By Janet McMillan, C2ST volunteer and graduate student in chemistry at Northwestern University

For anyone who watches the nightly news on a regular basis, it would seem that one massive medical breakthrough after another has resulted in countless drugs available to cure Alzheimer’s disease.  These massively overstated headlines often fail to report that the drug in question has not yet demonstrated efficacy in improving memory in late stage clinical trails. Again and again, a promising drug that can cure Alzheimer’s in mice fails to produce positive results in clinical trails. Despite the large number of drug candidates making it to this point in the past few years, the only drug on the market currently, Mermantine, only produces short term memory benefits for patients. Dr. Grace Stutzmann, an Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Rosalind Franklin University tries to understand why so many of these drugs are failing to do what scientists think they will.

Continue reading “Rethinking why we don’t have a cure for Alzheimer’s”

By Janet McMillan, C2ST volunteer and graduate student in chemistry at Northwestern University

As the world population grows and the developing world gets richer, the global demand for energy is projected to double by 2050.

The challenge we are all faced with, Dr. Maria Zuber lays out, is to develop rational, pragmatic and, importantly, accelerated energy solutions, all while considering the growing energy needs of the developing world.  Dr. Zuber, a professor of geophysics at MIT and Chair of the National Science Board, is a prolific researcher and advocate for climate policy, quickly makes obvious both the seriousness and urgency of this challenge.

Continue reading “A Challenging Climate for our Energy Needs”

By Ann Marie Carias, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and volunteer for C2ST and Alexandra Prokuda, Ph.D., Program Manager at C2ST

Currently, over 1 million people in the United States are living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) [1]. Furthermore, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has estimated that approximately 50,000 persons in the United States become infected with HIV each year with approximately 21,000 persons in the United States dying each year due to the epidemic [2].  Worldwide, the story is even more tragic with over 30 million persons, aged 15-49 years living with HIV, with 2.5 million people becoming infected annually, the majority of them women [1].  Continue reading “HIV Risk Factors: Why It’s Important to Get the Word Out”