A medical breakthrough can change the course of a patient’s life. It could be a new cure for an infectious disease, a revolutionary surgical technique or a life-changing device.
Medical imaging is a vital tool that allows physicians to see inside a patient’s body without the need for invasive surgery. The first medical imaging technologies—ultrasound in 1956, computed tomography (CT) in 1967 and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in 1973—have revolutionized the way doctors diagnose and treat brain, heart, lung, liver and kidney conditions.
Surgeons Joseph Murray and Robert Engle perform the world’s first successful kidney transplant, paving the way for pancreas, liver and heart transplants in the future. At Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Sidney Farber and colleagues find a drug that dramatically boosts cure rates for Wilms tumor of the kidney. Cell Biology researchers at Mass General develop a stem-cell culture system to generate mature human insulin-producing cells, and successfully transplant them into diabetic mice.
Genetics research is a major field of medical breakthrough, from the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA by Francis Crick and James Watson to the development of gene mapping that allows doctors to predict a person’s risk for specific diseases. The recent development of precise gene-editing tools such as CRISPR/Cas9, inspired by bacteria’s immune systems, may herald a future in which individualized medicine is possible.
MSU scientists are working to bring these advances to real-world healthcare. By combining nanomedicine and artificial intelligence, they are uncovering “hidden” disease markers in blood to help physicians spot diseases like cancer and heart disease much earlier than ever before—saving lives all over the world.