Biomedical Revolution
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Stanford Medicine News
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Streamlining cancer care
Sharron Brockman has become all too familiar with cancer. Diagnosed 18 months ago with stage-3 ovarian cancer, Brockman has gone through two rounds of chemotherapy and had to drop out of a clinical trial because of a reaction to one of the medications. But when she decided to continue her treatment this spring at the Stanford Cancer Center, the Sacramento resident came across something new: her own multidisciplinary care coordinator.
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Mix and Match: Seeking unexpected treatments in biomedical databases
Researchers have found a new way to draw on the world’s wealth of biological data: They’re digging through it to find new uses for old drugs—a strategy called drug repositioning.
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On shaky ground: Building to withstand a major earthquake
The new Stanford Hospital is being constructed to withstand the most severe tremors. When completed, in 2017, the building will be one of the most seismically safe hospitals in the country, able to continue operations after an 8.0, or “great,” earthquake.
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Stanford/Packard scientists find new uses for existing drugs by mining gene-activity data banks
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have paired up medicines and maladies with help from a molecular “Match.com.” When the scientists applied an “opposites attract” algorithm to publicly available databases, surprising sparks flew: They found potential compatibilities between numerous existing drugs and diseases for which those drugs had never before been thought to be beneficial.
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Bioengineer designs diagnostic microscope costing less than $1
It’s an invention that would make TV’s secret agent MacGyver proud: a fully functional microscope that can be assembled from folded paper and a tiny bead of glass. And it only costs about 50 cents.
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Stanford's big data conference: How 1s and 0s are advancing medicine
Massive, ongoing advances in computational processing power and interconnectedness are already changing the way medical research is done. But even more-disruptive outcomes—including changes in the very practice of medicine at the day-to-day clinical level—lie just ahead.
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Stanford team makes switching off cells with light as easy as switching them on
In 2005, a Stanford University scientist discovered how to switch brain cells on or off with light pulses by using special proteins from microbes to pass electrical current into neurons.
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Blood test could provide rapid, accurate method of detecting solid cancers, study finds
A blood sample could one day be enough to diagnose many types of solid cancers, or to monitor the amount of cancer in a patient’s body and responses to treatment. Previous versions of the approach, which relies on monitoring levels of tumor DNA circulating in the blood, have required cumbersome and time-consuming steps to customize it to each patient or have not been sufficiently sensitive.
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New Clinical Genomics Program Blends Stanford’s Capabilities and Expertise to Advance Patient Care
A new pilot program in clinical genomics will allow a small group of patients at Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford to have their DNA deciphered to help doctors with diagnosis and treatment.
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Michael Levitt wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Michael Levitt, PhD, professor of structural biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, has won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
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Thomas Sudhof wins Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Neuroscientist Thomas Südhof, MD, professor of molecular and cellular physiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
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Scientists reveal how beta-amyloid may cause Alzheimer's
Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown how a protein fragment known as beta-amyloid, strongly implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, begins destroying synapses before it clumps into plaques that lead to nerve cell death.
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Stanford Launches New Cancer Initiative
Stanford has begun a sweeping effort to change the way the world sees cancer. The Stanford Cancer Initiative is a joint project of the School of Medicine and Stanford Hospital & Clinics, and directed by the Stanford Cancer Institute (SCI), to invest at least $250 million in philanthropic contributions across four critical areas.
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$11.4 million grant launches new Center for Collective Cell Decisions
A new center at Stanford will bring together a diverse group of faculty with a common goal: to understand the collective behaviors of interacting cells. The Center for Collective Cell Decisions has been established with a five-year, $11.4-million grant from the National Centers for Systems Biology, part of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
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Addressing faculty senate, dean shares vision for leading 'biomedical revolution'
In his first presentation to Stanford's Faculty Senate, Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the School of Medicine, said the goal of the Campaign for Stanford Medicine is to "lead the biomedical revolution" by promoting fundamental, clinical and translational discovery, by transforming patient care and by training future leaders.
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Scientists think mysterious virus could be a signal of a weak immune system
More than 260,000 Americans are alive today thanks to transplant operations that have replaced their failing kidneys, hearts, lungs or livers with healthy organs donated by volunteers or accident victims.
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Grant from Li Ka Shing Foundation to fund big data initiative and conference at Stanford
Researchers at the School of Medicine and Oxford University are currently developing ways to mine the vast amounts of biomedical data housed in public databases to speed the discovery of new drugs, improve patient care and reduce health-care costs.