Breakthroughs

Mozziyar “Mozzi” Etemadi, MD, PhD, is supporting the transformation of healthcare delivery and patient care at Northwestern Medicine by bringing engineers into direct contact with clinical providers. In this episode, he talks about the explosion of artificial intelligence in healthcare in recent years and how Northwestern Medicine is using this technology to improve healthcare delivery and patient care.  “I think that as some of these tools like ChatGPT become more commonplace, as we learn more how they work, how to create them, we will create somewhat simpler versions of them, I think, that will work well in healthcare because they'll be a human in the loop and they'll be clear interpretability in what these things are saying. And trust will be built gradually.” Mozziyar Etemadi, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Anesthesiology, medical director of advanced technologies at Northwestern Medicine, and chief of data engineering at the Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Medicine.

Treating cancer has become increasingly difficult as cells develop resistance. Northwestern investigators have sought to address this issue on the cellular level through the development of a novel FateMap tool, used to predict the future behavior of cancer cells before they are exposed to cancer-fighting drugs. In this episode, Yogesh Goyal, PhD, discusses his latest research, published in Nature, and how his lab is addressing complex problems through an interdiscplinary approach. 

The launch of the Simpson Querrey Lung Institute for Translational Science (SQLIFTS) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine aims to expedite the discovery and implementation of innovative lung disease treatments through a patient-centered approach. In this episode, Scott Budinger, MD, the new executive director of the institute, discusses its launch and how it aims to transform lung disease research and clinical care.   

The global prevalence of Parkinson's disease has doubled in the past 25 years. While research into this extremely diverse neurodegenerative disorder is very active, there is much left to be uncovered about the underlying cause of the disease. Recently, Northwestern Medicine investigators have discovered novel genetic factors contributing to the risk of Parkinson's disease, which may lead to potential therapeutic targets. Steven Lubbe, PhD, assistant professor of Neurology at Feinberg, discusses these findings recently published in the journal Brain.

Disrupting our internal clocks can lead to diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Scientists at Northwestern have uncovered the mechanism behind why late-night eating is linked to weight gain and diabetes. Joseph Bass, MD, PhD, led the study published in the journal Science.  He shares the results and details the two decades of work leading to this latest discovery. Bass is chief of the Division of  Endocrinology, Metabolism and Molecular Medicine in the Department of Medicine.

This episode was released in February 2021, and is being re-shared to offer the research behind the popular weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy. Northwestern's Robert Kushner, MD, discusses the drug semaglutide, typically prescribed for treatment of Type 2 diabetes and the results of the phase 3 clinical trial as a treatment for obesity with very promising results. The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and in 2022, Kushner was awarded the prestigious Herbert Pardes Clinical Research Excellence Award from the Clinical Research Forum.

There's strong evidence that physical activity can play an important role in the health and lifespan of cancer survivors. Siobhan Phillips, PhD, MPH, leads the Exercise and Health Lab at Feinberg, which designs, tests, implements and disseminates physical activity interventions to support cancer survivors. In this episode, Phillips details interventions specifically designed for breast cancer survivors, a majority of whom don't meet the recommended standards for weekly physical activity. 

Skin diseases from psoriasis to melanoma affect as many as one in three Americans at any given time. Kathleen Green, PhD, has greatly advanced basic molecular research related to skin diseases. She discusses recent discoveries in her lab that could lead to future therapeutic targets. 

Physicians are notorious for prescribing antibiotics as a "quick fix" when they aren't necessary. There are many reasons why, and Jeffrey Linder, MD, MPH, dives into those and discusses effective ways to reduce the number of inappropriate prescriptions by working with physicians. Originally released in fall 2018, this episode is still timely as the over prescription can lead to dangerous side effects for patients including antibiotic resistance.

Northwestern scientists Yuan Luo, PhD, and Catherine Gao, MD, discuss a study they conducted using the artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT. The results showcase the online tool's ability to produce convincing medical research abstracts. They also discuss the tool’s potential to help with writing-intensive tasks in healthcare and medical research.  

A theoretical neuroscientist, Ann Kennedy, PhD, is investigating neural computation and the structure of behavior. In this episode, she talks about her recent research in the area of aggression and how it's regulated in the brains of animals. She was recently named the winner of the 2022 Eppendorf and Science Prize for Neurobiology.

Parkinson's disease is the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disease, and nearly one million people have Parkinson's disease in the U.S. A $30 million dollar, phase 3 clinical trial at Northwestern is investigating whether exercise can slow Parkinson's disease progression. Daniel Corcos, PhD, a professor of Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences, is leading the trial and explains what he hopes to accomplish. Interested in the study? Learn more: https://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/research/clinical-research/trials/index.html?id=STU00211903

To have the greatest impact on human health, biomedical research findings and evidence-based practices need to be implemented into routine healthcare. What is implementation science, and how can we ensure research successfully makes an impact? Rinad Beidas, PhD, and Sara Becker, PhD, discuss the field and its future as a research priority at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

There’s been an uptick in childhood food allergies in recent years, and new evidence from Northwestern shows they’re also becoming more common in adults. Many of the reactions to these allergies are life-threatening. Why is this increase happening, and how can we keep people affected by food allergy safe? Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, is trying to answer those questions. This a rewind episode that originally was published in 2019.

A Northwestern Medicine course called Cooking Up Health is giving medical students, trainees and health professionals the opportunity to learn culinary medicine and food-as-medicine science concepts. Melinda Ring, MD, created the course and explains how it can improve the health of patients and train more nutrition-aware physicians.  

Understanding how genes function is a vital part of understanding how to better treat cancer. Research led by Mazhar Adli, PhD, is grounded in the development of a systematic approach to identify the function of each gene in the human body. His team aims to discover novel therapeutic drug combinations to prevent cancer development and chemotherapy resistance. 

Bariatric surgery is proving to be an effective tool to help teenagers with severe obesity lose weight and reverse the progression of weight-related conditions, according to findings from the Teen Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery study (Teen-LABS). Thomas Inge, MD, PhD, principal investigator of Teen-LABS, shares results of the study, which is the only multicenter National Institute of Health sponsored research on adolescent bariatric surgery. 

How are habits – both good and bad – formed in the brain, and what role do habits play in diseases of the brain? These are some of the questions neuroscientist, Talia Lerner, PhD, is investigating in her lab. Her recent study, published in Cell Reports, may change the overall understanding of how habits are formed and could be broken.

Uniting scientists and harnessing the power of the immune system to fight disease is at the heart of the new Center for Human Immunobiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Stephanie Eisenbarth, MD, PhD is leading the new center, she is also the new chief of Allergy and Immunology in the Department of Medicine.   She discusses the variety of immunology research taking place within the new center and its goal of bringing a community of immunologists together to discover and translate innovative science into cures for immune-related diseases. 

In recent years, Feinberg has launched several initiatives to augment human expertise with computational methods and advance the science of human health. Theresa Walunas, PhD, explains how she is using big data from electronic medical records in a variety of projects at Feinberg, from improving quality of care to identifying patients who could develop debilitating autoimmune diseases.