Gaffney is Rewriting the “User’s Manual”
With the completion of the Human Genome Project. Scientists promised the world a sort of “user’s manual” for the human body and commentators predicted the end of disease.Continue Reading →
While those results have not yet arrived, it’s researchers like the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation’s Patrick Gaffney, M.D., who are trying to get the world there.
If DNA is the “Big Book of You,” with billions of pages ...
Dr. Patrick Gaffney
A summer of opportunities
This summer was amazing! I can’t even begin to describe how beneficial this summer fellowship was to my future career as a scientist. I learned so many new protocols that I can add to my list, as well as just how a lab works in general. I always thought labs had an impersonal and competitive environment, but this summer I got to see just how collaborative everyone was within and between labs.
I also got to do some amazing things that ...Continue Reading →
Getting settled in and initial thoughts on this fellowship opportunity
I can’t believe the first month of my fellowship has flown by so quickly! I began working in Dr. Erik Peterson’s lab in the University of Minnesota’s Center for Immunology Research at the beginning of June. So far I have been immersed in both the theoretical and technical aspects of lupus research. The fellowship has been made even more exciting by the fact that I have never been to Minnesota before, let alone the Midwest; I have just finished my ...Continue Reading →
A new drug is approved, new questions arise. So how do we find the answers?
Fortunately, many researchers have ideas about where to look for answers, because we know that Benlysta works by reining in a type of immune cells called B cells. B cells play an important role in the normal immune response, but when inappropriately activated in a lupus patient, they produce harmful elements that cause the damaging effects seen in SLE. Researchers think that measuring these may provide clues to help us determine whether an individual patient is likely to respond to ...Continue Reading →
A new drug is approved. What’s next?
We finally get to ask that question about lupus, after the FDA approved Benlysta, the first new drug approved for SLE in over 50 years, in March 2011.
Patients and researchers alike are asking questions … Who needs to take this drug? How is it different from the medicines that doctors were already using? How do we know it’s going to work? How do we know that it’s going to work better than those other medications?
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