Princeton disease ecologist C. Jessica Metcalf and Harvard physician and epidemiologist Michael Mina say that predicting disease could become as commonplace as predicting the weather. The Global Immunological Observatory, like a weather center forecasting a tornado or hurricane, would alert the world, earlier than ever before, to dangerous emerging pathogens like SARS-CoV-2.
The last million years of Earth history have been characterized by frequent “glacial-interglacial cycles,” large swings in climate that are linked to the growing and shrinking of massive, continent-spanning ice sheets. These cycles are triggered by subtle oscillations in Earth’s orbit and rotation, but the orbital oscillations are too subtle to explain the large changes in climate.
One of the most promising new cancer therapies involves engineering cells from the body's own immune system to attack tumors, but tuning those attackers to spare healthy tissues has been challenging. Now a collaboration of computer scientists and bioengineers has produced a way to select targets with the same kind of logic that drives computers, promising treatments that are both safer and more broadly effective.
A new recipe for patterning cells on a surface holds promise for the repair of damaged nerve tissue.
Are obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular illnesses and more the result of a “mismatch” between the meals we eat and the foods our bodies are prepared for?
The “mismatch hypothesis” argues that each of our bodies has evolved and adapted to digest the foods that our ancestors ate, and that human bodies will struggle and largely fail to metabolize a radically new set of foods.
A study of more than a half-million people in India who were exposed to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 suggests that the virus’ continued spread is driven by only a small percentage of those who become infected.
Princeton researchers are making key contributions toward developing a promising new treatment for the widespread and devastating diseases toxoplasmosis and malaria.
The Princeton scientists specialize in preparing the drug compound into a medicine that is both safe and effective for humans and able to reach its intended sites of action in the body in sufficient doses.
A Princeton team has developed a class of light-switchable, highly adaptable molecular tools with new capabilities to control cellular activities. The antibody-like proteins, called OptoBinders, allow researchers to rapidly control processes inside and outside of cells by directing their localization, with potential applications including protein purification, the improved production of biofuels, and new types of targeted cancer therapies.
Researchers at Princeton University have developed a systematic approach for evaluating how the microbial community in our intestines can chemically transform, or metabolize, oral medications in ways that impact their safety and efficacy. The new methodology provides a more complete picture of how gut bacteria metabolize drugs, and could aid the development of medications that are more effective, have fewer side effects, and are personalized to an individual’s microbiome.
A National Science Foundation grant will support Princeton researchers studying how COVID-19 may be spread by people without symptoms through everyday social interactions involving breathing and speaking.
