misinform patients and health care providers, say experts from the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality and the Northeastern University’s Center for Health Policy and Healthcare Research. The paper, published this week in the American Journal for Accountable Care, states that a lack of standards for public reports can produce conflicting information that could lead to confusion and leave patients and clinicians with little assurance about the integrity of the data provided.

Results of a small Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study show that hospitalized children given high-dose IV infusions of the antibiotic vancomycin to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections face an increased risk for kidney damage — an often reversible but sometimes serious complication.

Officials at Highmark Health, Allegheny Health Network, Highmark Inc. and Johns Hopkins Medicine today announced the signing of a new master collaboration agreement that will complement the formal oncology collaboration that began earlier this year. These collaborations aim to leverage the collective strengths of the organizations and improve the availability and affordability of health care to Pennsylvania patients.

New research shows that modern human skeletons evolved into their lightly built form only relatively recently — after the start of the Holocene about 12,000 years ago, and even more recently in some human populations. The work, based on high-resolution imaging of bone joints from modern humans and chimpanzees as well as from fossils of extinct human species, shows that for millions of years, extinct humans had high bone density until a dramatic decrease in recent modern humans.

Johns Hopkins and University of Alberta researchers have identified a single protein as the root of painful and dangerous allergic reactions to a range of medications and other substances. If a new drug can be found that targets the problematic protein, they say, it could help smooth treatment for patients with conditions ranging from prostate cancer to diabetes to HIV.

As foreign and domestic health care workers in West Africa fight to contain the deadliest Ebola virus disease outbreak in history, a group of disaster response and modeling experts from Johns Hopkins say a potential pool of manpower to help care for patients with Ebola is being overlooked and should be tapped quickly: people who have survived and recovered from Ebola virus infection.

Good news for people who are already following a diet rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and low in sweets: New research suggests these heart-healthy eaters don’t need to worry about choosing low glycemic index foods to lower the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

New research from The Johns Hopkins University suggests that the amount of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) found in peoples’ blood directly relates to how frail they are medically. This DNA may prove to be a useful predictor of overall risk of frailty and death from any cause 10 to 15 years before symptoms appear.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins have found that dense mats of interacting bacteria, called biofilms, were present in the majority of cancers and polyps, particularly those on the right side of the colon. The presence of these bacterial bunches, they say, may represent an increased risk for colon cancer and could form the basis of new diagnostic tests.

An advanced protective suit for health care workers who treat Ebola patients, devised by a Johns Hopkins team, is one of the first five awardees in a federal funding contest aimed at quickly devising new tools to combat the deadly disease.

The Food and Drug Administration wants to know when and why costlier brand-name drugs are used instead of generic ones. The organization has tapped a team at Johns Hopkins for a two-year study that will analyze factors that determine underuse of generic drugs

While many different combinations of genetic traits can cause autism, brains affected by autism share a pattern of ramped-up immune responses, an analysis of data from autopsied human brains reveals. The study, a collaborative effort between Johns Hopkins and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, included data from 72 autism and control brains.

Many children who sustain so-called open bone fractures in the forearm or lower leg can, and do, heal safely without surgery, according to the results of a small study led by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

Triple-negative breast cancer is as bad as it sounds. The cells that form these tumors lack three proteins that would make the cancer respond to powerful, customized treatments. Instead, doctors are left with treating these patients with traditional chemotherapy drugs that only show long-term effectiveness in 20 percent of women with triple-negative breast cancer. Now, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University have discovered a way that breast cancer cells are able to resist the effects of chemotherapy — and they have found a way to reverse that process.

Journalists are invited to hear from more than 20 Johns Hopkins-affiliated startups on Dec. 10 at an event entitled “A Healthcare Technology Day.” The showcase, which will run from 2 to 6 p.m. at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, will feature presentations by company management and offer opportunities for one-on-one interviews.

Whether we’re paying attention to something we see can be discerned by monitoring the firings of specific groups of brain cells. Now, new work from Johns Hopkins shows that the same holds true for the sense of touch. The study brings researchers closer to understanding how animals’ thoughts and feelings affect their perception of external stimuli.

Johns Hopkins University has been awarded a five-year, $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging to fund a center that will conduct research on the informal support resources of vulnerable older adults.

Akira Sawa, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and director of the Johns Hopkins Schizophrenia Center, has been named the inaugural Sachiko Kuno and Ryuji Ueno Innovation Professor, endowed by scientists, biotech entrepreneurs and philanthropists Ryuji Ueno and Sachiko Kuno.

Johns Hopkins researchers report that their test of an interventional X-ray guidance device approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2013 has the potential to reduce the radiation exposure of patients undergoing intra-arterial therapy (IAT) for liver cancer.

One little stick can save your life. The flu shot remains critically important to fight off the influenza virus, both around the world and in your home, say doctors and researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who encourage people 6 months of age and older to get vaccinated against this year’s influenza virus.

Six Johns Hopkins University researchers have been elected by their peers as Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Aravinda Chakravarti, Peter J. Espenshade, Alex Leo Kolodkin, Jin Zhang, Margaret Meixner and Daniela Drummond-Barbosa are among 401 new members honored this year for advancing science or its applications.

In what is believed to be the first interview-style qualitative study of its kind among health care providers in the trenches, a team led by a Johns Hopkins geriatrician has further documented barriers to better care of older adults as they are transferred from hospital to rehabilitation center to home, and too often back again.

Immunity is a thankless job. Though the army of cells known as the immune system continuously keeps us safe from a barrage of viruses, bacteria and even precancerous cells, we mainly notice it when something goes wrong: “Why did I get the flu this year even though I got vaccinated?” “Why does innocent pollen turn me into a red-eyed, sniffling mess?”

Working at the edge of a coal mine in India, a team of Johns Hopkins researchers and colleagues have filled in a major gap in science’s understanding of the evolution of a group of animals that includes horses and rhinos. That group likely originated on the subcontinent when it was still an island headed swiftly for collision with Asia, the researchers report Nov. 20 in the online journal Nature Communications.

Using an ultrasensitive blood test to detect the presence of a protein that heralds heart muscle injury, researchers from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere have found that obese people without overt heart disease experience silent cardiac damage that fuels their risk for heart failure down the road.

A Blood Pressure Hormone Implicated in Psychosis; Nutrient Deficiency Linked to Brain Wasting in Huntington’s Disease; Autistic Mice Become Social with Drug Treatment

When the mouse and human genomes were catalogued more than 10 years ago, an international team of researchers set out to understand and compare the “mission control centers” found throughout the large stretches of DNA flanking the genes. Their long-awaited report suggests why studies in mice cannot always be reproduced in humans. Importantly, the scientists say, their work also sheds light on the function of DNA’s regulatory regions, which are often to blame for common chronic human diseases.

The following research findings were presented by Johns Hopkins cardiologists at the annual Scientific Sessions Meeting of the American Heart Association in Chicago.

A team of researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine has discovered a receptor on blood vessels that causes the vessel to relax in response to light, making it potentially useful in treating vascular diseases. In addition, researchers discovered a previously unknown mechanism by which blood vessel function is regulated through light of a specific wavelength.

The Center for Clinical Global Health Education (CCGHE) at Johns Hopkins Medicine, with significant financial support from the Ujala Foundation and the Wyncote Foundation, has named eight new scholars to improve health care in India, with a particular focus on fighting tuberculosis.

Three Johns Hopkins Medicine hospitals are recipients of The Joint Commission’s 2013 Top Performer on Key Quality Measures award.

When choosing a cancer surgeon, patients are more likely to prefer surgeons with specialized training and lots of experience far more than those who practice in a convenient location or were recommended by a friend, according to results of a new survey reported in the November issue of the Annals of Surgical Oncology.

Sickle cell trait (SCT), an inherited condition marked by having a single copy of the sickle cell gene but not the two copies needed to cause sickle cell disease (SCD), may raise the risk of chronic kidney disease, according to results of a large study led by researchers from Johns Hopkins, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington School of Public Health.

New research in flies shows how cells in adult reproductive organs maintain their sexual identity. The study, published online on Nov. 13 in Developmental Cell, also identified a mutation that can switch the cells’ sexual identity. The findings could lead to new insights on how to alter cells for therapeutic purposes.

A urine-based test for early detection and monitoring of bladder cancer and a plan to develop nanoparticles to deliver chemotherapy drugs to bladder tissue are among the first round of projects awarded research grants by the Johns Hopkins Greenberg Bladder Cancer Institute.

A few days before open enrollment begins on the Maryland Health Connection website, one of the state’s premiere health care providers, Johns Hopkins Medicine, is voicing concern that its providers will not be available to individuals who select certain UnitedHealthcare products offered on the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange and other state exchanges.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and elsewhere have found that genetic differences may account for why zinc supplements are more beneficial to some people than to others for the prevention and control of diabetes

Lisa Cooper, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Johns Hopkins Center to Eliminate Cardiovascular Health Disparities, has been named the 2014 recipient of the Herbert W. Nickens Award by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The award is given annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to promoting justice in medical education and health care.

For years, a multidisciplinary team of Johns Hopkins researchers has tracked an elusive creature, a complex of proteins thought to be at fault in some cases of sudden cardiac death. As they report Nov. 5 in the online edition of Nature Communications, they have finally captured images of the complex. Those images reveal the connection between some genetic mutations and electrical abnormalities of the heart and provide a starting point for designing therapies.

Recent research from The Johns Hopkins University suggests that in high stakes situations, a person's performance depends on two factors: the framing of the incentive in terms of a loss or a gain, and their fear of loss.

The Ebola virus disease training modules for health care workers developed in collaboration between experts at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are now available.

A multicenter team of researchers has identified an enzyme key to the survival and spread of glioblastoma cancer cells that is not present in healthy brain cells, making the enzyme a promising therapeutic target.

An evening of opera with special guest Marilyn Horne, iconic American opera singer, featuring performances by soprano Colleen Daly and tenor Rolando Sanz with direction and musical accompaniment by James Harp to benefit the Model Lyric Performing Arts Center and the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. A multi-course menu with wine pairing will be prepared by Pazo, a Baltimore Harbor East southern Italian restaurant. Valet parking is included.

The 47^th annual Best Dressed Sale and Boutique, a fundraising project of The Women’s Board of The Johns Hopkins Hospital, will begin Friday, Oct. 31, at The Carriage House at Evergreen, located at 4545 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD.

Amoebas aren’t the only cells that crawl: Movement is crucial to development, wound healing and immune response in animals, not to mention cancer metastasis. In two new studies from Johns Hopkins, researchers answer long-standing questions about how complex cells sense the chemical trails that show them where to go — and the role of cells’ internal “skeleton” in responding to those cues.
 

Do blood vessels that feed tumors differ from other blood vessels? Fourteen years ago, experiments designed to answer that question led to the discovery of several genes that are more active in tumor-associated blood vessels than in normal blood vessels. New research now reveals the normal function of one of those genes and suggests it could be a good target for anticancer drug therapy.

Scientists from Johns Hopkins and the University of Nebraska have discovered an algae virus never before seen in the throats of healthy people that may subtly alter a range of cognitive functions including visual processing and spatial orientation in those who harbor it.

A Johns Hopkins research team reports that major hospitals across the U.S. collectively throw away at least $15 million a year in unused operating room surgical supplies that could be salvaged and used to ease critical shortages, improve surgical care and boost public health in developing countries.

Paying attention to the color of a newborn’s poop can mean the difference between life and death for babies with the rare liver disorder biliary atresia — the leading cause of liver transplants in children. The disease is almost universally heralded by white or clay-colored stools but is often diagnosed with woeful delays.

A common protein plays a different role than previously thought in the opening and closing of channels that let ions flow in and out of our cells, researchers at Johns Hopkins report. Those channels are critical to life, as having the right concentrations of sodium and calcium ions in cells enables healthy brain communication, heart contraction and many other processes. The new study reveals that a form of calmodulin long thought to be dormant actually opens these channels wide. The finding is likely to bring new insight into disorders caused by faulty control of these channels, such as cardiac arrhythmias, epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease, the researchers say.

Johns Hopkins Medicine has collaborated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to design an interactive Web-based learning program that guides health care workers, nurses and physicians through government-approved protocols to aid clinicians as they provide care to patients who may be at risk of contracting the Ebola virus. The program trains health care providers in three critical areas: proper donning of personal protective equipment (PPE), the safe removal of gear and active monitoring skills. All three modules will be available for free on the CDC’s website in the coming weeks and later available to the millions of iOS users on iTunes U.

A multicenter study of 169 men and women with a common form of neck pain suggests that both spinal steroid injections and conservative treatment with physical therapy and painkillers work equally well to relieve pain in the short term. But over time, a combination of the two appears to offer the most relief.

Morgan State University has been awarded a $23.3 million grant, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today. The award, called Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD), is part of a program to increase diversity in the biomedical sciences and will fund a new center to equip top Morgan State undergraduates with research skills and experience, in partnership with professors and research labs at The Johns Hopkins University.

Combining a PET scanner with a new chemical tracer that selectively tags specific types of bacteria, Johns Hopkins researchers working with mice report they have devised a way to detect and monitor in real time infections with a class of dangerous Gram-negative bacteria. These increasingly drug-resistant bacteria are responsible for a range of diseases, including fatal pneumonias and various bloodstream or solid-organ infections acquired in and outside the hospital.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Division of Cancer Prevention and Control (DCPC) has awarded the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center’s Breast Cancer Program a $1.7 million grant over five years to fund educational programs, enhance support and increase awareness for young women diagnosed with breast cancer.

With the heightened media coverage of the Ebola virus disease outbreak, it’s only natural to feel anxious about it. It’s important to know the facts.  

The Johns Hopkins Hospital has been recognized as a Leader in LGBT Healthcare Equality by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation, the educational arm of the country’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization. 

Nelson/Harvey Building renovations at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore are complete after a nearly 24-month construction project to completely modernize the two buildings originally built in 1977. The makeover adds 136 new private patient rooms, which will be used primarily for Department of Medicine, pulmonology, gastroenterology and cardiac medicine patients.

The Johns Hopkins Hospital celebrates with a ribbon-cutting ceremony the completion of another significant step in its East Baltimore campus redevelopment project. After nearly 24 months of construction, the Nelson and Harvey buildings, originally built in 1977, will reopen with 136 all-private patient rooms with sleeping accommodations for family members, family respite areas on each floor, updated software and equipment for caregivers, and many more modern amenities.

Five bladder cancer experts will be awarded research grants totaling $250,000 from the Johns Hopkins Greenberg Bladder Cancer Institute on Oct. 15. The grant awards will be the centerpiece of a day-long board meeting. The event will culminate with the unveiling of a ceremonial plaque marking the establishment of the new institute that was made possible with a landmark gift from Baltimore-area commercial real estate developer Erwin Greenberg and his wife, Stephanie Cooper Greenberg.

Results of a small clinical trial suggest that a chemical derived from broccoli sprouts — and best known for claims that it can help prevent certain cancers — may ease classic behavioral symptoms in those with autism spectrum disorders.

Johns Hopkins Medicine announces the start of its Healthy Beverage Initiative, a program designed to ensure that beverages containing relatively low levels of sugar are more readily available in the hospital cafeterias, vending machines and retail outlets on many Johns Hopkins Medicine campuses.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have added to evidence that continuous electronic fetal heart rate monitoring, widely used during maternal labor, has so many false positive readings that it is unable to reliably identify fetal brain injury caused by oxygen deficiency. Results of the new study by a team at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine appeared in the September issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, the official publication of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists popularly known as “The Green Journal.”

When young mice with the rodent equivalent of a rare autism spectrum disorder, called Rett syndrome, were fed a diet supplemented with the synthetic oil triheptanoin, they lived longer than mice on regular diets. Importantly, their physical and behavioral symptoms were also less severe after being on the diet, according to results of new research from The Johns Hopkins University.

Dorothy Roberts, author of Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Recreate Race in the Twenty-First Century, will deliver the keynote address at the fifth annual Henrietta Lacks Memorial Lecture this Saturday, Oct. 11, at 9 a.m. in Turner Auditorium on the campus of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine. Admission to the lecture is free.

Two Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine faculty members have been approved for research funding totaling almost $5 million from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).

Heart attack survivors often experience dangerous heart rhythm disturbances during treatment designed to restore blood flow to the injured heart muscle, a common and confounding complication of an otherwise lifesaving intervention

Johns Hopkins scientists have shown a strong association between tobacco use or exposure and infection with oral human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV16), the sexually transmitted virus responsible for mouth and throat cancers worldwide. The numbers of such cancers have increased 225 percent in the United States over the past two decades.

The National Institutes of Health have awarded $21 million to researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and seven other institutions to develop an antimicrobial solution that prevents HIV infection following anal intercourse. Johns Hopkins is the principal site for the research trials.

A multidisciplinary team at Johns Hopkins has used the principles of neuroscience to hijack our sense of what is and isn’t real. The result is a deceptively simple yet uniquely immersive video game, I Am Dolphin, slated for release on iTunes on Oct. 9.

Johns Hopkins and other cancer researchers report that a very short course of a chemotherapy drug, called cyclophosphamide, not only can prevent a life-threatening immune response in some bone marrow transplant recipients, but also can eliminate such patients’ need for the usual six months of immune suppression medicines commonly prescribed to prevent severe forms of this immune response. Patients receive cyclophosphamide for two days after their bone marrow transplant, in addition to two other chemotherapy drugs given before the transplant.

Experiments in mice with a bone disorder similar to that in women after menopause show that a scientifically overlooked group of cells are likely crucial to the process of bone loss caused by the disorder, according to Johns Hopkins researchers. Their discovery, they say, not only raises the research profile of the cells, called preosteoclasts, but also explains the success and activity of an experimental osteoporosis drug with promising results in phase III clinical trials.

Johns Hopkins Children’s Center infectious disease specialist Sanjay Jain, M.D., has earned a Transformative Research Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his ongoing work to design a new noninvasive imaging method that can rapidly identify a wide variety of bacterial infections and monitor their response to treatment in real time.

Studying mice with a genetic change similar to what is found in Kabuki syndrome, an inherited disease of humans, Johns Hopkins researchers report they have used an anticancer drug to “open up” DNA and improve mental function.

Tinnitus or ringing in the ears — a phantom sound with no identifiable external source — affects millions of Americans, some of them chronically. Yet despite its prevalence, so far there have been no evidence-based clinical guidelines on how to evaluate and treat the condition.

Neuroimaging scientists at The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Copenhagen are leading a team that received a $1.5 million grant from the Obama administration’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative to create a next-generation brain imaging system. They hope to help unlock the secrets of mental illnesses, including dementia, Parkinson's disease, depression and schizophrenia. The National Institutes of Health announced the award on Sept. 30.

A team of Johns Hopkins disaster preparedness and response experts will provide disaster readiness training to local and national house of worship leaders at a one-day session in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 30

Johns Hopkins Medicine is co-hosting an all-day symposium entitled “Prosthetists Meet Printers: Mainstreaming Open Source 3-D Printed Prosthetics for Underserved Populations.” The event includes workshops on such topics as strategy, techniques and policy regarding 3-D prosthetics.

Johns Hopkins Children’s Center pediatrician Myron Yaster, M.D., has been chosen to receive the first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia. Yaster is being honored for his trailblazing work in the field of pediatric anesthesia and pain management.

In an analysis of genetic information among more than 87,000 men, a global team of scientists says it has found 23 new genetic variants — common differences in the genetic code — that increase a man’s risk for prostate cancer. The so-called meta-analysis, believed to be the largest of its kind, has revealed once hidden mutations among men in a broad array of ethnic groups comprising men of European, African, Japanese and Latino ancestry.

Two Johns Hopkins neuroscientists have discovered the “molecular brakes” that time the generation of important cells in the inner ear cochleas of mice. These “hair cells” translate sound waves into electrical signals that are carried to the brain and are interpreted as sounds. If the arrangement of the cells is disordered, hearing is impaired.

Using a pain clinic as a testing ground, researchers at Johns Hopkins have shown that a management process first popularized by Toyota in Japan can substantially reduce patient wait times and possibly improve the teaching of interns and residents.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have identified a highly sensitive means of analyzing very tiny amounts of DNA. The discovery, they say, could increase the ability of forensic scientists to match genetic material in some criminal investigations. It could also prevent the need for a painful, invasive test given to transplant patients at risk of rejecting their donor organs and replace it with a blood test that reveals traces of donor DNA.

Patient service and quality improvement expert Lisa Allen has been named the first chief patient experience officer for Johns Hopkins Medicine.

The timing of a toddler’s first steps is an important developmental milestone, but a slight delay in walking is typically not a cause of concern by itself.

 Johns Hopkins researchers report that a small number of longtime smokers who had failed many attempts to drop the habit did so after a carefully controlled and monitored use of psilocybin, the active hallucinogenic agent in so-called "magic mushrooms,” in the context of a cognitive behavioral therapy treatment program.

The Johns Hopkins Multiple Sclerosis Center is the recipient of one of 22 research grants offered to investigators in nine countries by the International Progressive MS Alliance, a worldwide collaborative focused on finding solutions to progressive forms of multiple sclerosis (MS).

Norm Barker, M.A., M.S., a professor of pathology and art as applied medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Lydia Gregg, M.A., an instructor and certified medical illustrator at the school, each received an Award of Excellence in the BioCommunications Association’s 2014 BioImages competition.

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has been named a top medical education program, along with the University of California, San Francisco, by the physician network Doximity and its partner U.S. News & World Report. This is their first comprehensive national study of residency programs. Johns Hopkins placed in the top 10 in 14 specialties and is number one in four specialties: Nuclear Medicine, Otolaryngology, Pathology (Anatomic & Clinical) and Surgery.

Compared with women, American men have worse access to reproductive and sexual health care, research shows, a disparity fueled in part by the lack of standard clinical guidelines on the types and timing of exams, tests and treatments that should be offered to all men of reproductive age. 

A team of American infectious disease and critical care experts is alerting colleagues caring for Ebola patients that how they remove their personal protective gear can be just as crucial as wearing it to prevent exposure to the deadly virus.

 Three Johns Hopkins Medicine hospitals have been awarded the 2014 Excellence Award for Quality Improvement in Hospitals from the Delmarva Foundation for Medical Care, an independent, nonprofit health care quality improvement organization. The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore and Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., each earned the distinction.

Breast cancer cells can lay the groundwork for their own spread throughout the body by coaxing cells within lymphatic vessels to send out tumor-welcoming signals, according to a new report by Johns Hopkins scientists.

Working with mice, a multicenter team of researchers has found a new way to reduce the abnormal blood vessel growth and leakage in the eye that accompany some eye diseases. The finding could lead to the development of new drugs for wet macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema 

Research at Johns Hopkins has helped a team of scientists elsewhere identify and develop a compound that could directly target a genetic mutation responsible for a common familial form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and a biologically related memory-robbing disease known as frontotemporal dementia (FTD). 

The news in July that HIV had returned in a Mississippi toddler after a two-year treatment-free remission dashed the hopes of clinicians, HIV researchers and the public at large tantalized by the possibility of a cure.

A combination of two drugs already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for different applications reduces wound healing time by one-quarter and significantly decreases scar tissue in mice and rats, Johns Hopkins researchers report. If the findings, reported in the September issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, hold true in future human studies, the dual treatment could speed skin healing in people with skin ulcers, extensive burns, surgical wounds and battlefield injuries.

Many African-Americans may not be getting effective doses of the HIV drug maraviroc, a new study from Johns Hopkins suggests. The initial dosing studies, completed before the drug was licensed in 2007, included mostly European-Americans, who generally lack a protein that is key to removing maraviroc from the body. The current study shows that people with maximum levels of the protein — including nearly half of African-Americans — end up with less maraviroc in their bodies compared to those who lack the protein even when given the same dose. A simple genetic test for the gene that makes the CYP3A5 protein could be used to determine what doses would achieve effective levels in individuals, the researchers say.

Regardless of their stage or type, cancers appear to share a telltale signature of widespread changes to the so-called epigenome, according to a team of researchers. In a study of a broad variety of cancers, the investigators say they have found widespread and distinctive changes to chemical marks known as methyl groups attached to DNA. Those marks help govern whether genes are turned “on” or “off,” and ultimately how the cell behaves. Such reversible chemical marks on DNA are known as epigenetic, and together they make up the epigenome.

Modern Healthcare, a leading industry publication, has named Johns Hopkins Medicine Dean and CEO Paul B. Rothman, M.D., and patient safety expert Peter J. Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., to this year’s 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare list. The list recognizes individuals deemed by their peers and experts as leaders in the industry.

Researchers have discovered that three commonly used nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, alter the activity of enzymes within cell membranes. Their finding suggests that, if taken at higher-than-approved doses and/or for long periods of time, these prescription-level NSAIDs and other drugs that affect the membrane may produce wide-ranging and unwanted side effects.

Johns Hopkins stem cell biologists have found a way to reprogram a patient’s skin cells into cells that mimic and display many biological features of a rare genetic disorder called familial dysautonomia. The process requires growing the skin cells in a bath of proteins and chemical additives while turning on a gene to produce neural crest cells, which give rise to several adult cell types. The researchers say their work substantially expedites the creation of neural crest cells from any patient with a neural crest-related disorder, a tool that lets physicians and scientists study each patient’s disorder at the cellular level.

Bruce A. Perler, M.D., M.B.A., was named president-elect of the Society for Vascular Surgery, an international medical society with 5,000 members, at the society’s recent annual meeting in Boston.

Monthly blood transfusions can substantially reduce the risk of recurrent strokes in children with sickle cell disease (SCD) who have already suffered a silent stroke, according to the results of an international study by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center, Vanderbilt University and 27 other medical institutions.

Internationally renowned pediatric surgeon and scientist David Hackam, M.D., Ph.D., will become the new pediatric surgeon-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

A genetic variation linked to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe depression wreaks havoc on connections among neurons in the developing brain, a team of researchers reports. The study, led by Guo-li Ming, M.D., Ph.D., and Hongjun Song, Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and described online Aug. 17 in the journal Nature, used stem cells generated from people with and without mental illness to observe the effects of a rare and pernicious genetic variation on young brain cells. The results add to evidence that several major mental illnesses have common roots in faulty “wiring” during early brain development.

By finding a way to bind a slippery molecule naturally found in the fluid that surrounds healthy joints, Johns Hopkins researchers have engineered surfaces that have the potential to deliver long-lasting lubrication at specific spots throughout the body.

Peter O. Kwiterovich Jr., M.D., professor emeritus of pediatrics and medicine at Johns Hopkins, one of the world’s foremost authorities on lipid disorders and a leading advocate for routine cholesterol screening in children, died on Aug. 15 after a long battle with prostate cancer. He was 74.

Using a deceptively simple set of experiments, researchers at Johns Hopkins have learned why people learn an identical or similar task faster the second, third and subsequent time around. The reason: They are aided not only by memories of how to perform the task, but also by memories of the errors made the first time.

Already known for their higher-than-usual risk of asthma and environmental allergies, young inner-city children appear to suffer disproportionately from food allergies as well, according to results of a study led by scientists at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

A modified version of the Clostridium novyi (C. novyi-NT) bacterium can produce a strong and precisely targeted anti-tumor response in rats, dogs and now humans, according to a new report from Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers.

A modified version of the Clostridium novyi (C. novyi-NT) bacterium can produce a strong and precisely targeted anti-tumor response in rats, dogs and now humans, according to a new report from Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers.

Chronic pain, which persists despite the fact that an injury has healed, can last for many months or years and may affect up to 15% of the adult population at any point in time. While it is a condition in its own right, it can be a component of other conditions.

By modifying an existing “genome editing” technology that allows precise modification of pieces of DNA from chromosomes, Johns Hopkins researchers report they have significantly increased the range of DNA sites that can be efficiently edited by the process. In a description of their novel advance, reported in the Aug. 8 issue of Nature Communications, they say the modified methodology could eventually add efficiency and speed studies of gene function, aid in the development of new cellular models of diseases, and help treat genetic conditions.

Cynthia Boyd, an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, has been awarded research funding of about $1 million from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). The funding award is one of 33 that PCORI’s board of governors approved last week. The award has been approved pending completion of a business and programmatic review by PCORI staff and issuance of a formal award contract to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

A new Johns Hopkins review of 20 years’ worth of published research suggests that risks linked to long-term use of statins, including muscle toxicity, diabetes and dementia, are very low and that the potential benefit is very high. And although some experts say statins may be overprescribed, the new analysis could provide reassurance of the relative safety of the cholesterol-lowering drugs for the more than 200 million people worldwide who take them.

A review of data from a long-term study of thousands of Americans suggests that a history of high blood pressure in midlife increases the risk of cognitive decline in old age, according to a report on the study led by Johns Hopkins researchers. The findings, the scientists say, indicate a treatable cause — hypertension — for at least some pervasive forms of cognitive deficit.

A triple therapy for glioblastoma, including two types of immunotherapy and targeted radiation, has significantly prolonged the survival of mice with these brain cancers, according to a new report by scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

A multicenter team of researchers report that in a phase III clinical trial, a combination drug therapy cures chronic hepatitis C in the majority of patients co-infected with both HIV and hepatitis C.

 Studies by vascular biologists at The Johns Hopkins Hospital could lead to new treatments for vascular disease. This work was led by Dan Berkowitz, M.B.B.Ch., and Lewis Romer, M.D., both professors of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The studies focus on the balance between (good) nitric oxide, and (bad) oxidants—both important regulators of the inner lining of blood vessels, called the endothelium.

The Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center has been awarded three Telly Awards for two educational videos on pediatric and pancreatic cancers.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have mapped the sound-processing part of the mouse brain in a way that keeps both the proverbial forest and the trees in view. Their imaging technique allows zooming in and out on views of brain activity within mice, and it enabled the team to watch brain cells light up as mice “called” to each other. The results, which represent a step toward better understanding how our own brains process language, appear online July 31 the journal Neuron.

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have discovered a chemical alteration in a single human gene linked to stress reactions that, if confirmed in larger studies, could give doctors a simple blood test to reliably predict a person’s risk of attempting suicide.

ROCKVILLE, Md. — Kaiser Permanente and Johns Hopkins Medicine today announced plans to strengthen the successful collaboration between the two health care organizations. With the new agreement, Kaiser Permanente and Johns Hopkins Medicine will expand ways to deliver quality care by sharing evidence-based best practices, advancing population health programs, collaborating on education and research endeavors, and exploring how the organizations can work together to create better health care models for consumers and their communities.

Most cells do not divide unless there is enough oxygen present to support their offspring, but certain cancer cells and other cell types circumvent this rule. Researchers at The Johns Hopkins University have now identified a mechanism that overrides the cells’ warning signals, enabling cancers to continue to divide even without a robust blood supply.

The Sheikh Zayed Tower at The Johns Hopkins Hospital is home to a brand new, state-of-the-art computed tomography (CT) scanner, thanks to funding support from Toshiba. The Aquilion ONE ViSION Edition scanner will be used by the Division of Cardiology to scan patients’ hearts. Data collected from the scans, as well as a great deal of other data, will help fuel another joint venture between Johns Hopkins and Toshiba: the Toshiba Center for Big Data in Healthcare at Johns Hopkins.

The annual U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals rankings are in and Sibley Memorial Hospital and Suburban Hospital are ranked in the top tier among the 56 hospitals in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, coming in at 11th and 13th, respectively.

Blood clots occur so rarely in children undergoing spine operations that most patients require nothing more than vigilant monitoring after surgery and should be spared risky and costly anti-clotting medications, according to a new Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study.

The Johns Hopkins Hospital ranked in the top five in 10 specialties and #3 overall in the nation in the U.S. News & World Report ranking of U.S. hospitals. In the magazine’s ranking of hospitals at the state level, the hospital was named first in all specialties in Maryland and #1 in all specialties in Baltimore.

Cancer’s no game, but researchers at Johns Hopkins are borrowing ideas from evolutionary game theory to learn how cells cooperate within a tumor to gather energy. Their experiments, they say, could identify the ideal time to disrupt metastatic cancer cell cooperation and make a tumor more vulnerable to anti-cancer drugs.

David Valle, M.D., has been named the 2014 recipient of the Victor A. McKusick Leadership Award from the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG). The award recognizes those whose professional achievements have fostered and enriched the development of human genetics as well as its assimilation into the broader context of science, medicine and health.

The Johns Hopkins Military and Veterans Health Institute announced its first-ever grant awardees on July 15. The pilot research grants will go to projects aiming to improve the health and health care of service members, veterans and their families. 

A team of researchers has devised a Pac-Man-style power pellet that gets normally mild-mannered cells to gobble up their undesirable neighbors. The development may point the way to therapies that enlist patients’ own cells to better fend off infection and even cancer, the researchers say.

Using spider toxins to study the proteins that let nerve cells send out electrical signals, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have stumbled upon a biological tactic that may offer a new way to protect crops from insect plagues in a safe and environmentally responsible way. 

Strong leadership, reliable health care coordination and first-rate information technology are key for academic medical centers seeking to establish successful accountable care organizations, according to a Johns Hopkins study published in the journal Academic Medicine this week.

The 4-year-old Mississippi child whose HIV infection was put in remission with pre-emptive anti-viral treatment shortly after birth has shown signs of viral recurrence, according to the team that has been following the patient since birth. That team includes Deborah Persaud, M.D., a pediatric HIV specialist at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, who performed the initial and all subsequent virological analyses on the case; Hannah Gay, M.D., a pediatrician at the University of Mississippi Medical Center who has been treating and following the child since birth; and immunologist Katherine Luzuriaga, M.D., of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, who conducted immunological monitoring of the child.

Hospitals across the country vary substantially in their use of minimally invasive surgery, even when evidence shows that for most patients, minimally invasive surgery is superior to open surgery, a new study shows. The finding represents a major disparity in the surgical care delivered at various hospitals, the study’s authors say, and identifies an area of medicine ripe for improvement.

Remote examination of eye scans can be nearly as effective as traditional eye exams in detecting premature newborns with a potentially blinding eye disorder, according to findings from a new federally funded study conducted by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and 12 other institutions.

Johns Hopkins researchers have begun to connect the dots between a schizophrenia-linked genetic variation and its effect on the developing brain. As they report July 3 in the journal Cell Stem Cell, their experiments show that the loss of a particular gene alters the skeletons of developing brain cells, which in turn disrupts the orderly layers those cells would normally form.

Investigators at Johns Hopkins are among researchers at 10 institutions selected to carry out a five-year, $30 million patient-centered study designed to compare strategies for preventing fall-related injuries in older adults.

Johns Hopkins Medicine Senior Vice President for Human Resources Pamela Paulk was recognized at the White House on Monday as a Champion of Change for her work and advocacy in the hiring of ex-offenders.

Children who undergo simple emergency surgeries, such as hernia repairs or appendix removals, on weekends are more likely to suffer complications and even die than children getting the same kind of treatment during the week, according to results of a Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have spotted a strong family trait in two distant relatives: The channels that permit entry of sodium and calcium ions into cells turn out to share similar means for regulating ion intake, they say. Both types of channels are critical to life. Having the right concentrations of sodium and calcium ions in cells enables healthy brain communication, heart contraction and many other processes. The new evidence is likely to aid development of drugs for channel-linked diseases ranging from epilepsy to heart ailments to muscle weakness.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center used two relatively simple tactics to significantly reduce the number of unnecessary blood tests to assess symptoms of heart attack and chest pain and to achieve a large decrease in patient charges.

A Johns Hopkins-led research team has found that motivational interviewing, along with standard education and awareness programs, significantly reduced secondhand smoke exposure among children living in those households.

By analyzing the number of times scientists were cited in others’ papers, the company Thomson Reuters has created a new list of the top 3,215 most highly cited—and therefore most influential— researchers in the world. Seventeen are from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Researchers at The Johns Hopkins University report they have deciphered the inner workings of a protein called YiiP that prevents the lethal buildup of zinc inside bacteria. They say understanding YiiP’s movements will help in the design of drugs aimed at modifying the behavior of ZnT proteins, eight human proteins that are similar to YiiP, which play important roles in hormone secretion and in signaling between neurons.

Steven S. Hsiao, an internationally renowned researcher whose innovative experiments on how the brain perceives the shape, size and texture of three-dimensional objects could lead to the development of artificial limbs that can feel, died at The Johns Hopkins Hospital on June 16 of lung cancer. He was 59.

Biologists have long considered cells to function like self-cleaning ovens, chewing up and recycling their own worn out parts as needed. But a new study challenges that basic principle, showing that some nerve cells found in the eye pass off their old energy-producing factories to neighboring support cells to be “eaten.” The find, which may bear on the roots of glaucoma, also has implications for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other diseases that involve a buildup of “garbage” in brain cells.

A new study from The Johns Hopkins University shows that the brain cells surrounding a mouse’s neurons do much more than fill space. According to the researchers, the cells, called astrocytes because of their star-shaped appearance, can monitor and respond to nearby neural activity, but only after being activated by the fight-or-flight chemical norepinephrine. Because astrocytes can alter the activity of neurons, the findings suggest that astrocytes may help control the brain’s ability to focus.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have developed and tested a vaccine that triggered the growth of immune cell nodules within pancreatic tumors, essentially reprogramming these intractable cancers and potentially making them vulnerable to immune-based therapies.

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Department of Art as Applied to Medicine is hosting the fifth annual Graphic Medicine Conference, to take place June 26 to June 28 in the Preclinical Teaching Building on the Johns Hopkins medical campus.

Johns Hopkins pediatric endocrinologist Risa Wolf receives the 2014 Endocrine Scholars Award from the Endocrine Society. The annual award helps fund research of pituitary disorders, bone diseases and diabetes.

Cancer clinicians and a chaplain at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have developed a new tool to help doctors, nurses and other health care providers talk to dying patients and families who are, literally, praying for a miracle.

Using a type of human stem cell, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have created a three-dimensional complement of human retinal tissue in the laboratory, which notably includes functioning photoreceptor cells capable of responding to light, the first step in the process of converting it into visual images.

Two early career physician-scientists, Peter de Blank and Matthew R. Steensma, have been named inaugural winners of the Francis S. Collins Scholars Program in Neurofibromatosis Clinical and Translational Research, sponsored by the Neurofibromatosis Therapeutic Acceleration Program (NTAP) at The Johns Hopkins University. The program will create a community of expert clinician-scientists and groom them to be leaders in neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) research and clinical care. The awards will be presented at a ceremony on Tuesday, June 10, at the Whittemore House in Washington, D.C.

Infants exposed to rodent and pet dander, roach allergens and a wide variety of household bacteria in the first year of life appear less likely to suffer from allergies, wheezing and asthma, according to results of a study conducted by scientists at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and other institutions.
 

Utz Quality Foods Inc., Executive Chairman Michael Rice and his wife Jane, a breast cancer survivor, have donated $2 million toward a breast cancer survivorship program at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

By studying laboratory mice, scientists at The Johns Hopkins University have succeeded in plotting the labyrinthine paths of some of the largest nerve cells in the mammalian brain: cholinergic neurons, the first cells to degenerate in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Family and cultural pressures to conform to prescribed masculine behaviors create social isolation and distress that may drive young gay black men to seek approval and acceptance through perilous sexual behaviors, according to research led by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

A compound in saliva, along with common proteins in blood and muscle, may protect human cells from powerful toxins in tea, coffee and liquid smoke flavoring, according to results of a new study led by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

A multicenter team of researchers report that a commercial test designed to rule out the presence of genetic biomarkers of prostate cancer may be accurate enough to exclude the need for repeat prostate biopsies in many — if not most — men.

In a finding that runs counter to most health disparities research, Johns Hopkins researchers say that while younger black trauma patients are significantly more likely than whites to die from their injuries, black trauma patients over the age of 65 are 20 percent less likely to do so.

Striving for the protein equivalent of the Human Genome Project, an international team of researchers has created an initial catalog of the human “proteome,” or all of the proteins in the human body. In total, using 30 different human tissues, the team identified proteins encoded by 17,294 genes, which is about 84 percent of all of the genes in the human genome predicted to encode proteins.

New Johns Hopkins research suggests that critically ill patients receiving steroids in a hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU) are significantly more likely to develop delirium. Results of their research, they say, suggest minimizing the use of steroids could reduce delirium in the ICU.

A genetic variant linked to sudden cardiac death leads to protein overproduction in heart cells, Johns Hopkins scientists report. Unlike many known disease-linked variants, this one lies not in a gene but in so-called noncoding DNA, a growing focus of disease research. The discovery, reported in the June 5 issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics, also adds to scientific understanding of the causes of sudden cardiac death and of possible ways to prevent it, the researchers say.

Working with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers report they have identified chemical signals that certain breast cancers use to recruit two types of normal cells needed for the cancers’ spread. A description of the findings appears in the online early May edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

What: A distinguished group of 279 graduates will embark on their future careers as physicians and scientists at the convocation ceremony of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. A total of 127 M.D. degrees, 132 Ph.D. degrees and 20 master’s degrees will be conferred.

Sinisa Urban, Ph.D., a Howard Hughes Medical Institute early career scientist and an associate professor of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has been named one of 10 finalists for a new national award for young researchers in the life sciences. The honor recognizes Urban’s work uncovering the mechanism of action for a notoriously difficult-to-study class of enzymes that are important to the functioning of an array of organisms, from bacteria to humans. If chosen, Urban will receive an unrestricted cash prize of $250,000, the largest of its kind for young faculty.

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have developed a technique that can predict — with 95 percent accuracy — which stroke victims will benefit from intravenous, clot-busting drugs and which will suffer dangerous and potentially lethal bleeding in the brain.

The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System is one of nine U.S. health care employers recognized May 15 as a 2014 Frontline Healthcare Worker Champion, an award given by CareerSTAT, an initiative of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions and Jobs for the Future.

Paul B. Rothman, dean of the medical faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, has been named president of the Association of American Physicians, a professional organization started in 1885 by seven doctors, one of whom was William Osler, a founder of The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Baltimore-area commercial real estate developer Erwin L. Greenberg and his wife Stephanie Cooper Greenberg have pledged a $15 million gift to create the Johns Hopkins Greenberg Bladder Cancer Institute. Their gift is part of a $45 million co-investment with Johns Hopkins University, which will draw on the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center’s multidisciplinary research teams, and will include faculty from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Department of Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences, the Brady Urologic Institute, and the Departments of Pathology and Surgery. 

New animal studies by Johns Hopkins cardiovascular researchers strongly suggest that sildenafil, the erectile dysfunction drug sold as Viagra and now under consideration as a treatment for heart failure, affects males and females very differently.

A group of researchers led by Johns Hopkins scientists say they have identified a genetic marker that may be associated with the development of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), whose causes and mechanisms are among the least understood among mental illnesses.

Johns Hopkins researchers have found evidence in mice that a tuberculosis (TB) infection in the lungs triggers immune system signaling to the gut that temporarily decreases the diversity of bacteria in that part of the digestive tract.

A study of Italians who consume a diet rich in resveratrol — the compound found in red wine, dark chocolate and berries — finds they live no longer than and are just as likely to develop cardiovascular disease or cancer as those who eat or drink smaller amounts of the antioxidant.

Children delivered by cesarean section and those given antibiotics during early infancy appear more prone to developing allergic inflammation of the esophagus — the muscular tube that connects the mouth to the stomach — according to results of a study by investigators from the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and Harvard Medical School.

Officials at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center today announced receipt of a $10 million gift from Under Armour Inc. to fund breast cancer, breast health support programs and a women’s wellness center. 

Patients whose own red blood cells are recycled and given back to them during heart surgery have healthier blood cells better able to carry oxygen where it is most needed compared to those who get transfusions of blood stored in a blood bank, according to results of a small study at Johns Hopkins.

One hundred and twenty-five years ago, on a sunny, pleasant May 7, 1889, a large crowd gathered in the rotunda beneath the great dome of The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins will use a $65 million gift toward the construction of a new patient care building that will be named for the late Albert P. “Skip” Viragh, Jr., a Maryland mutual fund investment leader and philanthropist. A pancreas cancer patient treated at Johns Hopkins, Mr. Viragh died of the disease in 2003 at age 62.

Patients freshly discharged from acute care hospitals with low scores on a standard test that measures how well they perform such everyday activities as moving from a bed to a chair are far more likely to need readmission to a hospital within 30 days than those who score better, according to new Johns Hopkins research.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a contract to researchers at The Johns Hopkins University to launch a new center devoted to developing innovative ways to identify and track influenza viruses worldwide.

Traditional first-line checks of such heart disease risk factors as cholesterol, blood pressure and smoking habits aren’t nearly good enough to identify cardiovascular disease in otherwise healthy, young firefighters, according to results of a small Johns Hopkins study.

Tests of a new long-acting version of one of the oldest multiple sclerosis (MS) drugs on the market show it worked significantly better than placebo in reducing the number of patient relapses and developments of new or active lesions, researchers report. Most important, they add, the updated version was effective even though injections were given every two weeks instead of every other day, and it appears that fewer patients develop resistance to it.

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have successfully used stem cells derived from human body fat to deliver biological treatments directly to the brains of mice with the most common and aggressive form of brain tumor, significantly extending their lives.

A type of cell that builds mouse hearts can renew itself, Johns Hopkins researchers report. They say the discovery, which likely applies to such cells in humans as well, may pave the way to using them to repair hearts damaged by disease — or even grow new heart tissue for transplantation.

Johns Hopkins biochemists have figured out what is needed to activate and sustain the virus-fighting activity of an enzyme found in CD4+ T cells, the human immune cells infected by HIV. The discovery could launch a more effective strategy for preventing the spread of HIV in the body with drugs targeting this enzyme, they say.

Working together, Johns Hopkins biomedical engineers and neurosurgeons report that they have created tiny, biodegradable “nanoparticles” able to carry DNA to brain cancer cells in mice.

Johns Hopkins researchers report that they have identified a protein essential to the formation of the tiny brain region in mice that coordinates sleep-wake cycles and other so-called circadian rhythms.

Johns Hopkins researchers report they have figured out how the aptly named protein Botch blocks the signaling protein called Notch, which helps regulate development. In a report on the discovery, to appear online April 24 in the journal Cell Reports, the scientists say they expect the work to lead to a better understanding of how a single protein, Notch, directs actions needed for the healthy development of organs as diverse as brains and kidneys.
 

Better-educated people appear to be significantly more likely to recover from a moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), suggesting that a brain’s “cognitive reserve” may play a role in helping people get back to their previous lives, new Johns Hopkins research shows.

Johns Hopkins scientists report that rats exposed to high-energy particles, simulating conditions astronauts would face on a long-term deep space mission, show lapses in attention and slower reaction times, even when the radiation exposure is in extremely low dose ranges.

Working with mice and rabbits, Johns Hopkins scientists have found a way to block abnormal cholesterol production, transport and breakdown, successfully preventing the development of atherosclerosis, the main cause of heart attacks and strokes and the number-one cause of death among humans. The condition develops when fat builds inside blood vessels over time and renders them stiff, narrowed and hardened, greatly reducing their ability to feed oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle and the brain.

Three Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine researchers have been awarded two-year grants for their work on potential treatments for diabetes, Novo Nordisk announced this month.
 

Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered an unexpected phenomenon in the organs that produce sperm in fruit flies: When a certain kind of stem cell is killed off experimentally, another group of non-stem cells can come out of retirement to replace them.

A team of scientists led by Johns Hopkins and Stanford University researchers has laid the groundwork for understanding how variations in immune responses to Lyme disease can contribute to the many different outcomes of this bacterial infection seen in individual patients. A report on the work appears online April 16 in PLOS One.

Fecal color and consistency are well-known markers of digestive health in both children and adults, but paying attention to a newborn’s shade of poop can be a decided lifesaver in babies born with the rare, liver-ravaging disorder biliary atresia, commonly heralded by white or clay-colored stool.
 

Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center investigators report they have designed a blood test that accurately detects the presence of advanced breast cancer and also holds promise for precisely monitoring response to cancer treatment.

M. Daniel Lane, a Johns Hopkins biochemist renowned for his groundbreaking studies of the chemical processes within the human body that affect hunger, the feeling of fullness and obesity, as well as for his warmth and brilliance as a scientific mentor to generations of Hopkins researchers—including a future Nobel Prize winner—died at his Baltimore home on April 10 of myeloma. He was 83.

Analyzing a national database of hospital inpatient records, a team of researchers reports an expected spike in mortality six days after cardiac surgery, but also a more surprising and potentially troubling jump in deaths at the 30-day mark.

In experiments with mice, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists have identified an enzyme involved in the regulation of immune system T cells that could be a useful target in treating asthma and boosting the effects of certain cancer therapies.

Johns Hopkins-led research into genetic factors that cause kidney disease to progress faster in African-Americans than in whites has been selected as one of the top 10 clinical research achievements of 2013 by the Clinical Research Forum.

Working with human neurons and fruit flies, researchers at Johns Hopkins have identified and then shut down a biological process that appears to trigger a particular form of Parkinson’s disease present in a large number of patients. A report on the study, in the April 10 issue of the journal Cell, could lead to new treatments for this disorder.

The following announcements are related to awards that have been presented during the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2014, held in San Diego April 5-9, to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

Ramy El-Diwany, a fifth-year M.D./Ph.D. student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has won a 2014 Excellence in Public Health Award from the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Physician Professional Advisory Committee for his contributions to community health services.

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have confirmed suspicions that DNA modifications found in the blood of mice exposed to high levels of stress hormone — and showing signs of anxiety — are directly related to changes found in their brain tissues.

Research in mice and human cell lines has identified an experimental compound dubbed TTT-3002 as potentially one of the most potent drugs available to block genetic mutations in cancer cells blamed for some forms of treatment-resistant leukemia. 

What: Johns Hopkins public health and emergency preparedness experts will host the first national symposium designed to help health care providers and staff better prepare for and react to an “active shooter” in hospitals and other the health care settings. The “Active Shooter Incidents in Hospitals and Healthcare Settings” symposium will explore the legal, moral and ethical obligations of medical institutions and their staff to protect patients when such events occur.

Throughout the month of April, in celebration of National Donate Life Month, The Johns Hopkins Hospital will fly the Donate Life flag. The Flags Across Maryland campaign is designed to bring greater awareness to the plight of the nearly 3,000 people in Maryland on the waiting list for organ transplants. Donate Life flags will fly at venues across the state as part of a program sponsored by The Living Legacy Foundation, Maryland’s organ procurement organization, and Donate Life Maryland, which promotes the registration of organ donors.

The American Association of Plastic Surgeons (AAPS) will give one of its two 2014 Academic Scholarship Awards to Amir Dorafshar, M.B.Ch.B., a  Johns Hopkins plastic and reconstructive surgeon who has helped pioneer facial transplants and rebuild the lives of adults and children disfigured by trauma and disease.

Today, the Johns Hopkins Institute for Excellence in Education (IEE) awarded nine educators for their outstanding teaching here at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The awards included the Martin D. Abelhoff Award for Lifetime Achievement in Medical and Biomedical Education, the Lisa J. Heiser Award for Junior Faculty Contribution in Education, and several other teaching awards and grants for educational projects.

Analyzing federal health care data, a team of researchers led by a Johns Hopkins specialist concluded that doctors overlook or discount the early signs of potentially disabling strokes in tens of thousands of American each year, a large number of them visitors to emergency rooms complaining of dizziness or headaches.

Patients have substantial physical impairments even two years after being discharged from the hospital after a stay in an intensive care unit (ICU), new Johns Hopkins research suggests.

Working with mice and human blood and liver samples, scientists from the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center have identified a previously unsuspected liver hormone as a critical player in the development of type 2 diabetes, a condition that affects nearly 26 million people in the United States and is a leading cause of heart disease and stroke, as well as kidney, nerve and eye damage.

In a report published in the April edition of the Journal of Spinal Disorders and Techniques, a Johns Hopkins team says that only 10 percent of orthopaedic surgeons and neurosurgeons follow professional guidelines recommending routine psychological screenings of patients prior to major surgery for severe back and leg pain.

Men with long-term HIV infections are at higher risk than uninfected men of developing plaque in their coronary arteries, regardless of their other risk factors for coronary artery disease, according to results of a study led by Johns Hopkins researchers. A report on the research appears in the April 1 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

Johns Hopkins researchers say that an experimental anticancer compound appears to have reversed behaviors associated with schizophrenia and restored some lost brain cell function in adolescent mice with a rodent version of the devastating mental illness.

Infectious disease specialists at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center have identified a protein that regulates the body’s immune response to cytomegalovirus (CMV), a common pathogen that causes lifelong infections and can lead to devastating illness in newborns and those with weakened immune systems.

Johns Hopkins researchers have devised a computerized process that could make minimally invasive surgery more accurate and streamlined using equipment already common in the operating room.

Working with genetically engineered mice, Johns Hopkins neuroscientists report they have identified what they believe is the cause of the vast disintegration of a part of the brain called the corpus striatum in rodents and people with Huntington’s disease: loss of the ability to make the amino acid cysteine. They also found that disease progression slowed in mice that were fed a diet rich in cysteine, which is found in foods such as wheat germ and whey protein.

In a series of studies involving 140 American men and women with liver tumors, researchers at Johns Hopkins have used specialized 3-D MRI scans to precisely measure living and dying tumor tissue to quickly show whether highly toxic chemotherapy – delivered directly through a tumor’s blood supply – is working.

 In the immediate aftermath of hurricanes, floods and other disasters, it’s not uncommon for people to turn out in large numbers to assist victims, clear debris and chip in on dozens of other tasks to get a community back on its feet.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins report that compounds they hoped would “wake up” dormant reservoirs of HIV inside immune system T cells — a strategy designed to reverse latency and make the cells vulnerable to destruction — have failed to do so in laboratory tests of such white blood cells taken directly from patients infected with HIV.

Many diseases have their origins in either the genome or in reversible chemical changes to DNA known as the epigenome. Now, results of a new study from Johns Hopkins scientists show a connection between these two “maps.” The findings could help disease trackers find patterns in those overlays that could offer clues to the causes of and possible treatments for complex genetic conditions, including many cancers and metabolic disorders.
 

Expanding on earlier research, Johns Hopkins researchers report that people with balance disorders or dizziness traceable to an inner-ear disturbance show distinctive abnormal eye movements when the affected ear is exposed to the strong pull of an MRI’s magnetic field.

Johns Hopkins biologists have discovered that when biological signals hit cells in rhythmic waves, the magnitude of the cells' response can depend on the number of signaling cycles — not their strength or duration. Because such so-called “oscillating signaling cycles” are common in many biological systems, the scientists expect their findings in single-celled organisms to help explain the molecular workings of phenomena such as tissue and organ formation and fundamental forms of learning.

Using a powerful data-crunching technique, Johns Hopkins researchers have sorted out how a protein keeps defective genetic material from gumming up the cellular works. The protein, Dom34, appears to “rescue” protein-making factories called ribosomes when they get stuck obeying defective genetic instructions.

The wait is almost over for 126 students who will soon graduate from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine: At noon on Friday, March 21, they will open the envelopes that let them know where they will spend the next chapter of their lives training for careers in the medical fields of their choosing.

In a series of experiments sparked by fruit flies that couldn’t sleep, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have identified a mutant gene — dubbed “Wide Awake” — that sabotages how the biological clock sets the timing for sleep. The finding also led them to the protein made by a normal copy of the gene that promotes sleep early in the night and properly regulates sleep cycles.

Studying epithelial cells, the cell type that most commonly turns cancerous, Johns Hopkins researchers have identified a protein that causes cells to release from their neighbors and migrate away from healthy mammary, or breast, tissue in mice. They also found that deletion of a cellular “Velcro protein” does not cause the single-celled migration expected. Their results, they say, help clarify the molecular changes required for cancer cells to metastasize.

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine remains among the top medical schools in the United States, according to the 2015 edition of U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Graduate Schools.” In addition, The Johns Hopkins University is listed in the top tier of specialty rankings.

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have found one way that a recently discovered genetic mutation might cause two nasty nervous system diseases. While the affected gene may build up toxic RNA and not make enough protein, the researchers report, the root of the problem seems to be snarls of defective genetic material created at the mutation site.

An inflammatory protein that triggers a pregnant mouse’s immune response to an infection or other disease appears to cause brain injury in her fetus, but not the premature birth that was long believed to be linked with such neurologic damage in both rodents and humans, new Johns Hopkins-led research suggests.

Johns Hopkins public health and emergency preparedness experts will host the first national symposium designed to help health care providers and staff better prepare for and react to an “active shooter” in hospitals and other the health care settings.

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have identified a set of genes that appear to predict which tumors can evade detection by the body’s immune system, a step that may enable them to eventually target only the patients most likely to respond best to a new class of treatment.

An experimental drug aimed at restoring the immune system's ability to spot and attack cancer halted cancer progression or shrank tumors in patients with advanced melanoma, according to a multisite, early-phase clinical trial at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and 11 other institutions. All patients had experienced disease progression despite prior systemic therapies, and most had received two or more prior treatments.

In a study that began in a pair of infant siblings with a rare heart defect, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have identified a key molecular switch that regulates heart cell division and normally turns the process off around the time of birth. Their research, they report, could advance efforts to turn the process back on and regenerate heart tissue damaged by heart attacks or disease.

Johns Hopkins researchers report that people with chronic insomnia show more plasticity and activity than good sleepers in the part of the brain that controls movement.

Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center Associate Professor Jonathan Powell, M.D., Ph.D., received the BioMaryland LIFE (Leading Innovative Faculty Entrepreneurs) award and $50,000 for his novel type 2 diabetes therapeutic agent at last week's annual Joint Meeting of the Johns Hopkins Alliance for Science and Technology Development and the University of Maryland, Baltimore Commercial Advisory Board. The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine's Nita Ahuja, M.D., an associate professor of surgery, and Chad Gordon, D.O., an assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery, each received an Abell Foundation prize of $50,000.

Certain fragments of DNA shed by tumors into the bloodstream can potentially be used to non-invasively screen for early-stage cancers, monitor responses to treatment and help explain why some cancers are resistant to therapies, according to results of an international study led by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center investigators.

Using tiny particles designed to target cancer-fighting immune cells, Johns Hopkins researchers have trained the immune systems of mice to fight melanoma, a deadly skin cancer. The experiments, described on the website of ACS Nano, represent a significant step toward using nanoparticles and magnetism to treat a variety of conditions, the researchers say.

Certain fragments of DNA shed by tumors into the bloodstream can potentially be used to non-invasively screen for early-stage cancers, monitor responses to treatment and help explain why some cancers are resistant to therapies, according to results of an international study led by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center investigators.

People with late-stage cancer at the back of the mouth or throat that recurs after chemotherapy and radiation treatment are twice as likely to be alive two years later if their cancer is caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), new research led by a Johns Hopkins scientist suggests.

The brains of jazz musicians engrossed in spontaneous, improvisational musical conversation showed robust activation of brain areas traditionally associated with spoken language and syntax, which are used to interpret the structure of phrases and sentences. But this musical conversation shut down brain areas linked to semantics - those that process the meaning of spoken language, according to results of a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

The antidepressant drug citalopram, sold under the brand names Celexa and Cipramil and also available as a generic medication, significantly relieved agitation in a group of patients with Alzheimer's disease. In lower doses than those tested, the drug might be safer than antipsychotic drugs currently used to treat the condition, according to results of a clinical trial led by Johns Hopkins researchers that included seven other academic medical centers in the United States and Canada.

Overweight and obese people who feel their physicians are judgmental of their size are more likely to try to shed pounds but are less likely to succeed, according to results of a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

Robert E. Cooke, M.D., who served for 17 years as the fourth director of the Department of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, former director of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center, died on Feb. 2 at his Martha's Vineyard, Mass., home.

New research suggests that sedating patients before a nerve block needed to diagnose or treat chronic pain increases costs, risks and unnecessary surgeries, and sedation does nothing to increase patient satisfaction or long-term pain control.

Johns Hopkins pediatric cardiologist and geneticist Hal Dietz, M.D., has been awarded the first Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine for his work identifying the cause and a treatment for Marfan syndrome.

A Johns Hopkins study of patients with ischemic stroke suggests that many of those who receive prompt hospital treatment with "clot-busting" tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) therapy can avoid lengthy, restrictive monitoring in an intensive care unit (ICU).

The risk of a kidney donor developing kidney failure in the remaining organ is much lower than in the population at large, even when compared with people who have two kidneys, according to results of new Johns Hopkins research.

An 18-month pilot program that brought resources and counselors to elderly Baltimore residents with dementia and other memory disorders significantly increased the length of time they lived successfully at home, according to Johns Hopkins researchers. Staying at home was a clear preference for most of those who participated in the study.

Studying a cycle of protein interactions needed to make fat, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have discovered a biological switch that regulates a protein that causes fatty liver disease in mice. Their findings, they report, may help develop drugs to decrease excessive fat production and its associated conditions in people, including fatty liver disease and diabetes.

Johns Hopkins researchers report that fetal mice — especially males — show signs of brain damage that lasts into their adulthood when they are exposed in the womb to a maternal immune system kicked into high gear by a serious infection or other malady. The findings suggest that some neurologic diseases in humans could be similarly rooted in prenatal exposure to inflammatory immune responses.

Johns Hopkins scientists have developed three new Web-based software tools designed to help hospital emergency departments, first responder organizations and others model and prepare for major disasters, including flu outbreaks.

Medical associations widely recommend that women visit their obstetricians and primary care doctors shortly after giving birth, but slightly fewer than half make or keep those postpartum appointments, according to a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

The 13th annual Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences was awarded to Gregg Semenza, M.D., Ph.D., for his contribution to discovering how cells sense and respond to low oxygen conditions.

People seriously injured by violence are no more likely to die in the years after they are shot, stabbed or beaten than those who are seriously injured in accidents, Johns Hopkins researchers have found.

Nearly half of HIV-infected teenagers and young adults forego timely treatment, delaying care until their disease has advanced, which puts them at risk for dangerous infections and long-term complications, according to a study led by the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

Johns Hopkins surgeons report they have devised a better, safer method to replace bone removed from the skull after lifesaving brain surgery. The new technique, they say, appears to result in fewer complications than standard restoration, which has changed little since its development in the 1890s.

Physicians have long known that oxygen deprivation to the brain around the time of birth causes worse damage in boys than girls. Now a study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center conducted in mice reveals one possible reason behind this gender disparity and points to gender-specific mechanisms of brain repair following such injury.

Members of the Trinidad and Tobago Health Science Initiative’s Diabetes Outreach Program joined the country’s Minister of Health Fuad Khan Tuesday in Port of Spain to celebrate the program’s achievements in fighting diabetes in Trinidad and Tobago.

Fewer than one in two children and young adults treated for anxiety achieve long-term relief from symptoms, according to the findings of a study by investigators from the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and five other institutions.

Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that valproic acid, a widely prescribed drug for treating epilepsy, has the additional benefits of reducing fat accumulation in the liver and lowering blood sugar levels in the blood of obese mice.

Saudi Aramco, a fully integrated global energy and chemicals enterprise, and Johns Hopkins Medicine, a leading U.S. academic health system with extensive experience in elevating care delivery worldwide, today inaugurated a first-of-its-kind health care joint venture in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

The number of serious traumatic spinal cord injuries is on the rise in the United States, and the leading cause no longer appears to be motor vehicle crashes, but falls, new Johns Hopkins research suggests.

In normal development, all cells turn off genes they don’t need, often by attaching a chemical methyl group to the DNA, a process called methylation. Historically, scientists believed methyl groups could only stick to a particular DNA sequence: a cytosine followed by a guanine, called CpG. But in recent years, they have been found on other sequences, and so-called non-CpG methylation has been found in stem cells, and in neurons in the brain.

Investigators at Johns Hopkins report they have developed human induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) capable of repairing damaged retinal vascular tissue in mice. The stem cells, derived from human umbilical cord-blood and coaxed into an embryonic-like state, were grown without the conventional use of viruses, which can mutate genes and initiate cancers, according to the scientists. Their safer method of growing the cells has drawn increased support among scientists, they say, and paves the way for a stem cell bank of cord-blood derived iPSCs to advance regenerative medicine research.

Setting the stage for possible advances in pain treatment, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland report they have pinpointed two molecules involved in perpetuating chronic pain in mice. The molecules, they say, also appear to have a role in the phenomenon that causes uninjured areas of the body to be more sensitive to pain when an area nearby has been hurt.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins report they have figured out a key step in how “free” calcium — the kind not contained in bones — is managed in the body, a finding that could aid in the development of new treatments for a variety of neurological disorders that include Parkinson’s disease.

In laboratory experiments conducted on  human cell lines at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, scientists have shown that people carrying certain mutations in two hereditary cancer genes, BRCA2 and PALB2, may have a higher than usual susceptibility to DNA damage caused by a byproduct of alcohol, called acetaldehyde.

Allegheny Health Network and Johns Hopkins Medicine announced today that they have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to seek to establish a formal affiliation between Allegheny and the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center, for clinical collaborations, medical education, and a broad range of cancer research initiatives.  Details of an initial five-year affiliation outlined in the MOU are expected to be finalized within the next few months, officials of the institutions say.

Although the brain becomes smaller with age, the shrinkage seems to be fast-tracked in older adults with hearing loss, according to the results of a study by researchers from Johns Hopkins and the National Institute on Aging. The findings add to a growing list of health consequences associated with hearing loss, including increased risk of dementia, falls, hospitalizations, and diminished physical and mental health overall.

Using a simple study of eye movements, Johns Hopkins scientists report evidence that people who are less patient tend to move their eyes with greater speed. The findings, the researchers say, suggest that the weight people give to the passage of time may be a trait consistently used throughout their brains, affecting the speed with which they make movements, as well as the way they make certain decisions.

Efforts to cure hepatitis C, the liver-damaging infectious disease that has for years killed more Americans than HIV/AIDS, are about to get simpler and more effective, according to new research at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere.

Johns Hopkins scientists say a previously known but little studied chemical compound targets and shuts down a common cancer process. In studies of laboratory-grown human tumor cell lines, the drug disrupted tumor cell division and prevented growth of advanced cancer cells.

The Johns Hopkins community gathered today to celebrate the civil and human rights and community service legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. A packed Turner Auditorium paid tribute to King’s memory and heard words of inspiration from a leader in the fields of education and civil rights.

Producing brightly speckled red and green snapshots of many different tissues, Johns Hopkins researchers have color-coded cells in female mice to display which of their two X chromosomes has been made inactive, or “silenced.”

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have zoomed in on what is going on at the molecular level when the body recognizes and defends against an attack of pathogens, and the findings, they say, could influence how drugs are developed to treat autoimmune diseases.
 

Mutations in small proteins that help convey electrical signals throughout the body may have a surprisingly large effect on health, according to results of a new Johns Hopkins study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in December using spider, scorpion and sea anemone venom.  
 

John M. Freeman, an internationally renowned Johns Hopkins pediatric neurologist and medical ethicist whose iconoclastic questioning of established medical practices revolutionized the treatment of pediatric epilepsy and advanced the development of modern biomedical ethics, died on Friday, Jan. 3, of cardiovascular disease. He was 80.
 

Some 30 minutes of meditation daily may improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, a new Johns Hopkins analysis of previously published research suggests.

Johns Hopkins will host the 32nd annual commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy in civil rights and community service this Friday, Jan. 10, at noon in Turner Auditorium on the East Baltimore campus.
 

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center will receive $90 million in new funding as part of a $540 million gift from Ludwig Cancer Research, on behalf of its founder Daniel K. Ludwig, to six U.S. institutions. The new award is among the largest for a single private gift to cancer research.

Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center investigators have genetically engineered a new mouse that mimics a common form of leukemia in humans. Studying the model could lead to new understanding of the disease, they say.

Seven pediatricians from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center have been elected to the prestigious Society for Pediatric Research (SPR) for their contributions to the study of childhood disease.