NIH Research highlights, a year in review

Vera Mucaj
3 min readDec 29, 2023

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🎊I enjoy end-of-year/new year #predictions as much as the next girl. But I’m a bigger fan of #retrospective results and tangible successes. 🔙 🎉💪

💡My favorites this year came as a series of blogs by The National Institutes of Health, highlighting NIH-supported findings in Basic Research, Promising Medical Findings, and Human Health Advances. I’m highlighting my favorites below, but encourage everyone to peruse them all. The fascinating thing about #research in #healthcare: it’s slow until it’s very fast. The accumulation of hard work, by many people, over many years, leads to improved outcomes for all. Let’s continue encouraging and funding such remarkable work!

🔬Basic Research Insights — my favorite: “How Psychedelic Drugs May Help with Depression”
→ Psychedelic drugs (e.g., psilocybin, MDMA) are showing promise in treating treatment-resistant depression by promoting new brain cell connections. This process is known as neural plasticity.
→ The basic molecular mechanism discovered suggests these drugs have an ability to bind to specific receptors within neurons (5-HT2ARs) and induce dendritic spine growth, which forms connections between neurons.
→ Implications: This research could lead to the development of new treatments for depression, without causing hallucinogenic side effects. Further study is needed to safely activate these pathways for therapeutic use.

Link to all Basic Research highlights: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/2023-nih-research-highlights-basic-research-insights

👩‍⚕️Human Health Advances — my favorite: “An mRNA vaccine to treat pancreatic cancer”
→ Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the deadliest cancers. A personalized mRNA vaccine demonstrated a strong anti-tumor immune in a small study, showing promise in treating PDAC.
→ The vaccine is engineered to target specific neoantigens (proteins) in individual patients’ cancer cells. When combined with other treatments, this led to a strong response and no recurrence in a portion of those treated.
→ Implications: Personalized cancer treatment via immune system activation could be an option for those suffering from PDAC and other deadly cancers, where current standard of care is not offering much hope. Larger clinical trials are planned for further investigation.

Link to all Human Health Advances highlights: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/2023-nih-research-highlights-human-health-advances

⚕️Promising Medical Findings — my favorite: “Blood test for early Alzheimer’s detection”
→ Generally, Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed when cognitive decline has already occurred. A newly developed blood test, the Soluble Oligomer Binding Assay (SOBA), can detect toxic amyloid beta (Aβ) oligomers in blood, which are early markers of the disease, long before symptoms appear.
→ This method showed high accuracy in distinguishing Alzheimer’s disease from other cognitive impairments, and it might be used for early diagnostic tests of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
→ Implications: Early detection via SOBA could allow for timely interventions and management strategies to slow the progression of the disease.

Link to all Promising Medical Findings highlights: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/2023-nih-research-highlights-promising-medical-findings

Courtesy of Dall-E ❤

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Vera Mucaj
Vera Mucaj

Written by Vera Mucaj

Passionate about R&D and healthcare data. For more science-focused ideas, please visit my blog "Thought Experiments" at https://veramucaj.substack.com

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